Phantom Prey

Disappointed? “Did you get anything? ”
    Lucas told him about the missing fifty thousand dollars. “Looks like she just cashed the check, or signed it over to somebody. Or something. Anyway, it doesn’t pop up in any of her accounts that I can find.”
    There was a silence of several seconds, then Anson said, “Fifty grand?”
    “Yeah. The question is, what would she use it for? She doesn’t seem like a gambler. Cocaine? Doesn’t seem like that kind, either. Maybe . . . who knows, maybe she was buying photography equipment or computers or something. But Alyssa says she doesn’t know, and she thinks that she would.”
    “So now what?”
    “I’ll get my financial guys to look into it. Maybe go back to the A1 tonight. People knew her there. See if she was throwing any money around, talking about anything.”
    “What about the photo kit?”
    “Gotta think about that. Fax one to me, will you? I’ll look at it later.”
    Lucas headed back to the BCA, with copies of the Fidelity documents made on Alyssa Austin’s home-office copier. Give them to the accountants, he thought, and let them figure it out.
    He’d parked, was out of the car, walking toward the door, head down, when Jenkins and Shrake came hustling out of the building, carrying vests.
    He stopped. “Where’re you going?”
    “Antsy Toms is back in town,” Shrake said.
    “I’m coming,” Lucas said. “Let me get my vest.”
    He ran inside, up the stairs, down to his office, threw the copies at his secretary, Carol, and blurted, “Give these to Dan Hall, find out who cashed the fifty-thousand-dollar check.” She said, “What?” and he pulled his vest out from behind his file cabinets, shouted, “Dan Hall, find out about the check, the fifty grand.”
    “Where’re you going?”
    “Antsy Toms is back in town,” he said, and he ran past her, down the hall and back down the stairs. Shrake was at the wheel of his personal Crown Vic, waiting in the street. Lucas climbed in the back.
    “Where is he?”
    “At his mom’s house in Frogtown,” Jenkins said, as Shrake jumped on the gas. “We own the guy who lives across the street. He’s on his second continuance on coke charges. He’s been going down to the cathedral, lighting candles, hoping that Antsy would show up so he could turn him in.”
    “He wouldn’t be shittin’ you?” Lucas asked.
    Jenkins snorted. “He ain’t gettin’ a third continuance.”
    “Gotta stay cool,” Lucas said. “Antsy’s got more muscle than Rocky II. ”
    “And he’s more fucked up than Rocky the Flying Squirrel,” Shrake said. “I’m just praying he hasn’t left.”
    “Is St. Paul on the way?” Lucas asked.
    Long pause. Then Jenkins said, “I guess we forgot to call them.”
    “You morons,” Lucas said.
    Jenkins struggled, turned in his seat, and looked at Lucas: “Call them if you want, you yellow motherfucker.”
    They looked at each other for a minute, then Lucas said, “Whatever. ”
    Shrake busted a red light turning onto University, and the Crown Vic took about three turns that the road didn’t, and Lucas said, “I can’t believe you went out and bought this piece of shit.”
    “Couldn’t help myself,” Shrake said. “The seats fit my ass.”
    “The experts rated it on Microsoft Network,” Jenkins said over his shoulder.
    “How’d they rate it?”
    “Six out of ten,” Jenkins said. Then he made a laugh sound that went like “bwa-hahahah,” and Shrake said, “Fuck you,” and then, “We’re four blocks out.”
    “Put it at the Taco Shed,” Jenkins suggested.
    “Somebody’ll steal the tires,” Shrake said.
    “Not when they see us getting out of the car,” Jenkins said. He reached between his legs and swung up a pump shotgun.
    “Maybe we could rob the Taco Shed before we take Antsy,” Lucas said.
    “Not a bad idea,” Jenkins said, “except that it’s daylight.”
    A block from the Taco Shed, Jenkins called St. Paul and identified himself: “We’ve got a semi-confirmed tip that Antsy Toms is at his mother’s house.”
    He gave them the details, and help was on the way. It’d get there only a minute or so too late, Lucas thought: as planned.
    The Taco Shed was two houses sideways from Toms’s mother’s place. In addition to being Siggy’s stupid younger brother, and occasional cocaine runner, Toms was a weight guy, a lifter, a bouncer, a steroid freak, and a meth enthusiast. Three weeks earlier, stoned out of his mind, and tired of constant cop