Rules of Prey

any further. No comebacks.”
    There was a pause; then, “You know that taco joint across I-94 from Martin Luther College?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Twenty minutes. And, goddammit, you come alone, you hear?”
     
    Lucas made it in eighteen. The restaurant parking lot was empty. Inside, a lone diner stared out a window as he nurseda cup of coffee over the cardboard remains of his meal. An employee was mopping the floor and turned to watch Lucas come in. The countergirl, probably a student from the university, smiled warily.
    “Give me a Diet Coke,” Lucas said.
    “Anything else?” Still wary. Lucas realized that in his leather bomber jacket, jeans, and boots, with a day-old beard, he might look threatening.
    “Yeah. Relax. I’m a cop.” He grinned, took the badge case out of his shirt pocket, and showed it to her, and she smiled back.
    “We’ve had some problems here,” she said.
    “Holdup?”
    “Last month and the month before. Four months ago it was twice. There are some bikers around.”
    When the cop came in, Lucas recognized him instantly. Gray-haired, wearing a lightweight beige jacket and brown slacks. Roe, he thought. Harold Roe. Longtime cop. Must be near retirement.
    Roe looked around, stopped at the counter, got a coffee, and walked over.
    “You it?” Lucas asked.
    “You wearing a wire?”
    “No.”
    “If you are, you’re entrapping me.”
    “I admit it. If I am, I’m entrapping you. But I’m not.”
    “Read me my rights.”
    “Nope.”
    “Hmph. You know, this is all horseshit,” Roe said, taking a sip of his coffee. “If they put you on the witness stand, you might tell a whole ’nother story.”
    “Won’t be any witness stand, Harry. I could walk out of here right now, go to Daniel, say ‘Harry Roe is the man,’ and the IAD would put together a case in three days. You know how it goes, once they got a starting point.”
    “Yeah.” Roe looked around wearily and shook his head. “Jesus, I hate this.”
    “So tell me.”
    “Not much to tell. I figured that piece was cold. Never show up in a million years. There was this guy down the block, Larry Rice was his name, I grew up with him. He was a maintenance man for the city. I used to see him around City Hall all the time. You probably seen him yourself. Heavyset guy with a limp, always wore one of those striped train-engineer hats.”
    “Yeah, I remember him.”
    “Anyway, he was dying of some kind of cancer, little bit by little bit. It was working its way up his body. First he couldn’t walk, then he couldn’t control his bowels, like that. His wife was working and he was at home. One day these neighborhood punks came in and took the TV and stereo right out from in front of him. He had this wheelchair, but he couldn’t fight them. He couldn’t identify them, either, because they were wearing paper sacks on their heads . . . . Assholes is who they were.”
    “So you got him the gun?”
    “Well, his wife came over after this happened, and asked my wife if I had an extra gun. I didn’t. I’m no gun freak—sorry, I know you’re into guns, but I’m not.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “So I went up there to the property room and I knew about the gun because I worked on the case. I figured there was no way in hell it would ever be needed for anything.”
    “And you took it.”
    Roe took a sip of his coffee. “Yep.”
    “So this Rice guy . . .”
    “He’s dead. Two months ago.”
    “Shit. How about his wife?”
    “She’s still out there. After the meeting this afternoon, I went over and asked her about the gun. She said she didn’t know where it was. She looked, but it was gone. She said the last couple of weeks before he died, Larry sold a whole bunch of personal stuff to get money for her. He was afraid he wouldn’t leave anything. She said when he died, he left about a thousand bucks behind.”
    “She doesn’t know who got the gun?”
    “No. I asked her how he sold the stuff and she said he just sold it to people he knew, friends and so on. He had a little sign in the window, she said, but he didn’t advertise it or nothing. People might see the sign walking by on the sidewalk, but that was all.” Roe passed a slip of paper across the table. “I told her you’d want to see her. Here’s her address.”
    “Thanks.” Lucas drained the last of his Coke.
    “Now what?” asked Roe.
    “Now nothing. If you’ve been telling the truth.”
    “It’s the truth,” Roe said levelly. “I feel like a