Shadow Prey

said, “Wait a minute,” and turned back.
    “Hey,” he called to the security man. “How did that room-service food get up on three?”
    The security man looked at Lucas, then at Lily, then at the elevators.
    “Let’s go ask,” he said.
     
    “In a dumbwaiter,” a cook told them. He pointed to an alcove, where they could see the opening for the chain-driven lift.
    The security man looked from the dumbwaiter to the cook to Lucas. “Could a man ride up in that?” he asked the cook.
    “Well . . . I guess a couple guys have. Sometimes,” the cook said, his eyes shifting nervously.
    “What do you mean, ‘sometimes’?”
    “Well, when it’s busy, you know, the boss doesn’t want a lot of waiters riding up in the elevators with the customers. The waiters are supposed to take the stairs. But sometimes, I mean, if it’s on the tenth floor . . .”
    “How often do guys ride up?” the security man asked.
    “Look, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble . . . .”
    “Nobody’ll hear a word from us,” Lily promised.
    The cook wiped his hands on his apron, then lowered his voice and said, “Every day.”
    “Shit,” said the security man.
     
    The security man laid it out: “A suicide run. Four guys. They come down the alley to the service dock. They push the bell. One of the staff opens the door to see who it is. The Crows stick a gun in his stomach. One guy stays in the kitchen while the other three ride up in the dumbwaiter, one at a time. They come out in the service area on fourteen. They’ve got automatic weapons or shotguns. They check the hall, somehow . . . maybe just peek, or they use a dental mirror . . . they come out and take the two agents in the hall. That leaves one guy with the chief. They knock the door out with a shotgun, and then it’s three on two, maybe three machine guns or shotguns against two pistols . . . .”
    “It’s a possibility,” said Lily.
    Now it was Lucas’ turn to shake his head. “You know, when you lay it out like that, it sounds pretty unlikely . . . .”
    “The Crows are pretty unlikely,” the security man said.“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll freeze the kitchen. Stick a monitor somewhere. If they come in, we’ll snap them up.”
    “A trap,” said Lily.
    “Right. Well—excuse me, I gotta go talk to the chief. And listen: Thanks.”
     
    On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, Lucas shook his head again.
    “It was a hole, but that’s not what the Crows are up to,” he said.
    “Then what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    In the car, Lily looked at her watch. “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch?”
    “Sure. Want to go to my place?” Lucas asked.
    Lily looked at him curiously. “This is a new attitude,” she said. “What happened?”
    “Jennifer . . .”
    “ . . . figured us out,” she finished, sitting up straight in her seat. “Oh, shit. Did she throw you out?”
    “That’s about it,” Lucas conceded. He cranked the car and pulled away from the curb.
    “You don’t think she’d call David, do you?” Lily asked anxiously.
    “No. No, I don’t. She’s spent some time in bed with married men—I know some of them—and she’d never have thought of talking to their wives. She wouldn’t break up a marriage.”
    “It makes me nervous,” Lily said. “And that must be why you’re so bummed out. You sat in Daniel’s office looking like your dog had died.”
    “Yeah. It’s Jen and it’s this fuckin’ case. Larry killed, executed. And I’ve been useless. That feels weird, you know? When something important is happening—drugs, gambling, credit-card scams, burglary rings—I’ve got these contacts. Daniel comes to me and says, ‘Talk to your net. We got thirty-six burglaries on the southeast side last week, all small shit, stereos and TVs.’ So I go out and talk to the net. A good part of the time, I’ll find out what’s happening. I’llsqueeze a gambler and get sent to a fence and squeeze the fence and find a junkie, and squeeze the junkie and get the whole ring. But this thing . . . I got nobody. If they were regular crooks, I could find them. Dopers need dope or need to sell it, so they’re out and about. Burglars and credit-card hustlers need fences. But who do these guys need? An old friend. Maybe a former university professor. Maybe an old sixties radical. Maybe some kind of right-wing lunatic. Maybe Indian, maybe white. Who the fuck knows? I spent my whole