Shadow Prey

goddamn life in this town, and most of the time I lived right around where the Indians live and I never saw them. I know a few, but it’s because they’re in drugs or burglary, or because they’re straight and I go to their stores. Other than that, I just don’t have a net out there. I’ve got a black net. I’ve got a white net. I’ve even got an Irish net. I don’t have an Indian net.”
    “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Lily said. “You got the tip on the trouble out at Bear Butte and found the photograph that I picked Hood out of.”
    “I got tied up like a fuckin’ pig by Hood and almost got my brains blown out . . . .”
    “You figured out how to squeeze the Liss woman and got the names of the Crows out of her. You’re doing all right, Davenport.”
    “It’s been luck, and that ain’t going to hack it from here on out,” Lucas said, glancing at her. “So stop trying to cheer me up.”
    “I’m not,” she said cheerfully. “We don’t have a lot to be cheerful about. As a matter of fact, unless we get real lucky, we’re completely fucked.”
    “Not completely,” Lucas said. He downshifted, let the car wind down to a red light and touched her thigh. “But in an hour, who knows?”
     
    Lily prowled through the house like a potential buyer, checking each of the rooms. Once, Lucas thought, he caught her sniffing the air. He grinned, said nothing and got two beers.
    “Pretty good,” she said finally, as she came up the stairs from the basement. “Where’d you get that old safe?”
    “I use it as a gun safe,” Lucas said, handing her a beer. “I picked it up cheap when they were tearing out a railroad ticket office here in St. Paul. It took six guys to get it in the house and down the stairs. I was afraid the stairs were going to break under the weight.”
    She took a sip of beer and said, “When you invited me for lunch . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    “ . . . am I supposed to make it?”
    “Oh, fuck no,” he said. “You got your choice. Pasta salad or chicken-breast salad with slices of avocado and light ranch dressing.”
    “Really?”
     
    “It’s a zoo over on Franklin and down on Lake,” Lily said as she worked down into her salad. “With Clay in town, the feebs are crawling all over the place.”
    “Assholes,” Lucas grunted. “They’ve got no contacts, the people hate them, they spend twenty-four hours a day stepping on their dicks . . . .”
    “They’re doing that now, in major numbers,” Lily agreed. She looked up from her chicken-breast salad and said, “That was delicious. That pasta looks pretty good too . . . .”
    “Want a bite?”
    “Maybe just a bite?”
     
    After lunch, they went to the study and Lily pulled out one of Anderson’s notebooks for review. They both drank another beer, and Lucas put his feet up on a hassock and dozed.
    “Warm in here,” Lily said after a while.
    “Yeah. The furnace kicked in. I looked at the thermometer. It’s thirty-six degrees outside.”
    “It felt cold,” she said, “but it’s so pretty, you don’t notice it. With the sun and everything.”
    “Yeah.” He yawned and dozed some more, then cracked his eyes open as Lily peeled off her cotton sweater. She had a marvelously soft profile, he thought. He watched her read, nibbling at her lower lip.
    “Nothing in the notebooks,” he said. “I’ve been through them.”
    “There must be something, somewhere.”
    “Mmm.”
    “Why did the Crows kill Larry? They must have known that it would be counterproductive, in the political sense. And they didn’t have to kill him—he wasn’t helping us that much.”
    “They didn’t know that. He was on TV after the raid on the Crows’ apartment . . . . Maybe they thought . . .”
    “Ah. I didn’t think of that,” she said. Then she frowned. “I was on TV the other night. After Larry was cut.”
    “Might be a good idea to lie low for a while,” Lucas said. “These guys are fruitcakes.”
    “I still can’t figure Larry,” she said. “Or this other guy, Yellow Hand. Why kill Yellow Hand? Revenge? But revenge doesn’t make any sense in this kind of situation, against one of your own people. It just muddies things up. And they never mention those shootings in their press releases . . . .”
    “I got no ideas,” Lucas said. After a moment he added, “Well, that’s not quite right. I do have one idea . . . .”
    “What’s that?”
    “Why don’t we sneak back to the