Silken Prey

all your money gambling and now you’re homeless?”
    “Got a date,” Jenkins said. “She likes it when my cheeks are smooth like a baby’s butt.”
    “So she doesn’t get beard burn on her thighs?”
    “That’s disgusting, but given a person of your ilk, I’m not surprised,” Jenkins said.
    Lucas finished up at the urinal and walked over to wash his hands and said, “Say you’ve got a hot, rich politician running for office, but she’s losing, then her opponent is hit with a scandal involving child porn on his computers, then the guy you think put it there suddenly disappears and the politician turns out to have armed security people, including a couple of guys with thick necks who were in special operations in the army. What we unsophisticates call ‘trained killers.’ What do you think?”
    Jenkins paused, half of his face covered with shaving cream, the other half bare and shaven; he asked, “You got that much for sure?”
    “I’m being told all that,” Lucas said.
    “Have you hooked Tubbs to Grant?”
    “Not yet . . . but Tubbs was probably involved in dirty tricks, and she needed one, bad. And he had a whole bunch of money, cash, in a hideout spot.”
    “You steal any of it?” Jenkins asked.
    “No, no, I didn’t.”
    “Huh,” Jenkins said. “Little cold cash is always useful.”
    “But that would be illegal,” Lucas said.
    “Oh, yeah, I forgot,” Jenkins said. “Listen, we told you, you gotta be careful. Now you gotta be more careful. If Tubbs was found dead with a gunshot wound or his head bashed in, that’s one thing. The killer could have been anybody. But if he disappears with no sign . . . then whoever disappeared him knew what he was doing, and that’s another thing entirely. You don’t find that kind of guy standing around on a street corner—a killer who knows how to organize it, and carries it out clean.”
    “My very thought.”
    Jenkins took another thoughtful scrape through the shaving cream, rinsed the blade, then asked, “Would winning the election be worth the risk of murdering somebody? Of getting involved in a conspiracy to murder somebody?”
    “That’s the problem,” Lucas said. “I don’t think any rational person would, and Grant seems pretty rational. Either that, or she’s crazier than a shithouse mouse. I talked to her today, pushed her a bit, and she pushed back. Never showed a wrinkle of worry, which means she’s either innocent or nuts.”
    “Go for innocent: it cuts down the number of problems,” Jenkins said.
    “Another thing: I’m told one of these special forces guys is in love with her . . . which creates the question, exactly what would he do to see her win? Would he even tell her what he was planning to do?”
    “Remember that guy who went around robbing those ladies’ spa places?” Jenkins asked. “You know, manicure stores? Couple years ago?”
    “Yeah, but I can’t remember why he did it.”
    “He did it because he figured that there wouldn’t be many guys around to deal with. No macho problems. It’d just be a bunch of women, and the places were almost all cash. He was getting a couple thousand bucks a week, paying no taxes, taking it easy,” Jenkins said. “Anyway, he was ex–special forces. I tried to get his military records, and couldn’t. Never did. We didn’t need them, as it turned out, because one of the places he hit made some great movies of him . . . but the point is, I couldn’t get the records. That’s gonna be a problem, if these guys are really ex-army. Especially if they’re former special ops.”
    “Maybe I won’t need them,” Lucas said.
    “Oh . . . I think you probably will. There’s nothing harder to break, IMHO”—he actually said the letters, I-M-H-O—“than a murder done by a guy who’s well organized, doesn’t feel much guilt, and you can’t find the body. I’ve had two of those, and I’m batting five hundred. The one guy I got, it was luck. This is probably gonna be tougher. So you will need all the background you can get on them. . . . Grant wouldn’t hire stupid people.”
    “I knew that talking to you would cheer me up,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, well . . .”
    Jenkins went back to shaving, and though it was late, Lucas headed back to his office. He wasn’t exactly inspired by Jenkins, but he could make a couple of quick checks.
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    H E FOUND EMPLOYMENT RECORDS for Carver and Dannon in the quarterly tax reports filed by