Silken Prey

that kind of guy. He won’t go after us . . . if he owes us.”
    •   •   •
    “A LL RIGHT,” L UCAS SAID. He stood up. “I’ll do it.”
    “Excellent,” the governor said. “Call me every day.”
    “But what if he did it?” Lucas asked.
    “He didn’t,” the governor said.
    Lucas said, “I’m going to tell Rose Marie about it. I can’t . . . not do that.” Rose Marie was the public safety commissioner and an old friend.
    The governor was exasperated: “Jesus Christ, Lucas . . .”
    “I can’t not do that,” Lucas insisted.
    The governor threw up his hands. “All right. When you tell her, you tell her to call me. I’ll need . . . Wait. Hell no. I’ll call her right now. You get going on this. I’d like to get something pretty definitive in, say, mmm, three days. Two would be better.”
    “Man . . .”
    “Go.” Henderson waved him away.
    •   •   •
    R OSE M ARIE R OUX HAD been a cop, then a lawyer and prosecutor, then a state senator, then the Minneapolis chief of police, and finally, the commissioner of public safety under Henderson. She had jurisdiction over a number of law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. She viewed Lucas as both a friend and an effective tool for achieving her policy goals, not all of them involving crime-fighting. She’d gotten him his job at the BCA.
    Rose Marie’s husband was ten years older than she was, and when he’d retired, he talked her into dumping the suburban Minneapolis house in favor of a sprawling co-op apartment in downtown St. Paul. Lucas gave the governor a few minutes to talk to her, and then, as he walked back to his car, called her himself.
    “You at home?”
    “Yeah, come on down. I’ll buzz you into the garage.”
    •   •   •
    L UCAS HAD BEEN TO the apartment often enough that he knew the routine; buzzed into the garage, he parked in one of the visitors’ slots and took the elevator to the top floor. Rose Marie’s husband opened the door; he was holding the
Times
in one hand and a piece of jelly toast in the other. “She’s out on the deck,” he said.
    “You raked the leaves off the deck yet?”
    “Thank God for the penthouse—not a leaf to be seen,” he said.
    Rose Marie, wrapped in a wool shawl, was sitting on a lounge chair, smoking a cigarette; nicotine gum, she said, was for pussies. She was a short woman, going to weight, with an ever-changing hair color. Lucas liked her a lot.
    When Lucas stepped out on the deck, she said, “I appreciate what you did, bringing me into it. This will be interesting, all the way around. Although it has a downside, of course.”
    She crushed the cigarette out on a ceramic saucer by the side of the chair. As Lucas sat down facing her, she asked, “How much do you like your job?”
    “It’s okay. Been doing it for a while,” Lucas said.
    “If this kind of thing happens too often, you’ll get pushed out,” Rose Marie said. “It’s inevitable.”
    Lucas shrugged. “I do it because it’s interesting. This assignment’s interesting. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be chasing chicken thieves in Black Duck.”
    Rose Marie said, “I keep thinking about what I’m going to do when this job is over. If Elmer makes vice president, he’ll take care of both of us. If he doesn’t, then I’m unemployed, and you probably will be, too.”
    “That’s a cheerful thought,” Lucas said.
    “Gotta face facts,” Rose Marie said. “We’ve both had a good run. But I don’t feel like retiring, and you’re way too young to retire. We’re both financially fine, but what the fuck do we do? Become consultants? I don’t feel like running for anything.”
    “I haven’t spent a lot of time worrying about it,” Lucas said.
    “You should,” Rose Marie said. “Even if Elmer makes vice president, I’m not sure you’d want what he could get you. I’d be fine, because I’m basically a politician, I could work in D.C., or for his office here. But you . . . I don’t know what you’d do. I don’t think you’d want to wind up as some FBI functionary. Or Elmer’s valet.”
    “No.”
    “Well. Sooner or later, your name will be connected to this job,” Rose Marie said. “Whether or not it pans out. If the attorney general doesn’t jump you for the prosecution, Porter Smalls will come after you for the defense. A lot of people in the Department of Public Safety and over at the BCA don’t like this kind of thing,