Silken Prey

us.”
    “Stay in touch,” Lucas said. “Let me know for sure when they hit 494.”
    Quintana lived in Golden Valley, a first-ring suburb west of Minneapolis. He was standing on his front porch when Lucas and Virgil arrived. He got in the backseat, and Lucas introduced Flowers. Quintana said, “I appreciate the chance.”
    “Like I said, it’s up to Minneapolis what they do about this,” Lucas said. “But you kinda blew it, Ray.”
    “I know that,” Quintana said. “But tell me you don’t do a little off-the-record relationship stuff. I thought Tubbs might be something for me: a guy to know.”
    “I understand that,” Lucas said. “I don’t buy all that other stuff.”
    “Ahhh . . .” Quintana shut up and looked out the side window.
    After a couple minutes of silence, Virgil said to Lucas, “At least we know he’s not lying to us now.”
    “How’s that?” Lucas asked.
    “His lips aren’t moving.”
    Quintana began laughing in the backseat, and then Lucas and Virgil started.
    •   •   •
    T HEY PULLED INTO a mostly empty strip mall parking lot a mile from Grant’s house. The streets were good between the mall and her house, and they could be there in a couple of minutes. They talked about Tubbs and Roman, but not about Quintana’s problem.
    “I wish that motherfucker Tubbs wasn’t dead,” Quintana said. “Then I could kill him myself.”
    Lucas asked Flowers how his most recent romance had been going.
    “I think it’s gone,” Flowers said. “We’re apparently friends, now.”
    “That’s not necessarily the kiss of death,” Quintana said from the backseat, and they talked about that for a while.
    Jenkins called when the caravan got off I-94 and headed south on I-494, and then when it got off I-494 and headed west. Lucas called the tech and said, “I’m making the call.”
    And at that moment, as he hung up on the tech and prepared to call the unknown phone, another call from Jenkins came in. “Man, we got a problem. We got a problem.”
    “What?”
    “I got a cop car on my ass, and so does Shrake. The caravan has pulled over ahead of us. Shit! They made us. I gotta talk to this cop.”
    “Goddamnit, where are you?” Lucas asked.
    He got the location, and told Flowers to go that way, and then made the call on Quintana’s phone and handed it to Quintana. It rang, and rang, and rang, with no answer. The tech called and said, “We’ve got a location for you. The phone’s at Hampshire Avenue North and Thirtieth.”
    “What?”
    “It’s at Hampshire Avenue North and Thirtieth. There’s a park there.”
    Lucas asked, “Where in the hell is that?”
    “Well, if you’re at Grant’s house, it’s about eight miles east. As the crow flies.”
    “Sonofabitch,” Lucas said.
    “What’re we doing?” Flowers asked.
    “Got no choice, now. We’ll try to shake them, see if anything comes loose,” Lucas said.
    He turned around in his seat and said to Quintana, “I’m going to point out these guys and tell you to look at them. Like you’d seen them before. I want you to take a long look, then come over and mutter at me. Don’t let them hear what you’re saying.”
    “I never saw them,” Quintana said.
    “Ray, for Christ’s sakes, I’m trying to shake ’em. We’re doing a pageant.”
    Quintana cracked a smile. “All right.”
    “What do you want me to do?” Flowers asked, as they turned a corner and saw the lights on the squad cars.
    “Well, given the way you’re dressed, you could ask me if I want them hog-tied,” Lucas said.
    “Don’t take it out on me,” Flowers said. “I’m not the one who . . .”
    “. . . poked the pup,” Quintana said.
    “Shut up,” Lucas snarled, no longer in the mood for humor.
    •   •   •
    W HEN THEY CAME UP on the lights, the street was full of cops and politicians. Flowers turned on his own flashers, and a cop who started toward them stopped and put his hands on his hips. Lucas, Flowers, and Quintana got out, and the cop waited for them to walk up, and then asked, “Any chance you’re the BCA?”
    “BCA and Minneapolis police,” Lucas said.
    At that moment, Taryn Grant, who was in the street with a half-dozen campaign workers and her security people, came steaming toward them and shrieked, “I knew it was you. I knew it.”
    “Shut up,” Lucas said, but without much snap.
    “This is the last straw.” She was wildly angry; her blond hair had come loose from whatever kind of spray had