Stolen Prey

Keisler said.
    “If your client is innocent, he has the obligation to provide us with any information he has,” Morgan said.
    “But not misinformation. Let me put it this way. This is more of a feeling than hard information, and while it includes a name, it’s possible that he would be implicating a completely innocent person. He wants to cooperate, and if he cooperates, and you guys, from some misplaced sense of vengeance, go after him, we want the court to know that he cooperated.”
    A FTER A LOT of to-ing and fro-ing, which took the best part of fifteen minutes, a name was spat out: Mohammed Ibriz.
    Lucas: “This guy, Mohammed Ibriz, is an accomplice?”
    “I can’t swear to it,” Kline said. “But I heard Ivan talking to theguy several times, when we were working down there in Systems. I was over on the other side of the computers, and you know how you listen to somebody when they’re trying to be confidential and quiet? I heard him call him Mohammed several times, and you know now, how you notice Islamic names because of all the trouble?”
    “Where did the Ibriz guy come from?” Lucas asked.
    “From Ivan’s cell phone. It was sitting on the work table, and it rang, and I looked down at it and it said, ‘Mohammed Ibriz’ on the display,” Kline said. He thought Ibriz might be an accomplice, he said, because the calls started just about the time the money was stolen, and continued off and on through the month.
    “And you just remembered the name, like that?” Morgan asked.
    “Well, I heard
Mohammed
a lot, so that was already in my head, and then Ibriz … I guess it just stuck,” Kline said. “Then Officer Davenport asked me these questions about some Syrian moving gold coins…. It popped into my head.”
    “You wouldn’t know where we could find this guy, would you?” Lucas asked.
    “Well, I know what I did, this morning,” Kline said.
    “What was that?” Lucas asked.
    “I looked in the phone book. There’s an office listing for a Mohammed Ibriz over in Galtier Plaza. How many Mohammed Ibrizes can there be?”
    Galtier Plaza was maybe six blocks away.
    T HERE WAS more lawyer talk, but Morgan had agreed that no matter what happened, if there should be a prosecution, thecourt would be told of Kline’s cooperation … if, in fact, it turned out to be anything.
    When they were gone, Lucas asked Morgan, “What do you think?”
    “Keisler’s a dealer. That’s what he does. If he doesn’t want to deal, he probably thinks he’s got a strong case. And he’s smart enough to know strong from weak. His partner, the trial guy, could sell ice cubes to penguins. So, if I were you, I’d look into Mohammed.”
    Lucas patted his pocket looking for his cell phone, and realized why he’d felt uneasy walking across the street to the courthouse: he’d left the phone in the car, on the car charger. He borrowed a phone, called Del, and said, “Meet me at Galtier Plaza in fifteen minutes. Bring the Turicek file. We need to talk to a guy.”
    L UCAS TALKED to Morgan for a few more minutes, then hurried off to Galtier, which was an office and apartment complex on the edge of an area called Lowertown. He’d once seen a woman get murdered in a park across the street, and never walked through the area without thinking about that day.
    Flowers had been with him….
    Flowers
, he thought. “Goddamnit.” He should have stopped and gotten the phone. He’d never owned a cell phone until three years earlier, and now he felt naked without it.
    Del was waiting outside Ficocello’s barbershop on the Skyway level. The Ficocello brothers were both cutting hair, and both took the time to raise a hand as Lucas went by. Del said, “He’s on nine.”
    They went up in the elevator, found a blond-wood door with a sign that said ibriz property management, and went in. There were two offices: the outer office, with a secretary staring at a computer, and an inner office, where a tall thin man was reading the
Pioneer Press
. He took down the paper to watch them as they showed their IDs to the secretary, then stood up and came to the door and asked, “Is there a trouble?”
    “We’re from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Lucas said. “We’re looking for a Mohammed Ibriz.”
    The man said, “That is I. How can I help?”
    “Do you know a man named Ivan Turicek?” Lucas asked.
    Ibriz cocked his head and said, “No. I believe not.”
    Lucas opened the file and took out an enlarged copy of