Stolen Prey

passed it on to another guy I know, because he is also a Mexicano. I didn’t know he was a drug dealer.”
    “Why’d you think about the killings on the other side of town?” Andrews asked.
    “’Cause I watched the TV news last night. Sounded like Mexican dopers to me.”
    They talked for a couple more minutes, and when asked where he’d come from, Castells said, “Washington, D.C.”
    “You were a congressman, or something?” Del asked.
    Castells said, “Something like that.”
    “You speak Spanish?” Del asked.
    “Yes.”
    Lucas asked, “French?”
    “Mm-hmm. You looking for a language teacher?”
    “No. German?” Lucas asked.
    “Maybe a little. I travel on business.”
    “Antiquities.”
    “Yes. And high-end furniture.”
    He did not, he said, have any more relevant information, but he’d keep his ear to the ground, his nose to the grindstone, and his feet on the fence. If he heard anything more, he’d call Lucas. Lucas gave him a card and stood up. “Stay in touch. We could be a valuable contact for a hardworking antique dealer.”
    “Antiquities, not antiques. Antiques were made in Queen Victoria’s time. Antiquities were made by the Greeks and Romansand Egyptians. Entirely different market,” Castells said, as he put the card in his pocket. He was, Lucas thought, exactly the kind of guy who would keep it.
    Outside, Lucas said to Andrews, “Interesting guy.”
    Del said, “Yeah. So are we going down to the Wee Blue Inn?”
    “Thought we might,” Lucas said.
    T HE W EE B LUE I NN was a hole-in-the-wall motel and bar on Robert Street in West St. Paul. All three of them knew it, and Del and Andrews had been inside. “The owner is a guy named John Poe, like in Edgar Allan, but he doesn’t write poetry,” Del said. “He sells the occasional gun, and he’ll rent you a room for an hour at a time.”
    “He sweats a lot,” Andrews said. “He usually smells like onion sweat. I think he eats those ‘everything’ bagels.”
    “Can we jack him up without anybody looking in a window at us?” Lucas asked. “I’d rather talk to Poe straight up, see what he has to say, than go in with the whole SWAT squad.”
    “I could go in and look around,” Del said. He looked nothing like a cop, a major asset in his job.
    “Except that Poe knows you,” Lucas said.
    “He won’t tell anybody,” Del said. “He doesn’t want his clientele knowing that cops are hanging around.”
    “Let’s do that,” Lucas said. “If there are three bad Mexicans in there, we’ll call up the SWAT.”
    T HEY TALKED ABOUT Poe on the way over, and Andrews called headquarters and got them to put a couple squads in a dry cleaner’slot two blocks away, no stoplights between them and the Wee Blue Inn. “Just in case,” he said.
    At the Wee Blue Inn, they dropped Del and went on their way, around the block. Del called one minute later and said, “I talked to Poe. He says the Mexicans were here, but they’re gone. Checked out yesterday morning. They said they were going back to Dallas.”
    “Did he
ask
them where they were going, or did they volunteer it?”
    Del went away for a moment, then came back: “They volunteered it.”
    “So they’re not going back to Dallas,” Lucas said.
    “I wouldn’t think so,” Del said.
    “Huh. Be back in one minute.”
    T HE W EE B LUE I NN was an earth-colored stucco place with a blue-tile roof. The earth color came from dirt.
    The floors inside were made of dark wood and squeaked underfoot, not from polish, but from rot, and the whole place smelled of old cigar smoke and something that might have been swimming-pool chlorine, or possibly old semen. Lucas tried not to touch anything, just in case; no swimming pool was visible.
    Poe was a short fat man with a bad toupee and a three-day beard, whose lips formed a small but perfect O. Del had him in his office, where he sat sweating. He fit in the place like a finger in a glove, Lucas thought; or a dick in a condom. Andrews nodded to him, then pointed at him and said to Lucas, “This is Poe.”
    Poe was adamant about the Mexicans leaving. “They had duffel bags, and they took off. Loaded up, said, ‘Thank you,’ and they were out of here.”
    “Speak good English?” Lucas asked.
    “So-so. They was Mexican, no doubt about that.”
    “What, they were wearing sombreros?” Del asked.
    “No, they just looked like Mexicans,” Poe said. “Mexican boxers. Welterweights. Small guys, good shape. Mean-looking. Most