Stolen Prey

door at Polaris, but not about Kline. He filled in what she hadn’t overheard in the phone conversation, then said, “It could be a complete waste of time. This guy is a slacker…. You know slacker…?”
    “Yes, I know this,” she said.
    “He’s a slacker and a depressive and he apparently smokes a lot of dope and doesn’t care who knows about it. He says this theft is way too ambitious for him, and I halfway believe him. But he’s all we’ve got, at the moment.”
    “Okay,” she said, and stood up. “So now I go see your medical inspector, and they will tell me about the autopsy. You will call me if something happens?”
    “Absolutely,” Lucas said.
    H E CALLED ICE, who told him she couldn’t talk for a couple minutes. “I’m right in the middle of something. Call you back in three minutes.”
    He looked at his watch, and again five minutes later when she called. “What I was right in the middle of, was a bunch of bank systems security people. The thing is, we cleared out the problems in the main system, and now that they’ve seen it, the security people can take care of the backups.”
    “So you’re done there?”
    “Pretty much. But you’ve got these accountants here, the DEA people?”
    “What about them?” Lucas asked.
    “Once we broke through on the back door, and the boobytraps, I let the Polaris security people take it, and I started looking around the system. The thing is, I isolated at least some of the wire numbers where the thieves sent the money. The last of it went out three days ago, and it went to four different accounts in four different banks, all of it to either the east or west coasts, the big cities, LA, New York, Philadelphia. I don’t know where it went from there.”
    “So get the DEA guys on it.”
    “I told them, but that’s not what they’re here for,” ICE said. “They’re hot on the trail of this drug money, the big money, and they don’t give a rat’s ass about your twenty-two million. They say they do, but they don’t. You need to get your own people over here, or Bone’s people, or somebody, if you want to start running down where this money went, and who’s got it, and who’s going to get killed next.”
    “Yes,” Lucas said. “That’s what I need to do.”
    He called Shaffer, and Shaffer exploded and said, “Those fuckin’ feds … All right, I’ll get somebody there. I’ll get Specs over there.”
    “Tell him to talk to Bone. Bone will help.”
    “Listen, I heard two minutes ago—I swear to God, two minutes—the Roseville cops got the shooters’ SUV up at the Rosedale parking lot. I don’t think they’re shopping, I think they went there to get a new ride. I’m going up there. What about you? Heard anything back from Shrake and Jenkins?”
    “No. They’re pretty good about updating me, so I suspect Kline is still holed up in his apartment.”
    “Okay. I’m outa here,” Shaffer said. But just before he hung up, he said, “Things are moving.”
    “Yeah, they are,” Lucas said.
    M ARTÍNEZ TALKED to the Big Voice a few minutes after she left Lucas’s office. She had known him when she was a child, and though his name was Sebastian, she’d always called him Sebas as a kid, and still did. “I think the money is gone,” she told him.
    “Tell me why,” he said.
    She explained about the DEA accountants and the two teams, one following the shooters and the stolen money, the other going after the main accounts where they’d been sending money for three years. “They know it is going through Sunnie, but they haven’t found the pathway yet. They will, it’s a matter of time. So, that is finished.”
    “They won’t get the main money. It’s filtered three times, and then it goes poof, and disappears,” the Big Voice said. “The money stolen, this is a shame. I’ll talk to Javier, but I think you’re correct. It’s gone.”
    “So, will you call back the children?”
    “I’ll talk to Javier,” the Big Voice said. “To tell the truth, I think that since we’ve already made so much noise, it would not hurt to make a little more. To send the message. Also, this Kline. If there’s any chance…”
    “They would have to be very careful. I know he is being watched,” she said.
    “We will think about it,” the Big Voice said.
    “So that’s up to you … and Javier,” Martínez said. “What do you want me to do?”
    “Come back with the body. But be careful, Ana. This killing of Rivera, this was brilliant