Storm Prey

with gray. His face was too white after three months of Minnesota winter gloom, showing scars and dimples from fifteen years of hockey and twenty-five years of cops; he’d kept the winter weight off by playing basketball, his cheekbones showing beside his hawkish nose. At least he didn’t smoke. He could see the smoke eating into guys like Del.
    He was standing in the shower, lathered up with Weather’s body wash, when she called from the bedroom—“You still in there?”
    “One more minute ...” he shouted back. Surprised: he hadn’t expected to see her until sometime in the evening. He rinsed off the body wash, gave the ugly bits a final scrub, climbed out and found her standing in the doorway.
    She reached across to the towel bar, pulled a towel free and handed it to him. “The operation was canceled because a man got murdered in the pharmacy and they took all the drugs.”
    “What?” He was dripping, and started to dry down.
    She said, “Mmm, you smell like spring rain.”
    “What?”
    “There were about a million media people there, all the cable networks, and Gabe had to go out and tell them the hospital got held up and they murdered Don Peterson by kicking him to death.”
    Held up his hands: “Wait-wait-wait. I can’t listen to this naked.”
    “Ah, God, this is the third most awful day of my life,” she said, but she popped him on the ass as he went by.
    Lucas got his shorts on and pulled a T-shirt over his head. “Now. Start from the beginning.”
    “Okay. The hospital pharmacy got robbed. One of the pharmacists was beaten up so bad that he died. Guess who’s running the investigation for Minneapolis?”
    He shrugged. “Who?”
    “Your old pal Titsy.”
    Impatient, didn’t want to hear about it: “Weather ... just tell me.”
    She backed up and sat on the bed as he dressed: “Okay. I got there on schedule ...”
     
     
    THE BROTHERS Lyle Mack and Joe Mack, Mikey Haines, Shooter Chapman, and Honey Bee Brown sat in the back of Cherries Bar off Highway 13, looking at an old tube TV balanced on a plastic chair, the electric cord going straight up to a light socket. The room smelled of sour empty beer bottles and wet cardboard. Three nylon bags full of drugs sat on the floor behind them, and Lyle Mack said, “You dumb fucks.”
    “What was we supposed to do? The guy was calling the cops,” Chapman said. Haines, who’d done the kicking, kept his mouth shut.
    Honey Bee stared at them, as she worked through a wad of Juicy Fruit the size of a walnut. She said, around the gum, “You guys could screw up a wet dream.”
    Lyle Mack was sweating, scared, and thinking: Too many witnesses. Too many people knew that Joe Mack, Haines, and Chapman had raided the pharmacy. He and Honey Bee, the three of them, anyone they may have talked to—and there were probably a couple who’d taken some hints—plus the doc, and maybe the doc’s pal, the square doc, whoever he was.
    “Tell me about the woman in the Audi,” Lyle Mack said.
    “She rolled in as we were rolling out. She might not connect us,” Joe Mack said. “She saw me, I think, but who knows? Our lights was in her eyes. She was blond, she was short, was driving an Audi. Could have been a nurse.”
    “She totally saw you, dude,” said Haines, trying to take some pressure off himself. Christ, he’d kicked that dude to death. He didn’t know what he thought about that. Shooter had once killed a spade out in Stockton, California, but that was different. “That dude that died, it was like totally a freak accident. They said so on TV, he was on some meds that made him bleed. Wasn’t me. I kicked him a little.”
    “Punted the shit out of him,” said Joe Mack, passing back the pressure.
    “The old fuck scratched me,” Haines said. “He was hanging on.”
    “That was after you kicked him,” Joe Mack said.
    Lyle Mack asked, “How bad you hurt?”
    “Aw, just bled a little, it don’t show,” Mikey said.
    “Let me see,” Lyle Mack said.
    Mikey pulled up his pant leg. “Nothing,” he said. He looked like he’d been scraped with a screwdriver, a long thin scratch with some dried blood.
    The TV went back to the morning show where some crazy woman was talking about making decorations for Martin Luther King Day from found art, which seemed to consist of beer-can pull-tabs and bottle caps. They all watched for a minute, then Joe Mack said, “She’s gotta be on something bad. You couldn’t do that, normal.”
    Lyle Mack pointed