Storm Prey

talking about killing them, I mean, fuck you. I’m not killing anybody,” Joe Mack said. “I mean, I couldn’t do it. I’d mess it up.”
    Lyle Mack was nodding. “Me and you both, Joe Mack. We gotta get hold of Cappy.”
    “Ah, man.” Joe thought about Cappy for a minute, and then thought about getting a drink.
    “Got no choice,” Lyle Mack said. He listened toward the front of the bar for a minute, then said, “Don’t tell Honey Bee about this. She likes those boys, and she’d get upset.”
    “What if Cappy ... I mean, Shooter and Mikey is his pals.”
    “I don’t think anybody is Cappy’s pals,” Lyle Mack said. “Cappy is his own pal.”
     
     
    OUT IN THE Trans Am, Haines said, “Hope Honey Bee’s got Home Box Office.”
    “Gotta stop at the house first,” Shooter said.
    “Lyle said—”
    “It’s Lyle that worries me,” Chapman said. “I could see him thinkin’. He’s worried about us.”
    “About us?” Haines didn’t understand.
    “About us givin’ him up. I could see his beady little eyes thinkin’ it over. So he sends us out to Honey Bee’s, which is so far out in the country a goddamn John Deere salesman couldn’t find us. Why is that? Maybe he wants to get us alone and do us.”
    “But he said we can’t be seen,” Haines whined. “He said we’re going to Eddie’s.”
    “Well, he’s sorta right about not bein’ seen, but we gotta take the chance,” Chapman said. “We gotta run by the house, grab the guns, and then we can take off. Turn the furnace down. If we was going to Eddie’s for a month, we’d at least turn the furnace down. Take the shit out of the refrigerator. Take us two minutes.”
    The chrome yellow Trans Am fishtailed around the corner; a great car, in the summer, but with its low-profile, high-performance rubber, a pig on ice.
     
     
    LUCAS FINISHED DRESSING, checked himself in the mirror: charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie that vibrated with his eyes. Weather said, “And now, something occurred to me this very minute. When I was going in the parking ramp, a van was coming out really fast. We almost ran into each other.”
    “You weren’t driving too fast, were you?” Of course she was; he’d given her a three-day race-driving course at a track in Vegas, as a birthday present, and she’d kicked everybody’s ass.
    Weather ignored him. “The man in the passenger seat looked like a lumberjack or something. One of those tan canvas coats that lumberjacks wear. Long hair, brown-blond, down on his shoulders, and a beard. He looked like a Harley guy. Big nose. That was just about ...” She rubbed her forehead, working it out, and said, “That must have been just about the time of the robbery.” She looked up: “Jeez, what if that was the guys? The driver looked the same way. I didn’t see him so well, but he had a beard ...”
    Lucas held up a finger, picked up his cell phone, sat on the bed, and punched up a number. A moment later, said, “Yup, it’s me, but I can’t talk because my wife is standing about a foot away.”
    “Hey, Marcy,” Weather called. Marcy Sherrill was a deputy chief with the Minneapolis cops: Titsy.
    Lucas said, “What we need to know is, what time exactly did this whole thing happen? What time did it start, and when did it end?”
    Marcy: “I don’t think this is for the BCA.”
    “Listen, just shut up and tell me, and then I’ll tell you why I want to know,” Lucas said.
    He listened for a moment, turned to Weather and said, “Between five-thirty and five-forty, right in there.”
    Weather said, “Lucas, that was ... I mean, that was exactly the time I got there.”
    Lucas went back to the phone: “You know Weather is on the surgical team that’s separating the twins? Yeah? So she pulled into the parking ramp right then, and saw a van coming out, and the face of a guy in the passenger seat. Said he looked like a lumberjack, blond or brown hair, down on his shoulders. Beard. Yeah, saw him pretty clearly. Saw the driver, too, not so well, but he had a beard. They were moving fast, and a little recklessly. Said the passenger was wearing like a yellow lumberjack coat.”
    “Tan canvas,” Weather said.
    “Tan canvas coat,” Lucas repeated. He listened, then put the phone down and asked, “You get any impression of size?”
    Weather closed her eyes for a minute, then said, “Yes. He was a big guy. Bigger than you. Taller, I think, and heavier.”
    Lucas passed it on, listened again, and said,