Storm Prey

Angeles. What I know, is, I’m cutting back. You live on five thousand a month, or you go hungry.”
    But Barakat couldn’t live on five thousand; couldn’t feed the habit for five thousand. The financial problem had led to his involvement with the Macks, a solution he’d suggested himself. The whole thing had seemed so simple.
    Now this.
    And the blond woman.
    If the blond woman was the same one he’d seen in the elevator—and he’d have bet she was, she had to have been coming down from the parking ramp, and the timing was right—then he had a problem, too. He had no reason to be back there at that time of day—the emergency room was at the far end of the hospital, and nothing at the back end was even open. If she’d picked out one of Lyle Mack’s guys, and was asked if she’d seen anyone else ...
     
     
    HE DROPPED in an armchair and propped his head up with his hand. Thought about the blonde, and about the goods: Lyle Mack said he had the goods. Fire in the blood; needed the goods, despite what he’d said. Why had he said he’d get them some other time? He needed them now ...
    Think about the blonde.
    Arriving at that time of the morning, she had to be staff, and medical staff, not administrative. If she’d been an emergency case, she would have gone down the street, instead of up the ramp. If she was a nurse, she had a rich husband—nurses didn’t drive Audis.
    A doc? Maybe. There were lots of women docs.
    His brain switched tracks again. Mack had the goods. All he had to do was pick them up. They were right there. Like a fat man thinking about a doughnut, he thought about the heft and feel of a big bag full of powder cocaine.
    The keys to the kingdom of glory. He’d been sober for three days, and he didn’t like it. Though he’d read that there was no real physical dependency—he wasn’t shaking or seeing snakes—the psychological dependency was just as real. Without the coke, without money for the coke, he was living a drab, colorless existence, a life of shades and tints. The coke brought life, intelligence, wit, excitement, clarity: primary colors.
    He looked in his wallet. Nine dollars, and he hadn’t eaten in a day. Had to eat. Had to get the goods.
     
     
    THE MINNEAPOLIS police department is in the city hall, which is an ungainly, liver-colored building that squats in the Minneapolis glass-and-steel loop like an unseemly wart. Marcy Sherrill was slumped in her office chair, door closed to a crack. Lucas poked his nose in, called, “Hello?” He got what sounded like a feminine snore, so he knocked and tried again, louder this time. “Hello?”
    Marcy twitched, sat upright, and turned and yawned, disoriented.
    “Ah, jeez ... come on in. I dozed off.” She half-stood, then dropped back in her chair, dug in her desk drawer for a roll of breath mints, popped one.
    Marcy was a tidy, athletic woman, forty or so, who’d never had a problem jumping into a fight. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she and Lucas had once, pre-Weather, spent some time together—or as Marcy said, forty days and forty nights. She’d later had a lengthy, contentious affair with a local artist, then married a medium big shot at General Mills.
    And quickly produced James.
    James was just back to preschool after a bout with the flu, she said, as Lucas and Weather settled into visitors’ chairs. “I’ve been getting about two hours of sleep a night,” she said. “As soon as he got better, he started running again. He never stops. He starts when he gets up, he runs until he drops, he sleeps like a log, then he starts running again.”
    “Same with Sam,” Weather said. “Sam is starting to learn his letters now ...”
    They one-upped each other for a minute or two, on their respective kids’ looks, intelligence, vigor, and overall cuteness. When they were done, Lucas scored it as a tie, though, of course, Weather was correct. Sam was the superior kid.
     
     
    “SO WHAT do you think about this Don Peterson guy?” Lucas asked. “What’d you get?”
    “The killing was pretty straightforward,” Marcy said. “The killer probably didn’t mean to do it. Kicked the guy a few times. According to Baker—”
    “Baker’s the nurse,” Weather said.
    “Yeah. Dorothy Baker. She was doing inventory on the drugs. She couldn’t see anything, or say anything, because they taped her up, but she could hear everything. Peterson got a hand free, somehow, tried to slip his cell phone out and call nine-one-one-Baker