Storm Prey

had the gang files. “So we’re on it. We’re cooperating, but I’m going after it full-time. Virgil, Jenkins, you guys stay with Weather. Shrake, I want you hanging around, keep loose. If something comes up, I’ll call you.”
    Weather said, “You don’t think this has anything to do with ... that other time? With the Seed?”
    Lucas shook his head: “That’s ancient history. Those guys were nuts, everybody knows it. Nope: this has to do with the hospital. They’ve got themselves in a crack now, and they’re trying to get out.”
    Virgil said, “You think somebody in the hospital was involved, an insider, right? Maybe Weather, or me, or somebody else, could talk up the idea that the Seed guys might be coming after him. Maybe break him out.”
    Letty said, “Put it on the ten-o’clock news.”
    Lucas shrugged: “We could try, but I don’t see anybody confessing. We’ve got three murders now. More likely somebody’d quit his job and head out. That’s something we could look for.”
    “Need to talk to other gang squads where the Seed and the Angels have branches,” Jenkins said. “See if anybody dumps a load of commercial pharmaceuticals on the street.”
    “That we can do,” Lucas said. “What else?”
    “Roust the Seed,” Shrake said. “Kick some ass. Keep an eye on Weather.”

6
    THE BCA HEADQUARTERS was in a modern building out in a St. Paul residential area, the parking lot mostly empty at six o’clock on a cold winter night. Lucas let himself in, climbed the stairs to his office, dropped his coat, and walked down the hall. Frank Harris was sitting in his office, in the dark.
    “You asleep?” Lucas asked.
    “Thinking,” Harris said. “And my eyes are tired.”
    Lucas settled into a visitor’s chair. “You know the situation.”
    “Yeah, and I’ll give you everything we’ve got,” Harris said. He was a slim shadow, in a suit and tie, on the other side of the desk. “But I don’t like it. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t your wife.”
    “I don’t need any inside sources. I don’t need any of your guys, I won’t give anything up. What I need is names: I’ll generate my own information,” Lucas said.
    “If you talk to a smart guy, and a few of them are pretty smart, they’ll get an idea of how deep our information is,” Harris said. He didn’t particularly like Lucas, and Lucas knew it, and knew why.
    Harris was a third-generation cop, had struggled to get out of a suburban police force and into the BCA, had hustled his way up through the ranks, lived on his seventy-five thousand dollars a year, married when he was twenty, had three kids. Lucas had parachuted into a top spot, helped by political muscle, and worse, was rich, drove a Porsche, once had a reputation as a serious womanizer, and still got more than his share of face time with the media.
    Now Lucas shook his head. “No. Two or three names—it’s nothing. Especially if I go in dumb, and thrash around. I swear to God, Frank, we’re not going to burn you. We just need a place to start.”
    “Well, don’t get hurt,” Harris said. He leaned forward and pushed a paper file across the desk. “Shred it when you finish reading it. If it got out, it’d be a goddamn disaster. If you need another copy later, I can print another one.”
    Lucas took the file and stood up. “Thanks, Frank. I owe you.”
    Sometimes, he thought, walking away, you do favors for people you don’t like, because you’re cops. Just the way it was.
     
     
    SHRAKE WAS SITTING in Lucas’s office, waiting, and Lucas shut the door behind himself, sat down and opened the file. Maybe two hundred pages, printed out in color: surveillance and source reports, photographs, mug shots and rap sheets. They covered the Hells Angels and Bad Seed, with miscellaneous stuff on the Outlaws, Banditos, and Mongols.
    Lucas cut the stack of paper roughly in half and pushed it across to Shrake. “Read. Mention anything that looks like anything—especially with the Seed.”

    THE ANGELS were the main biker gang in the Cities. The Seed didn’t have a clubhouse, but ran out of a bar called Cherries, south of the river, the reports said. The Seed had a working treaty with the Angels, and Angels members were welcome at Cherries. On the other hand, the report said, the Seed also had some alliances with the Outlaws in Illinois, and might then be a trusted communications link between the two bigger rival gangs.
    Money for the gangs came from drug dealing,