Storm Prey

groping past the truck to the back door, then, after getting his guts up, out the back door and into the alley.
    Nobody in sight: a cold, dark night in January, looking down a narrow alley toward the street a half-block away. He listened for a moment, heard nothing but distant cars on 1-494, and headed toward the street.
    When he got there, he stopped beside a hedge and punched Cappy’s number on his speed-dial. The phone rang and Cappy said, “Ten seconds.”
    Ten seconds later, Cappy’s van came around the corner. Not Joe Mack’s old van, but Cappy’s old van—and stopped at the mouth of the alley. Lyle Mack crawled in and said, “So fuckin’ cold. You get off work?”
    “Yeah, I did. First day I ever missed,” Cappy said. “Told them I had the flu.”
    “Whatever,” Lyle Mack said. He pointed. “Go that way.” Cappy did a lot of turns through Mack’s neighborhood, saw nothing behind them. They drove out to Cherries, stopped a block away, and Lyle Mack got into Joe Mack’s old van. They headed into St. Paul, Cappy a half-block behind Lyle Mack.
     
     
    BARAKAT was waiting.
    Lyle Mack pulled into Barakat’s driveway and Cappy parked in the street, and he and Lyle Mack went to the side door. Barakat jerked the door open, and they filed in, and Lyle Mack could see that Barakat was furious.
    “What the fuck is going on?” he shouted. “Your brother kidnapped and strangled some woman? You guys are crazy.”
    “Ah, Joe fucked up bad,” Lyle Mack said. “We’ve got him hid out.”
    “They’ll get him,” Barakat said. “He’s all over TV”
    “They won’t get him,” Lyle Mack insisted. “We got a guy named Eddie coming over from Green Bay. He’s gonna drive him down to Brownsville. He’s... going away.”
    Barakat stared at him, eyes cold as black glaciers; just a thin patina of white under his nose. He was flying, Lyle Mack realized. He was high as a kite. Lyle Mack said, “This is Cappy. He’s gonna come with you.”
    Barakat’s attention shifted to Cappy. “You as dumb as the Macks?”
    “Hope not,” Cappy said. His voice was mild, and he smiled, the corners of his mouth turning up. His eyes were dead as planks.
    “I hope to God,” Barakat said. He inspected Cappy for a moment, then nodded. “You could be an orderly. You got the look. We gotta talk before we go in.”
    “Lyle said that you could teach me how to act like a hospital guy.”
    “It’s not rocket science,” Barakat said. “I got a map for you and other stuff. A key. A place you can hide if you need to.”
    “Cool,” Cappy said. To Lyle Mack. “You best get back. Leave the van . . .”
    “... right up from the SuperAmerica. By the pink house.”
    “Don’t put it on the plow side. It might snow.”
    “Don’t worry . . .” Lyle Mack glanced at his watch. “I’m outa here.”

    WHEN HE WAS GONE, Barakat said, “We have to leave in a half hour. So let’s sit, and I’ll tell you where you can go, and walk you through the map.”
    “You got a little blow under your nose. In the whiskers,” Cappy said.
    Barakat wiped his face with his hand and said, “Thanks. You want a taste?”
    “Well, yeah. If you got some extra.”
    “Just a taste,” Barakat said.
    They had two or three tastes, and Cappy banged around the kitchen, going with the flow, talking like he didn’t usually talk; told Barakat about living in Bakersfield, and riding his bike to Vegas and LA. Barakat told him about growing up in Lebanon and the war with the Party of God. “Goddamn, this is good shit,” Cappy said, after a while. “You don’t operate on people when you’re high, do you?”
    “I don’t operate on people. When somebody needs to be operated on, we call a surgeon.”
    “So what do you do?”
    “Whatever,” Barakat said. He said, “I can’t believe that idiot kidnapped that woman. Then killed her. I mean, if you want to get hunted down like a dog . . .”
    “He didn’t kill her,” Cappy said.
    “He didn’t? Who did?”
    Cappy raised his hand. “I did.”
    Barakat fixed on him, then stepped sideways to the kitchen table and sat down. “How’d you do that?”

    CAPPY WAS TAKEN ABACK. Nobody wanted to talk about that. But Barakat seemed straight enough. Intent.
    “Well, Lyle called me up and says Joe has this big problem . . .” He told Barakat about driving over to the airport parking structure, about getting lost, about finding the van, about crawling in and strangling MacBride. Barakat took another