Sudden Prey

pocket,” Lucas said, looking across the desk at him. Lucas had the money, all right: they never talked about it, but they all knew it.
    “Way to go,” Del said. He looked at the others: “That’s what’ll get them. We’ll buy the motherfuckers out.”
    The phone rang on Lucas’s desk.
     
     
     
    ALTHOUGH COPS WERE everywhere around the hotel, there were still a few working the neighborhoods, doing the routine.
    Barney’s Old Time Malt Shoppe pulled in a lot of cops because Barney used to be one, before he retired, and because he rolled free coffee to any cops who stopped in, and always had a booth open. A single patrol car sat in Barney’s lot. Stadic noted the number, 603, then cruised the place, peering through the windows. A tall, slender, pink-cheeked sergeant with pale hair and a much darker mustache: Arne Palin, two years behind Stadic at Central High.
    Stadic pulled to the curb, kept an eye on the cops through the window. Harp had written down the plates on the truck LaChaise had taken to the laundromat for the meeting. Stadic took the piece of notepaper out of his pocket and called Dispatch on his handset: “Yeah, six-oh-three, run a Chevy S-10, Wisconsin Q-dash-H-O-R-S-E.”
    “Hang on . . .”
    A moment later it came back: the truck was registered to an Elmore Darling, on a rural route in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin.
    “Thanks for that . . .”
    He looked through the window into Barney’s. The cops inside hadn’t heard their car number going out. He moved down the street, to a stop signal.
    Now. One more call.
    He brooded about the idea through the green light: the streets were empty, and he sat staring at nothing, the red-yellow-green bouncing unseen across his face. He knew the phone number, all right. If he had the guts . . . but then, it was hardly a matter of guts anymore. It was a matter of urgent necessity. And he’d already set it up.
    If Davenport thought LaChaise was going after his daughter, LaChaise was a dead man: and that’s what he needed. Dead men. Stadic pulled himself together and punched in the number. Christ, if they recognized his voice . . .
    The phone rang once, then Davenport’s voice said, “Yeah?”
    “I don’t want to say who this is—I don’t want to get involved—but you gave me your card, once.” He pitched his voice up, made it smooth, syrupy.
     
     
     
    “OKAY,” LUCAS SAID, an edge of impatience in his tone. He was staring at Sherrill, who was chewing on a cuticle. Lucas didn’t need tips about loan sharks, cigarette smuggling, credit-card-dealing, dope factories.
    “I live down by Richard Small and Jennifer Carey.” The voice was curiously soft. “That’s your little girl with Jennifer, right?”
    There was a hard moment of silence, then Davenport said, “Jesus.”
    “There’s been a truck driving around. I saw him twice when I was out walking my dog. Wisconsin plates. I thought I should call.”
    And the caller was gone.
    Lucas exploded out of the chair and ran from the office and through the building to Dispatch. The other four, not understanding, went after him.
     
     
     
    A PATROL CAR squatted in front of the house, exhaust curling up into the falling snow. Another was parked across the street, and the two cops from the car waited in the back of the house. Lucas arrived fifteen minutes after his dash to Dispatch, carrying his black wool overcoat and a briefcase. Del trailed a few steps behind, like a destitute bodyguard, watching the windows up and down the street. A cop met them at the door.
    “We kept everybody away from the windows,” the cop said. “There’s been nothin’ on the street. Nothin’ moving.”
    “Good. And thanks. Keep an eye out,” Lucas said.
    Jennifer Carey and Richard Small waited for him in the dining room, the blinds pulled.
    “Where’s Sarah?” Lucas asked, without preamble.
    “Upstairs, in bed,” Jennifer said. She was still the willowy blonde, but with a few more wrinkles than when Sarah had been conceived. Lucas had wanted—had offered, in any case—to marry her, but though she’d wanted the baby, she hadn’t cared for the prospects of marriage to Lucas. Now she and Small, a vice-president at TV3’s parent corporation, had put together a family: Jennifer’s daughter, his son. Jennifer looked past Lucas at Del, and a tiny smile caught her lips. “How’re you doing, Del?”
    Del shrugged. “Cheryl’s gonna make it.”
    “What’s the threat level?” Small asked. He was short,