Sudden Prey

asked, “You want me to come along?”
    Lucas shook his head. “It’s probably bullshit. Half the dopers in town will be calling, trying to fake us out. Go see Cheryl.”
    “They’ll let me in pretty soon,” Del said. The light on his watch face flickered in the dark. “I gotta be there when she wakes up.”
    “Keep an eye out,” Lucas said. “The crazy fucks could be around the hospital.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS, BEGINNING TO feel the weight of all the sleepless hours, looked at the house and wondered: called to a semi-slum duplex, in the early-morning darkness. An ambush?
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    “You wait here,” the patrol cop said. “We’ll go knock.”
    The two patrol cops, one tall and one even taller, were wearing heavy-duty armor, capable of defeating rifle bullets. Two more cops sat in the alley behind the house, covering the back door.
    Lucas stood by the car, waiting, while the cops approached the door. One of them peeked at a window, then suddenly broke back toward the door, and Lucas saw that it was opening. A woman, gaunt, black-haired, poked her head out and said something to the cops. The tall cop nodded, waved Lucas in, and then he and the taller cop went inside.
    Lucas caught them just inside the door. The taller cop whispered, “Her husband’s in the back bedroom, and he keeps a gun on the floor next to the bed. We’re invited in, so we can take him.”
    Lucas nodded, and the two cops, walking softly as they could over the tattered carpet, eased down the hallway, with the woman a step behind them. At the last door, the lead cop gestured and the woman nodded, and the cop reached inside the dark room and flipped on the light. Lucas heard him say, “Police,” and then, “Get the gun,” and then, “Hey, wake up. Wake up. Hey you, wake up.”
    Then a man’s voice, high and squeaky, “What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?”
    The woman walked back down the hall toward Lucas. She was five-six, and weighed, he thought, maybe ninety pounds, with cheekbones like Frisbees. She said, “I heard you’re putting up the money.”
    “If your information is any good,” he said.
    The two patrol cops prodded her husband out into the hallway. Still mostly asleep, he was wearing stained Jockey shorts and a befuddled expression. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
    “Oh, the information is good,” the woman said to Lucas. Then, “You remember me?”
    Lucas looked at her for a moment, saw something familiar in the furry thickness of her dark brows, mentally put twenty-five pounds on her and said, “Yeah. You used to work up at the Taco Bell, the one off Riverside. You were . . . let’s see, you were hanging out with Sammy Cerdan and his band. You were what—you played with them. Bass?”
    “Yeah, bass,” she said, pleased that he remembered.
    He was going to ask, “What happened?” but he knew. Still smiling, a rickety smile that looked as though it might slide off her face onto the floor, she said, “Yeah, yeah, good times.”
    Her husband said, “What the hell is going on? Who’s this asshole?”
    The tall cop said, “He had a bag of shit under his mattress.”
    He tossed a Baggie to Lucas: the stuff inside, enough to fill a teaspoon, looked like brown sugar.
    “This is fuckin’ illegal. I want to see a search warrant,” the husband said.
    “You shouldn’t of hid the bag, Dex,” the woman said to him. To Lucas, “He never gave me nothin’. I’m boostin’ shit out of Target all day and he never give me nothin’.”
    “Kick you in the ass,” Dexter shouted at her, and he struggled against the taller cop, and tried to kick at her. She dodged the kick and gave him the finger.
    “Shut up,” Lucas said to him. To the woman: “Where are they?”
    “My brother rented them a house, but he doesn’t know who they are. The one guy, Butters? He was here asking about crooked cops and houses he could rent. As soon as I saw on TV, I knew that was him.”
    “You cunt,” her husband shouted.
    Lucas turned to him and smiled: “The next time you interrupt, I’m gonna pull your fuckin’ face off.”
    The husband shut up and the woman said, “I want the money.”
    “If this pans out, you’ll get it. What’s the address?”
    “I want something else.”
    “What?”
    “When my mom took the kids, they kicked me off welfare.”
    “So?”
    “So I want back on.”
    Lucas shrugged. “I’ll ask. If you can show them the kids, then . . .”
    “I don’t want