Sudden Prey

“No way we’re going through that. And the garage door will be locked. We could try pulling the fire escape down.”
    “The whole city would see us climbing up there,” LaChaise said. Then: “Run downstairs and see if there’s anybody in the laundromat.”
    Martin nodded, trotted down the stairs, fought the jammed door for a moment, then disappeared outside. A second later he was back. He shoved the door shut and called up, “Nobody.”
    LaChaise crushed one of the boxes, pushed others in front of the door, until he had a clear patch of wall.
    “What’re you doing?” Martin asked, hustling up the stairs.
    “This,” LaChaise said. He hit the wall with the claw side of the hammer. A square foot of old plaster cracked and sprayed out, showing the laths beneath.
    “Jesus, sounds like dynamite,” Martin said, looking back down the stairs.
    “Nobody to hear us,” LaChaise said. “And Harp don’t come up this way, so he won’t see it.” He hit the wall again, a third time and a fourth. “Why don’t you go down to the bottom and keep an eye out. This could take a few minutes.”
     
     
     
    LA CHAISE BROKE A six-inch hole through the wall, alternately beating it with the head of the hammer, smashing it, then digging the hole out with the claw. When the hole was big enough, he reached through and popped the locks on the door. They pushed inside, and found an empty apartment.
    “Nobody around,” Martin said, after a quick reconnaissance. “But his car’s downstairs. The Continental. Maybe he ran out to the store.”
    “Give us some breathing space,” LaChaise said. “We gotta be ready, though. Shouldn’t cook nothin’ until we got him.”
    Sandy had followed Martin through the apartment. The place had once been four tiny apartments, she thought, re-modeled into one big one. A hallway divided the new unified apartment exactly in half—that would have been the old main entry hall.
    The place felt empty. More than that. Vacated. She looked in the refrigerator: it was nearly bare. She stepped back down the hallway and looked into the master bedroom—she’d peeked in when they first entered, but this time, she pushed in and looked around. A small leather suitcase was lying empty at the end of the bed. The apartment was cold, she noticed. She went back to the living room and checked the thermostat. It was set at fifty-five.
    She said, “I think they went on a trip.”
    “Huh?” LaChaise looked at her. “Why?”
    “Well, there’re holes in the closet where they took a whole bunch of clothes out at the same time. And there’s a suitcase sitting on the floor like they decided to take a different one, but didn’t put the first one back. And the thermostat’s set at fifty-five, like you’d turn it down before you went somewhere.”
    “Huh,” said Martin, nodding. “It feels like they left.”
    Martin noticed the two telephone answering machines, sitting side by side. “He’s got two answering machines,” he said. “I wonder if he left a message.”
    He picked up one phone, and dialed the number posted on the other: the phone rang twice, then a man’s voice said, “Leave a message.” Nothing there. He hung up, picked up the second phone and dialed the first. And Harp’s voice said, “We’re outa here. Back on the twenty-sixth or so. I’ll check the messages every day.”
    “He’s gone,” Martin said to LaChaise. “He says they’re gone until the twenty-sixth.”
    LaChaise made him redial, listened to the message, then looked at Martin with a broad grin. “Goddamn. We landed on our feet,” he said, when he’d hung up. He looked around the apartment: “This place is six times better than the other one. This is great. And we got a Continental. A fuckin’ luxury car . . .” He started to laugh, and whacked Martin on the back. Even Martin managed to crack a smile.
     
     
     
    ROUX AND THE mayor met Lucas in Roux’s office, and heard about the laughing incident.
    “I didn’t believe it was me, until I saw the tape,” Lucas said. “I don’t know why we were laughing. We just about had a goddamned disaster on our hands, and instead, it was all done with. I guess that’s why.” The explanation sounded lame.
    “The St. Paul cop getting killed—that’s not a disaster?” the mayor asked.
    “We didn’t know the cop was dead. And we thought we were going to get a whole goddamned family shot up. When Butters ran in there, when he blew through that door, I thought we