Sudden Prey

that the dispatcher was sending a squad. “If you stay where you are, you’ll be safe . . .”
    “No, no, Martin’s right on top of me. I’ve got to talk to somebody, I’ve got to try to get away.”
    Her voice was a whispered croak: nothing fake about it.
    “They’re going after more guns,” she continued. “They’ll kill anybody who gets close to them. They’ve got a policeman working with them. One of you.”
    “What policeman?”
    “Gotta go . . .”
    “Just stay . . .”
    “Can you get me a lawyer, let me talk to a lawyer? I haven’t done anything, they just took me . . .”
    “Absolutely. Absolutely,” Lucas said. “We can bring you in, give you all the legal help you need, all the protection you need. Just stay right where you’re at . . .”
    Sandy was afraid to turn around, afraid that Martin would be coming up behind with his knife. “I can’t,” she said. “I gotta go. Get me out.”
    “Call back,” Lucas said. “Call us back. You don’t even have to talk. Just dial the number, leave the phone off the hook, or just say, ‘Sandy,’ and we’ll come and get you . . .”
    “I gotta go . . .”
    And she was gone.
    “Hello? Hello?”
    The dispatcher: “She’s gone, Lucas. I’ve got three cars coming in, we started them as soon as she said her name, but they’re at least three or four minutes away.”
    “Ah, Christ, ah, Christ. Listen: warn the squads that we took automatic weapons off Butters this morning, if they haven’t already heard.”
    “They know.”
    “Get everything else you can, scramble it down there in case we get a chase going . . . How many people down in your office there know about this?”
    “Just two.”
    “Keep it that way. If we don’t pick her up, and word gets around, she’s dead.”
    “Gotcha . . . Are you gonna talk to Chief Roux . . . about the cop thing?”
    “Yeah. I’ll talk to her.”
    Lucas hung up, rounded his desk and headed for the door, which almost hit him, opening inward: Anderson said, “Wup.”
    “I’m running,” Lucas said.
    “Only need a tenth of a second,” Anderson said. “You know a guy named Buster Brown? Like in the shoes?”
    Lucas tried to focus on the name. “Buster? Yeah, I do.”
    “He’s trying to get you. Says it’s urgent. Life-and-death about LaChaise.” He handed Lucas a Post-it with a number on it. “He says he’ll be there.”
    “Ah . . . All right.” Lucas turned back to his desk, snatched up the phone, and began punching in numbers. “We’ve got some heavy stuff coming down,” he said to Anderson. “Go get Lester, tell him to meet me at the chief’s office. Right now . . . and hey, you got any gum? My mouth tastes like it’s had a bird in it.”
    “No, but Lester’s got some toothpaste in his desk drawer.”
    “I’ll be up,” Lucas said. The phone was answered on the first ring: “Hey, Buster? Lucas . . .”
     
     
     
    REGINALD BROWN WAS a scanner freak, a terminal diabetic, blind, a double amputee. He could be a pain in the ass, but sometimes he came up with nuggets of information: he knew most of the drug dealers in town by voice, from their cellular phone calls.
    “Boy, do I have something for you. I think,” Buster said.
    “What happened?” Lucas asked.
    “I heard some guys talking about you: just now, just a minute ago. I think it was this LaChaise guy. I got half the call on tape.”
    Lucas said, “Play it for me.”
    “Sure: Listen to this.”
    “. . . need to know where this Weather is, and be good to know where Capslock’s old lady is, her room number. And we need to know where Davenport is working, and Capslock, Sherrill, Sloan, Franklin and Kupicek. You know the list.”
    Long pause.
    “That don’t sound right; you better be tellin’ the truth, or your name’ll be on the list, motherfucker . . . Hey, listen to what I’m telling you . . . No, not you. Did you find out anything about Elmore?”
    Another pause.
    “That’s what we thought. We’ll look those boys up when we’re done here . . . Now listen, we need that shit and we need it right now. We’ll call back in . . . two hours. Two hours, got it?”
    Pause.
    “I don’t know. And you let us worry about getting back to you. You might be pulling some bullshit. And if you are, you better think twice . . .”
    Pause.
    “ Yeah, yeah. Two hours.”
    Lucas told him to play it again.
    “I knew the names,” Buster said, when it was done.
    “A cellular call.”
    “Yeah, my end of it, anyway.