Sudden Prey

between the hunt and the relatives.
    Lucas sighed: “Listen, goddamnit. We need to push off in a different direction.”
    “What direction?” Franklin asked. “You show me the direction, I’ll push.”
    Lucas dropped his feet out of the drawer. “We gotta find the cop. If we can shake him out, we’ll have them.”
    “So . . .” Sherrill said.
    “So we start pushing people out again—but this time, we want to know who on the force is dealing.”
    The others looked at each other, then Del said, “Dangerous.”
    Lucas nodded. “Yeah, but it’s gonna get done, sooner or later. And right now, it’s an angle nobody’s working.”
    “So let’s go,” Franklin said.
    “Everybody keep your goddamn heads up—and wear your vests. This is bad shit.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS TOLD LESTER, who said, “Internal affairs are looking through a few things, but they’re not on the street. You guys be careful.”
    Lucas nodded. “Del and I are gonna talk to Daymon Harp again, shake him pretty hard. He’s been around for a while.”
    “You want somebody from drugs?”
    Lucas shrugged. “We can handle it; and you’re a little short right now.”
    “You could have Stadic,” Lester said. “He’s not carrying a gun until the board says okay.”
    “All right. He oughta know about Harp, anyway.”
    Lester said, “Take him. He’s just been playing doorman up at the hotel . . .”
     
     
     
    WHEN STADIC SAW Lucas and Del walking toward the front of the hotel, he caught the way their eyes picked him up and held him: and he thought, They got me. He took a step backwards, but realized he didn’t have anyplace to run.
    Lucas came up and asked, “How’s it going?”
    “Quiet,” Stadic said. “The way I like it.” To Lucas he said, “Your old lady came through again.”
    “Yeah, yeah . . .”
    “Do you know a dealer named Daymon Harp?” Del asked.
    Stadic thought, Here it comes. He said, “Yeah, I see him around. We took him down three or four years ago, he did two. Then we took him again last year, but we missed—he wasn’t carrying, no money, no dope. Bad information.”
    Lucas nodded: “Good. We need somebody who knows him and his people. We’re gonna go over and push him.”
    Stadic’s eyebrows went up: “You want me to come?”
    “That’d be good,” Lucas said.
    “Give me fifteen seconds to get out of this fuckin’ doorman’s suit,” Stadic said. “You guys are answering my prayers.”
    They rode down in a plain gray city car, the heater running as hard as it could, and not quite keeping up. They passed a fender bender on Nicollet, slid through a stop sign at the next street. “Fuckin’ Minnesota,” Del said. “I’m moving to fuckin’ Florida.”
    “I was reading a book by a guy down in Miami,” Stadic said. “He says Florida’s fuckin’ fucked.”
    “The fuckhead’s probably just trying to keep me out,” Del grumbled.
    “Both of you shut the fuck up,” Lucas said. “You’re giving me a fuckin’ headache.”
    Del changed the conversation’s direction: “You hear what’s been happening over in St. Paul with the unmarked cars?”
    “No.”
    “All their cars got these yellow bumper stickers, they said, ‘Buckle Up, It’s the Law.’ ”
    “Yeah, I seen those,” Stadic said.
    “So the wiseasses over there have been peeling off the top of the stickers. Cut them in half with a razor, peel them right off. Now it says . . .”
    “It’s the Law,” Lucas said, laughing.
    “Not that anybody would drive a piece of shit like this except a cop,” Del said. “What color you think this car is?”
    After a minute, Lucas said, “Fuck gray,” and they all laughed.
     
     
     
    ALL OF SANDY’S stitches were intact, but LaChaise’s wound showed some pink at the edges, and was leaking at one corner. “I’ll rebandage it, but the best thing would be, if you just sat still for a while,” Sandy told him.
    As she worked, Martin nailed a piece of plywood over the hole in the hallway wall, next to the door. “Gonna get some goddamn junkies coming in, if we don’t nail it up,” he said.
    When he was done, he stepped back inside, pulled the cardboard boxes up to the doorjamb, and closed the door.
    A moment later, he was at the window; he saw the car pull up across from the laundromat.
    “Cops,” he said.
    Sandy stood up, hand to her mouth. LaChaise rolled to his feet, started toward the window, but Martin waved him back: “Don’t touch the curtain. They might look