Sudden Prey

Lucas puzzled through it: the cop was telling them that Elmore had been killed by other cops, probably the Michigan prison people, in revenge for the killing of Sand. That was absurd—but something a con might believe. But if the Michigan people hadn’t killed Elmore, and LaChaise hadn’t . . .
    Lucas launched himself out of his chair and took a quick turn around his desk. Had to be the cop. But how had he known to kill Elmore? How had he known that Elmore was even involved? Was the cop that deep with LaChaise, that he’d know all of it? Had he been involved in the escape itself?
    That didn’t seem likely: the voices on the phone had been antagonistic.
    So how did he know? They had enough pieces of the picture that he should be able to put it together. And when he found it, maybe the cop . . .
     
     
     
    STADIC WAS FRANTICALLY trying to locate Sell-More. The junkie had said he might know somebody. And as one of Harp’s dealers, he might. Harp and Stadic were careful in their rare meetings, always taking them well out of town. But money had to be moved, information had to be worked through, pictures had to be looked at. And with dopers, you could never tell: they were as likely to wake up in Chicago or Miami as at home, and somehow, somebody might have seen him, and Harp, and put two and two together.
    Stadic hit all the spots, braced a few dealers with questions about cops, as cover. Davenport would probably shit if he found out that Stadic was covering the same ground as his own people, but that couldn’t be helped.
    Just after dark, he talked to a convenience store clerk who had sold Sell-More a doughnut not ten minutes earlier. Sell-More was walking, the clerk said. Stadic criss-crossed the side streets, and five minutes later found Sell-More wandering along a sidewalk, hands in his pockets, eyes glazed. Stadic pulled over, ran the window down: “Get in,” he said.
    Sell-More looked at him, then spoke slowly, a thin glimmer of intelligence: “I ain’t got much.”
    “We want to talk to you anyway,” Stadic said, the car grinding through the lumpy ice at the edge of the road. “Get in.”
    Sell-More shuffled around the car, got in the passenger side, slumped, then leaned forward and rubbed his hands in the air from the car’s heater. “Fuckin’ hungry,” he said.
    “You spent the money on dope?”
    “I am a dope,” Sell-More said. “What you want, anyway?”
    “Where’re your gloves?”
    “Ain’t got no gloves. Where’re we going?”
    “Just gonna drive around a minute, keep the heat going,” Stadic said. “What’d you find out?”
    Sell-More shrugged. “My man said that Daymon Harp’s got a cop, ’cause every time somebody tries to edge in on Daymon, they get busted the next day. He says everybody knows that.”
    “That’s it?”
    “Dude gotta be in narcotics,” Sell-More said.
    Though he was driving, Stadic closed his eyes for a moment. He felt the world slipping out of control, like one of those nightmares where something goes wrong, and you can’t ever get it quite right again. If a dumbass like Sell-More could figure this out, then other people could figure it out, too. He hadn’t been given away by the name, but by the pattern. And if anyone looked at the pattern of arrests closely enough, they’d find Stadic’s name.
    “Hey, man . . .”
    The tone in Sell-More’s voice snapped his eyes open, and he found that he was drifting toward a parked Pontiac. He wrenched the car back to the middle of the street, missing the Pontiac by a foot.
    “You okay?” Sell-More asked.
    “Tired,” Stadic said. He steadied himself. One thing at a time. When Harp got back, Stadic would have to move him out of town. Kill him? Probably not. The thing was, Harp maybe had stashed Stadic’s name somewhere as an insurance policy, the same way he’d taken those pictures . . . Goddamn him.
    Stadic slipped his hand inside his coat, found the cell phone. The cold lump of his pistol was next to it. “I need you to make a phone call,” he said.
     
     
     
    SHERRILL AND SLOAN had come back, still in their parkas.
    “Cold?”
    “Yeah. Getting bad,” Sherrill said. “Supposed to get warmer tomorrow, but they’re talking about some big storm is getting wound up somewhere. Somebody’s gonna get it in two or three days.”
    “Doesn’t make it easier.”
    “Nobody on the streets,” Sloan said. “You hear anything from Sell-More?”
    “Not a thing.” The phone rang, and Lucas picked