Sudden Prey

won’t take long,” Stadic said. “They’ll probably hit this house in twenty minutes or so, and Franklin doesn’t live too far away. I’d say, half hour to an hour, depending on what happens with the raid.”
    “Anybody watching his house?”
    “No.”
    “Gimme the address,” LaChaise said.
    After he hung up, Stadic worked it through his quickening brain: wait in the snow across the street. If he saw LaChaise and Martin arrive, that was fine. If he didn’t, he’d wait until Franklin showed. Franklin would pull out the other two. And when they moved in on him, to kill him, Stadic could come up from behind, and take them out.
    Just as he’d planned it at the other house, but with one less guy to worry about. Had to get that cell phone, though.
    Leaving the office, locking the door, he heard voices in the hall, and then Lester came around the corner with Lew Harrin, a homicide guy. He heard Lester say, “There’s Stadic, let’s get him,” and then Lester called, “Hey, Andy.”
    Stadic turned as they came up. “Yeah?”
    “We got a homicide down on Thirty-third, somebody ran over a guy laying in the street. The uniforms checked it out, say it looks like he was already dead, couple of bullets in the head. Run down there with Lew, see what’s going on.”
    “Listen, I’m totally fucked . . .” Stadic began.
    “Yeah, I know,” Lester said. “We’re all fried. We can’t put you out front because you don’t have a gun, but you can do this, this is just bullshit interviewing. Anyway, we hear the guy’s a doper. Maybe you’ll know him.”
    “Man, my head . . .”
    “I don’t want to hear it,” Lester said. “Get your ass down there.”
     
     
     
    LA CHAISE AND MARTIN scrambled to get ready for the attack on Franklin. Martin had field-stripped one of the .45s. He walked around finding his boots as he put it back together and reloaded. LaChaise pulled on his parka and said to Sandy, “I’m worried about you. You’d sell us out, just like your old man.”
    “C’mon, Dick,” she said. “Don’t scare me.”
    “You oughta be scared.”
    “I am scared,” she said. “The police are going to kill us.”
    “Yeah, probably,” he said, and he grinned at her.
    Martin handed LaChaise a blued Colt .45 and a half-dozen magazines. “A little more firepower,” he said. “I wish we had some goddamn heavier stuff. That AR’d be worth its weight in gold.”
    LaChaise broke his eyes away from Sandy. “These’ll work,” he said, stuffing them in his parka pocket. He turned back to Sandy. “I thought about taking you, but that won’t work. We’re gonna have to . . .”
    “What?” she asked, suddenly sure that this was it: they were going to kill her.
    LaChaise grinned at her. “Gonna have to tie you up a little.”
    “Dick, c’mon. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t . . .”
    “Bill and I have been talking: we think you will.”
    She looked at Martin, who nodded. “You will,” he said.
    “Down the garage,” LaChaise said.
     
     
     
    THEY’DFOUND A dozen padlocks in a kitchen drawer, of the kind Harp used as backup locks on his washing-machine coin boxes. And from the garage, they got a chain. Martin brought an easy chair along, and a stack of magazines.
    The lockup was quick, simple and almost foolproof: LaChaise, Sandy thought, probably learned it in prison. One end of the chain went snugly around her waist, and was padlocked in place. The other end went around a support beam in the basement, and was padlocked there. She had just enough slack to sit down.
    “You can try to get out,” LaChaise said. “But don’t hurt yourself trying, ’cause it won’t do you no good.”
    “Dick, you don’t have to do this,” Sandy said, pleading. “I’d be here.”
    LaChaise looked at her hard: “Maybe . . . maybe we can have some fun when I get back.”
    “What?”
    He said, “C’mon, Bill. We gotta move.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS KNEW FIVE minutes after they took Arne Palin that they’d made a mistake.
    They’d set up a few blocks away, pulled on the vests, ready for anything. The entry team went to the front door, knocked, and when Palin opened, pushed him back. Another team went through the back door at the same moment, breaking the lock. Palin, sputtering, stuttering, his wife screaming, watched as the team flowed through the house, from bedrooms to basement. Lucas, Sloan and Franklin moved in right behind the entry team. Palin had been patted down and pushed back on the