Wicked Prey

to his office, peeling off his jacket to show the .45 he carried under his armpit. Pulled off the shoulder rig, stuck the whole apparatus in a file cabinet. His secretary, Carol, trailed him into his office.
    “You’ve got a call, sounds like it might be important,” she said.
    “The security committee? I got that . . .”
    Carol looked at a piece of paper. “From New York. You know a woman named Lily Rothenburg? Says she’s a captain with the NYPD?”
    “Absolutely,” Lucas said.
    “She wants you to give her a call,” Carol said. “She says it’s semi-urgent.”
    “Ring her up and transfer it in,” Lucas said. “Dig up a phone number for Dan Coates over in Wisconsin—it’s the Special Assignments Bureau in their Justice Department. I need to talk to him right after Lily.”
    “Gotcha.” She hesitated in the doorway. “One more thing. You got a nut call: the guy says, ‘Is this Davenport’s office?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘Tell that motherfucker that I’m coming for him.’”
    Lucas laughed: “Did he say who it was?”
    “There was a caller ID. Do you know an Achmed Mansoor?”
    Lucas shook his head. “Nope. Did he say anything about Allah?”
    “No . . . and this guy sounded like an American. Ghetto accent. I did a reverse directory and came up with a Middle Eastern sandwich shop in Dinkytown.”
    “Gimme the address: I’ll look into it.”
    * * *
    DEL CAPSLOCK had come through the door while they were talking, and said to Carol, “You sweet thing.”
    Carol, feigning propriety: “How’s the pregnant wife?”
    “She’s fine. She’s great,” Del said. “She looks like a goddamn rosebud. Doc says she’s starting to dilate, but she’s still a while out. She’s got me running around like a Shriner parade.”
    Lucas asked, “Do they still have those?”
    “They must, somewhere,” Del said. “They still got Shriners.” He eased into one of the visitors’ chairs and put his boots on Lucas’s desktop. “So what’s this about a sandwich shop in Dinkytown?”
    Carol explained and Del said, “I’ll go over and have a chat with the guy.”
    “I’m not doing much,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, but you go walking in the door, maybe he pulls out a shotgun and kills you,” Del said. “Me, he doesn’t know from Adam.”
    “As far as you know.”
    “Whatever.” Del yawned then added, “I never heard of a cop getting killed by somebody who called ahead.”
    “Probably happened somewhere,” Lucas said.
    “Everything’s happened somewhere.”
    DEL WAS A battered man in his late forties, in jeans and a Pennzoil T-shirt with grease spots on it, rough-side-out Red Wing work boots, and an old, unfashionable nylon fanny pack, worn in front. He had a cell-phone-sized digital camera hung on a string around his neck and a .38 revolver in the fanny pack. He’d been working the streets around the convention center.
    “So what’s happening?” Lucas asked.
    “Ah, you know: kids and old people. There are some assholes out there, but most of them are hobbyists. They seem like my mom . . . you know, old. They’ve got these recycled chants from the sixties. ‘Hey, hey, John McCain, how many children have you slain?’ Like that.”
    “With a few assholes.”
    “A few,” Del said. “Vandals. Red-and-black flags. Slingshots. Guys who want to wreck the place for the pure pleasure of it. I could point out twenty people, if we picked them up and put them in the basement for a few days, the convention would be a sea of peace.”
    “Ramsey County sheriff is setting up a raid tonight, tomorrow night, pick some of those guys up,” Lucas said. “Or so I’m told.”
    “Here?”
    “No, over in Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “They’re pulling in some Minneapolis cops.”
    They talked about that for a while, and Lucas told Del about the guy with the sniper rifle, and Del shook his head and said, “That’s all we need.”
    “You having a good time?” Lucas asked.
    “Yeah, I am,” Del said. “I like talking to them; pretty good folks, for the most part. Even the assholes are interesting.”
    “I’d like to get out there; just to see it, you know?” Lucas said.
    Del was doubtful. “You look too much like a cop—or even a Republican.”
    “Not that. ”
    “Well—you got that vibe. You’d have to tone it down,” Del said. “Like, borrow clothes from me.”
    Lucas shuddered: “Maybe not.”
    He was, in fact, a clotheshorse, this morning wearing a light checked sport