Wicked Prey

bruises he’ll look like he’s been in a car wreck, but he’s not hurt.”
    “How about the Nazi signs?” McCall asked.
    “The chick saw them—I saw her looking at them,” Lane said. “Some poor sonofabitch cop is going to spend the next week with his nose in the tattoo files.”
    Cohn nodded. “Good.” And it was good: he had a competent crew.

    AT THE MOTEL, they were like ballplayers after a big win, knuckle-bumping each other and laughing, reliving it; even Cruz, when she showed up, got into it. Then they dumped the money on the bed and started counting: it was all fifties and hundreds, all used, non-sequential, and showed nothing under a black light. Counting took the best part of a half hour, with all of them at it, ten-thousand-dollar bundles, wrapped with rubber bands.
    When they finished, Cohn counted the bundles: “One forty-one, one forty-two, one forty-three . . . and a half.”
    Cruz said, “One million, four hundred and thirty thousand, and a half.”
    “Good one,” Lane said.
    McCall gave Cruz a squeeze: “You da man.”

6
    IN THE YEARS THEY’D BEEN MARRIED, the telephone rang in the bedroom once too often, so they finally took it out. At five o’clock Sunday morning, when the phone started ringing, Lucas had been asleep for four hours. Because of the convention, he got up and staggered out through the living room to the nearest portable and looked at the caller ID. Nothing but a number, but he recognized the number.
    “Yeah.”
    “Can you come down to my office?”
    “Right now?”
    “That’d be good.”
    “Half hour?”
    “Okay.”
    * * *
    “WHO WAS THAT?” Weather asked. Sunday was her day to sleep in.
    “Neil Mitford.” Mitford was Governor Elmer Henderson’s executive assistant, chief weasel, confidant, fixer, and maybe bagman. He’d been in Washington for the fight over the Homeland Security arrests.
    “What’d he want?”
    “Dunno,” Lucas said.
    She went back to sleep and Lucas stared in the bathroom mirror for a couple of minutes, trying to get his eyes open, then shaved, brushed his teeth, stood in the shower and let hot water beat on the back of his neck. Toweled off, he got dressed: jeans, a blue T-shirt, walking shoes, sport coat, Colt Gold Cup .45. On the way out, he remembered the convention credentials, got them off the dresser, slipped them into his pocket with his ID. The cameras were still in the car.
    Feeling tired, but not bad; and the morning was perfect, cool, crisp. August was Minnesota’s most perfect month, and this was the final day of it. September might be fine, too, but not perfect. Sometimes, they saw snowflakes in September.
    He rolled the Porsche out of the garage, yawned, headed through the quiet city streets out to I-35E, the car’s exhaust burbling along, north to the Capitol. When he got there, he took a lap around it, to see what was going on, if anything. A speaker’s shell had been set up on the Capitol lawn, for an antiwar rally later in the day. A few people in message T-shirts were wandering around, two of them smoking, and a kid was going through a garbage can, looking for something to eat. He drove back up the hill, parked in the state garage behind the Capitol and walked down to the building, flashed his ID at a Capitol guard, and continued up to Mitford’s broom-closet office. He knocked, tried the door, but it was locked, and he heard Mitford call, “Hang on.”
    “It’s Lucas.”
    Mitford came to the door buttoning his pants, the belt undone. He was in a day-old undershirt and stocking feet, unshaven, beat up. He said, “Come on in,” his voice creaking. He looked up and down the hall, then closed the door and locked it. A blanket lay on the floor next to the couch; he’d been asleep. “Got a big problem,” he said.
    Lucas nodded: “Yeah, I guess. It’s not even six o’clock.”
    “I’ve been up all night . . .” Mitford walked around his desk and sprawled in his chair, pointed Lucas at the visitor’s chair. “A hurricane is coming into New Orleans, probably going to flatten the place again. McCain may not come, the president and vice president have canceled, the whole thing is going up in smoke.”
    “Plus they’re already pissed at your boss.”
    “There’s that, but that’s a good thing,” Mitford said.
    “So . . .”
    “So three people got robbed at gunpoint in the High Hat last night,” he said. “One of them’s still in the hospital, one’s a woman, she’s still freaking out