Wicked Prey

because the robbers threatened to take her with them, supposedly to gang-bang. The Minneapolis cops have all the information, but I want you to talk to them.”
    “How much did they get?” Lucas asked.
    Mitford held up a finger. “They were violent, intimidating. Hats and masks and gloves. One white guy, one black, one undetermined—the white guy had swastikas tattooed on his wrists. In and out, and gone.”
    “How much . . . ?”
    “Not much . . . a few hundred dollars . . . four-fifty, maybe.”
    Lucas waited for the rest of it. Mitford didn’t call him in for a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar armed robbery.
    Mitford didn’t get the reaction he expected, so he said, “Listen, you’ve been around. Political campaigns take all kinds of donations. Some of them, people don’t want to know about. They tend to be in cash, for street-workers, canvassers . . .”
    “Vote buyers . . .”
    “Whatever,” Mitford said. “But we don’t really buy votes—it’d cost too much.”
    “How much?”
    “I’m not sure exactly,” he said. “I’d guess . . . a million-two? A million-five? Depending on how much they’d already moved.”
    “In cash?”
    “Mmm . . .”
    “Small, used, unmarked bills?” Lucas asked. Of course they would be.
    “Mmm. In Philly, they call it street money.”
    “So what’s the problem? Put the cops on it,” Lucas said. “Hell, it’s a bunch of Republicans. If the news leaks . . .”
    “Nice thought, but I’m afraid that some of the people with, you know, this kind of cash, uh, might have been in Denver a couple weeks ago,” Mitford said. The Democratic convention had been in Denver.
    “Ah, man.”
    “And these guys can’t really talk about it,” Mitford said. He was all but wringing his hands. “Somebody, you know, could point out that moving this much money around might constitute some kind of infraction.”
    “Infraction? They’d be on their way to Club Fed if the word got out,” Lucas said.
    “Maybe. So they won’t complain, they won’t talk, they won’t say anything to anybody they haven’t been . . . reassured about,” Mitford said. “They filed robbery reports to cover themselves with their bosses, so nobody would think they skipped with the cash. One of the guys really got the shit beat out of him. But they won’t talk.”
    “So, if they won’t complain . . . that’s life,” Lucas said.
    “The problem is, there’s probably twenty guys like this in town,” Mitford said. “The robbers knew exactly where to hit, where to go . . . one of them was wearing a High Hat room-service uniform.”
    “You think they’ll do more?”
    “Why not? If you’ve got the information, it’s easy pickings,” Mitford said. “These guys are like accountants, pencil-necked geeks with sugar money, ethanol money, oil money, automobile money, union money . . . they don’t know from robbery. They’ve got no security, because they can’t afford to have other people know what they’re doing. But these robbers, man—they’re crazy. They must be coked up, cranked up, something. They beat the shit out of this one guy.”
    “Could be a technique,” Lucas suggested.
    “Yeah?” Mitford was interested.
    “Get on top of people, intimidate them, scare them so bad that they won’t resist,” Lucas said. “Pro robbers’ll do that, get on top and stay on top. Of course, some of them just like to hurt people.”
    “Can you take a look at it?”
    Lucas shrugged. “Sure, I’ll take a look. But I’m not going to jail. If somebody mentions big money, I’ll make a note.”
    Mitford sighed and shook his head, turning, and looked at a blank wall, where, in most offices, there’d be a window. “When we went with you, there was an argument. We knew you were flexible, because you’ve always operated that way. But you’ve got so goddamn much money, the question was, were you flexible enough ? Some guys, most guys, can’t tell us to go fuck ourselves.”
    “I’m not telling you to go fuck yourself,” Lucas said. “I can call you a confidential informant, that doesn’t bother me. But I’m not a cover-up guy. There might come a time when I’ve got to go public with it. But not necessarily . . .”
    “Not necessarily . . .” Mitford gnawed at a fingernail, spit a piece of nail at his wastebasket. “Well . . . take it easy. If you really get in a crack, and have to make a record, let me know ahead of time. Let me get a jump on the PR. But I’ll tell you, I know for