Wicked Prey

into the robberies on my own. I talked to Danny . . .” Danny Lake was the head of robbery-homicide, “. . . and he said I could sit in. The thing is . . .”
    The counter girl passed Lucas his hot fudge and a plastic spoon, and Lucas paid and they ambled down the street. “. . . The thing is, it’s possible that I got a line on these guys.”
    Jones’s eyebrows went up. “How’d that happen?”
    “An old friend called me from New York. Nothing to do with politics, she just called out of the blue,” Lucas said. He outlined what Lily Rothenburg had passed along, and mentioned the Photoshopped mug shots.
    “You got these pictures?” Jones asked.
    “Got them, but I haven’t printed them,” Lucas said. “Everybody’s working this weekend, so I can get that done right away. I wanted to check with you first, so, you know—I don’t step on your feet.”
    “I’ll tell you what, I don’t mind too much, you looking over my shoulder,” Jones said, serious now. “Maybe some other time, I’d mind. But right now—everybody’s used up. If we’re gonna run these around to the hotels and motels, it’s gonna be you and me. Everybody else is working the Republicans.”
    “I could probably get one guy to help out,” Lucas said. “I can e-mail you the jpegs, you can pass them out on this side of the river, I’ll take the other side.”
    “It’s something. You wanna talk to the victims?” Jones asked.
    “Yeah—but I wanted to talk to you first,” Lucas said.
    “I knew something was up with them,” Jones said. “You got any idea how much these assholes really took?”
    “Nobody talks about money—but these guys, Brutus Cohn, whoever, they don’t steal four hundred dollars and an engagement ring,” Lucas said. “They know what they’re doing.”
    “Fuckin’ Republicans,” Jones said.
    “Yeah, well—I was told that these guys were in Denver last week,” Lucas said.
    “Way of the world, baby,” Jones said.
    Lucas wadded up the hot-fudge sundae cup and tossed it at a trash basket. Hit the rim and went in.
    “Brick,” Jones said.
    “Brick my ass,” Lucas said. “With my skills, looks, intelligence, and speed, and your tennis shoes, we coulda been in the NBA.”
    Jones laughed and said, “Well, maybe. If you could jump more than four inches off the ground. You wanna walk over to Hennepin? We could talk to Wilson again, if he’s awake.”
    “Let’s go. And fuck a bunch of jumping. With my skills, you don’t need to jump.”

7
    HENNEPIN GENERAL WAS A RABBIT WARREN, but Jones seemed to know where he was going. Lucas tagged along, stopping only to squirt a handful of alcohol foam onto his palms, because he liked the feel of it. When they got to John Wilson’s room, Jones knocked on the door panel and Wilson waved them in, and said into his telephone, “I gotta go—the cops are back . . . Maybe, I haven’t seen him yet. Conway called this morning . . . yeah.”
    A woman was sitting in the corner of the private room, on a rolling chair. She was conventionally pretty, dark-haired, brown-eyed, probably-not-yet-thirty, but tired, and Lucas could see forty in the wrinkles on her face. She had a bad bruise, as deep as a port-wine stain, on her left cheek.
    Lucas watched Wilson as he talked on the phone. He was a small man with a button nose and tidy bow lips, dressed in a hospital gown. He had double black eyes, an aluminum brace on his nose, held in place with tape, a scrape on one cheek that might have been made by the heel of a shoe, and a bandaged ear. A lunch tray sat on a pull-out table, with a piece of white-bread sandwich crust, and a cup of brown stuff which might have been pudding.
    Jones, not wanting to interrupt the phone conversation, leaned to Lucas and nodded at the woman and said quietly, “Miz Johnson.”
    Wilson said, “Yeah, yeah. Get back to ya on that. Talk to ya, man,” and hung up and looked at Jones and asked, “You get them?”
    “Not yet.” Jones turned a hand to Lucas and said, “This is Lucas Davenport, he’s an agent with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He’s going to be working the case along with me.”
    Wilson said to Lucas, “You know Neil Mitford.”
    Lucas nodded: “Yeah.”
    “They told me you’d be coming along,” Wilson said. “What do you think? Full-court press, or piss on the fire and go on home?”
    “Well, we’re going to push it,” Lucas said.
    “Lucas thinks we might have a line on the robbers,” Jones said.