Wicked Prey

“Travel agency?”
    Wilson said to Spellman, “We use Dole,” and Spellman shook his head. “I did mine online, direct with the hotel.”
    “How about the hotel?” Wilson asked.
    Johnson frowned, shook her head: “How would they know about the money?”
    “How about some kind of lobby group back in Washington?” Lucas asked, but Johnson waved him off.
    “No, no, no, that wouldn’t be it . . . You get all kinds of talk, who is going with who, who is staying with who, but you wouldn’t get room numbers.”
    “People would tell people . . . you guys probably told people where you’d be staying,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, but how would one person gather all the names up, with hotels?” Johnson asked.
    Spellman said, “They’ve only got two. That’s not a lot.”
    “Two for now—but I expect there’ll be more,” Lucas said. “The money’s too easy. Plus, we think they need more money than they’ve gotten. The New York cops think Cohn’s trying to retire, and the money gets cut up between several people.”
    Jones jumped in: “Do you remember anybody chatting you up, about where you were staying, and all that? Who was with who? Somebody unusual, who you might not normally have been talking to about it?”
    They all shook their heads. Wilson said, “I didn’t talk to anybody about it. I mean, people know about me and Lorelei . . .”
    Johnson looked at Lucas and said, “I’m not entirely unmarried. Almost, but not quite, so we don’t talk about traveling together.”
    Lucas nodded. “Okay.”
    Again, Spellman and Wilson looked at each other. Spellman finally said, “You know, there are a certain number of guys who know each other, like I know Johnny here. One of those guys could probably make you a list.”
    “If they had names, they could get room numbers—they could just do a social hack,” Wilson said. To Lucas, “A social hack . . .”
    “I know what it is,” Lucas said.
    Jones said, “So you think they got a list, and then they bullshitted people into giving them room numbers? Like bellmen or desk clerks or wives or whatever?”
    Lucas: “No. Couldn’t be that way. Had to be back in time. Days ago, or maybe weeks. Cohn flew in from England, where he’d been hiding out. And it was all planned—they were ready to go as soon as they got here. They had a guy in a room-service uniform, that was specific to the High Hat. Their whole method of operation, the way they’ve done things in the past, and now this time, suggest it was all carefully planned. The hotel was scouted. They knew the route in and out. Then when we unexpectedly popped them at their motel, they had a can of gas on hand and burned it down.”
    “Jesus,” Spellman said. “You’re starting to scare me . . . But—they had to get the room numbers at the last minute. I didn’t know what my room number was until I checked in, and I only checked in about six hours before they robbed me.”
    Johnson said to Spellman, “Not necessarily. Did you get a special rate through the hospitality guys?”
    Spellman said, “Yeah, the standard.”
    “So did we,” Wilson said.
    Johnson said to Lucas, “The Republican hospitality committee would know where we were. They assigned rooms. They’d have a block of rooms, and a chart they’d fill in, depending, you know, on your status. What you do. If you’re like us, you get a pretty nice room, but not right in with the delegates. Somebody on the committee had to know who was who . . .”
    “You know that for sure?” Lucas asked.
    “I used to do it, for car-sales association conventions,” she said.
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lucas said. “ Now we’re getting somewhere . . .”
    He pushed the three of them to come up with more organizations that might have the information, but they had no ideas. “I think . . . the hospitality committee. That’s about it,” Johnson said.
    Jones said to Lucas, “Since they only hit people in the same hotel, it’s possible that there’s somebody inside the hotel. Maybe they got a reservations list, looked them up, marked down the people who worked for lobbyists, and went from there.”
    Lucas nodded: “You’re right: that’s a possibility. You chase that down, I’ll run down the hospitality committee.”
    * * *
    LUCAS CALLED Dan Jacobs at the convention security committee: Jacobs came on the line and said, “I was about to call you. We need you to go back and look for Justice Shafer again.”
    Lucas had virtually