Wicked Prey

Goddamnit. I would never, ever, ever do anything like that. You know I would never do that.”
    Cohn scratched his bare chin, thinking, then said, “One thing I know for sure. We killed a Wisconsin cop. They won’t let anybody deal on that—or if you do get a deal, it’ll be for thirty years, instead of no parole. So even if one of you is dealing, it’d be time to stop. Right now. Because if we go down, we’ll take you down with us.”
    “I oughta get out of here,” Cruz said. “I know I oughta get out of here.”
    “One easy hit on this third guy, and then the hotel, and we’re set. I won’t set foot out of this place until we’re making a move,” Cohn said. He looked around the sparsely furnished condo. “Let’s get some beer in here, and settle in. Let’s get the boys over.” He grinned at Cruz—“Take a fuckin’ aspirin, Rosie. We’re gonna be good, and you’re gonna be rich. Richer. Whatever . . .”
    * * *
    THE SECRET SERVICE agent’s name was George Dickens. He met Lucas at the hospitality committee’s office suite in a temp office in what had been an especially vacant stretch of the St. Paul skyway.
    Lucas introduced himself and Dickens, a thin, hard, lank-haired man who looked like he could run down and arrest a greyhound, said, “My boss wanted me to ask you about the parameters of the alert on Justice Shafer.”
    “Which parameters?” Lucas asked.
    “Who’s looking?”
    “Northern and Western Wisconsin and all Minnesota sheriffs have been contacted directly, with the full file on him, and they’ve all been asked to distribute the file to the local police forces in their jurisdictions,” Lucas said. “We’ve also directly notified all the bigger police departments . . . like every town over about ten thousand or so—county seats, and all the towns here in the metro area. We’re calling Iowa now. They’ll do Des Moines and the suburbs, the bigger towns and all the county sheriffs north of about I-80. Every place within about a short-day’s drive from here.”
    “How many of them will take it seriously?” Dickens asked.
    “Some won’t—but most of them will post the pictures,” Lucas said. “We’ve got the tag on his truck posted, too, and the highway patrol guys are looking for it.”
    Dickens Nodded, then asked, “Why haven’t we found him?”
    “I’d say he’s probably ditched himself,” Lucas said. “He’s here, or up in Duluth, or over in Eau Claire, watching TV and trying to get his guts up.”
    Again, Dickens nodded, as if Lucas confirmed what he thought, and said, “That’s what I think, too. Damn hard to catch somebody who holes up, and when there’s nobody to ask about him—no family. Shafer’s mother hasn’t see him in eight years and nobody knows where his old man went, and that was twenty years ago.”
    They thought about that for a minute, then Dickens asked, “What do you want me to do in here?”
    Lucas, who mostly dealt with the FBI, at the federal level, thought that was about the most modest and reasonable question he’d ever been asked by a fed. He smiled and said, “Do the unreasonable federal act: scare them.”
    * * *
    THERE WEREN’T many people to scare the shit out of, as it turned out—three women in their forties or early fifties, all a little heavy, harried, confused about the questions.
    Their leader, whose name was Helen Fumaro, who wore a large cluster of American Indian turquoise jewelry around her neck, said, Yes, they assigned blocks of rooms. Yes, if somebody had access to their computers, they could have figured out who was staying where, and when, and even the rate. Would they know who the lobbyist representatives were? Well, the billing addresses were right there in the computer . . . If you could get into the computers, and if you knew who you were looking for, you could find them.
    “But we wouldn’t know who they were looking for,” Fumaro said, her hands fluttering in front of her, as though she were air-typing. “I don’t know who any . . . moneymen are. I get a list of people who’ve been approved by our Washington office, and then we arrange the hotels depending on their numerical rating, one through ten.”
    “How does that work?” Lucas asked.
    Fumaro said, “If you’re a one—there aren’t many—you get the best rooms in the best hotels. You get what you want. If you’re a ten, well, we might have to tell you that, regretfully, the hotels are all booked up.”
    “I always wondered