Wicked Prey

air-defense manufacturers. He probably has four times as much money with him as all these other guys . . . why didn’t they hit him? I know he’s in town.”
    Fumaro reached forward and called up a form. “He registered with us on twenty-nine June.”
    Cheryl Ann said, her voice hushed and conspiratorial, “They don’t know about him. Because Raphael was dead. They killed him too soon. Holy shit. It’s just like in Clue . Colonel Lesbo did it, with the poison in the drink at the hotel.”
    Dickens ventured a smile. “Lesbo?”
    Cheryl Ann said, “The three of us saw them once—just once—at the Hamilton, in the bar, which is a weird place for Raphael, now that I think about it.” The other two women nodded.
    “They saw us and we saw them, and we stopped to say hello and look her over and I got a very definite lesbian radio wave from her,” Cheryl Ann said. “Not that I’d really know.”
    “You’d recognize her again?” Lucas asked.
    “Maybe—but you know what? There’s a photograph of her,” Cheryl Ann said. “He took a picture of her with his cell phone, sent it to himself at the office, and printed it out, and pinned it up on the wall of his cubicle. After he died, we took the stuff off the walls and put it in a box and gave it to the police, when they came around. They might still have it.”
    “What about the body?” Dickens asked.
    “I think the Spanish embassy shipped it back to Spain,” Fumaro said.
    Lucas said, “Time to call the cops, I guess. Were these District cops, or are you over in Virginia, or what?”
    “Right in the District,” Fumaro said. “The guy who came to get the box was Detective Sams.”
    Lucas wrote it down and went home to confront Letty.
    * * *
    LETTY WAS STANDING in the living room with her arms crossed, one foot all but tapping, a pose that Lucas recognized from encounters with more women, over the years, than he cared to remember. Before he could say a single word, Letty said, “I’m trying to get to be what Jennifer calls a Real Fuckin’ Reporter, and I do not want to hear about this story.”
    “What story?” Weather asked.
    Lucas, fists on his hips, looking at Letty but talking sideways to Weather: “Your daughter here is running down hookers, in St. Paul, and I won’t tell you what kind of questions she’s asking them, because it embarrasses me.”
    Weather said, “Hookers?”
    Lucas said to Letty, “I’m putting my foot down. I let you run all over me, but this time, by God, you are not going to go around this town looking for hookers. I mean, do you have any idea what those people could do to you? Of course not. You’re a teenager and you don’t have a single fucking idea what you’re getting into . . .”
    “I do have a fucking idea because I tracked down one of these girls—on my own—and she’s no older than I am . . .”
    “Watch your language,” Lucas said, getting loud. He knew he was about to start waving his arms, so he put his hands in his pockets, afraid that he might frighten her.
    “You started it,” she said.
    “Technically, you said ‘fuck’ first,” Weather told Letty.
    Ellen came in from the kitchen, carrying Sam: “What the heck is going on here?”
    “Letty’s interviewing hookers,” Weather told her.
    “Hookers?”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Lucas said. To Letty: “You, young lady, are grounded.”
    * * *
    THAT WASN’T the end of it, of course. Lucas had never grounded anyone before, so the term “grounded” had to be defined. He couldn’t actually restrict her to the house, because she had to go to school the next week, and there was some slack there, and he actually approved of the idea of Letty working with Jennifer Carey. Besides, he wasn’t a jailer.
    When everything was hashed over, Letty had negotiated it down to one restriction: she was not allowed to go downtown on her own, and anytime she went out of the house, she had to tell somebody specifically where she was going. If she violated the deal, she’d be restricted to the house for the rest of the week, including the weekend.
    “All right. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but you’re the dictator,” she said.
    Lucas said, “What do you mean it’s not right? You’re going around . . .”
    “I’m reporting the news,” Letty snarled.
    Weather jumped in: “Both of you shut up. A deal’s a deal. All right? All right.”
    Ellen said, “Hookers? In St. Paul?”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sakes . . .”
    * * *
     
    LETTY