Wicked Prey

gotta call the cops.”

12
    THE NEWS ABOUT WEIMER got to Lucas through the Secret Service. Dickens heard about it from a St. Paul cop on the security committee, and suggested that the cops call Lucas. A St. Paul lieutenant named Parker called at eight o’clock, and Ellen, the housekeeper, brought the phone to the bedroom and said, “St. Paul police. They say it’s important.”
    Weather was already at work, and Ellen said that Letty was up and waiting for a ride to Channel Three.
    “Tell her I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” Lucas said. He took the phone: “Yeah. Davenport.”
    “Don Parker at St. Paul. We had a robbery last night, and we’ve been told you’re tracking them.”
    “Lobbyist guy?”
    “That’s what I’m told,” Parker said. “He’s not talking much, said they took his travel money, but said it was the same deal as two other ones he heard about. Anyway, he’s at St. John’s.”
    “Hurt?”
    “Peeing blood. Probably get out tomorrow, depending. They rabbit-punched him a few times. Took him for a ride in a van, robbed his room. There’s something going on there.”
    “I’ll go talk to him,” Lucas said.
    “Dick Clay is working it for us, but he’s back in the house already . . . if you need anything.”
    Lucas hung up and thought, All right: the motherfucker’s still in town.
    * * *
    LUCAS GOT CLEANED UP and headed out to the kitchen, where Letty was reading the newspaper and eating toast. They were a little reserved after the fight the night before, and Lucas had a quick microwave oatmeal with milk and a banana, then they loaded into the Porsche and headed north and west toward Minneapolis.
    Letty said, finally, looking out the side window, “Can’t wait until I get my license.”
    “You’ll be lucky if you get a license at all, after a stunt like yesterday’s,” Lucas said.
    She turned back to him and said, “You want to let it go, or do you want to argue? I mean, I’ll argue if you still want to.”
    “Let it go,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. Like I said, I can’t wait until I get my license.” She reached out and ran a hand over the dashboard. “Take this thing out on the highway and blow the coon-farts out of it.”
    Lucas laughed and said, “You should live so long as to get your hands on this car, sweetie. I’m thinking Hyundai. Used.”
    “You should live so long as to see me driving a Hyundai,” she said.
    She got him laughing, and though he could feel the manipulation, it felt kinda good . . . because that’s what daughters were supposed to do. Then they were across the bridge and into town and down to the station, and he waved and she was inside and he headed back to St. Paul.
    * * *
     
    SHELLY WEIMER was propped up in a bed, a fat man with a pencil-thin mustache in the St. John’s Intensive Care Unit, a saline drip running into one arm. He was reading the Wall Street Journal , holding it up with one hand, while the other hand took the drip. He folded the paper when Lucas walked in, and asked, “Who’re you?”
    “I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Lucas said. “Lucas Davenport.”
    “I’m really hurt,” Weimer said, and the hand holding the newspaper trembled with the effort of speaking. He reached out, slowly, and dropped it on a service tray.
    “I’m sorry,” Lucas said.
    “Kept hitting me in the back, in the kidneys. Hit me even after they had the money.” He groaned, as if to emphasize the money .
    “You didn’t see any faces?”
    “No. The guy who was hitting me was wearing a mask,” Weimer said. “The driver I couldn’t see at all . . . You’re Mitford’s guy.”
    “Not exactly. We talk,” Lucas said.
    “But you know the score.”
    “More or less. You had a shitload of illegal money stashed in your room and a guy named Brutus Cohn and one of his gang members grabbed you in an alley and threw you in the back of a van, and put a bag on your head, got your room key and took the money. And beat you up.”
    Weimer nodded, shifted in bed, winced, and said: “That’s it, in a nutshell. I didn’t know his name was Brutus Cohn, and you might want to go easy on that ‘illegal money’ thing. Since you know all of that, why haven’t you picked him up?”
    “We’re looking, we haven’t found him,” Lucas said. “He’s ditched himself somewhere—could be headed out of town by now. But, we’re looking. Got his face all over national TV.”
    “Won’t get my money back,” Weimer said.
    “No, it