Winter Prey

message, and the Milwaukee watch commander said somebody would try to reach him.
    The Grant Airport was a single Quonset-hut hangar at the west end of a short blacktopped runway. The hangar had a windsock on the roof, an office, and plane-sized double doors. The manager told him to pull his truck inside, where four small planes huddled together, smelling of engine oil and gasoline.
    “Hoser’ll be here in five minutes. I just talked to him on the radio,” the manager said. The manager was named Bill, an older man with a thick shock of steel-gray hair and blue eyes so pale they were almost white. “He’ll put down right outside the window there.”
    “He’s a pretty good pilot?” Lucas could handle helicopters because they didn’t need runways. You could get down in a helicopter.
    “Oh, yeah. Learned to fly in Vietnam, been flying ever since.” The manager sucked his false teeth, his hands in his overall pockets, staring out the window. “You want some coffee?”
    “A cup’d be good,” Lucas said.
    “Help yourself, over by the microwave.”
    A Pyrex pot of acidic-looking coffee sat on a hot plate next to some paper cups. Lucas poured a cup, took a sip, thought nasty, and the manager said, “If you get back late, the place’ll be locked up. I’ll give you a key for the doors so you can get your truck out. Here he comes.”
    The chopper was white, with a rakish HOSER AIR scrawled on the side, and kicked up a hurricane of snow as it put down on the pad. Lucas got the door key from the manager, and then, ducking, scurried under the chopper blades and the pilot popped the door open. The pilot wore an olive-drab helmet, black glasses, and a brush-cut mustache. He shouted over the beat of the blades, “You got pac boots?”
    “Back in the truck.”
    “Better go get ’em. The heater ain’t working quite right.”
    They took off three minutes later, Lucas pulling on the pac boots. “What’s wrong with the heater?” he shouted.
    “Don’t know yet,” the pilot shouted back. “The whole goddamn chopper’s a piece of shit.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    The pilot smiled, his teeth improbably white and even. “Little pilot joke,” he said.

    A half hour after takeoff, the pilot got a radio call, answered, and then said, “You’ll have a guy waiting for you. Domeier?”
    “Yeah, good.”
    They put down at a general aviation airport at the north end of the city. The pilot would wait until ten o’clock, he said. “Got that storm coming in. Ten o’clock shouldn’t be a problem, but if you were as late as midnight, I might not get out at all.”
    “I’ll call,” Lucas promised, pulling off the pac boots and slipping on his shoes.
    “I’ll be around. Call the pilots’ lounge. There’s a guy waving at us, and I think he means you.”
    Domeier was waiting at the gate, hands in his pockets, chewing gum.
    “Didn’t expect to see you,” Lucas said. “I was told you were off.”
    “Overtime,” Domeier said. “I got a daughter down at Northwestern, exploring her potentialities, so I need the fuckin’ work. What’re we doing?”
    “Talking to Bobby McLain again,” Lucas said. “About a thing called an offset negative.”

    McLain was at home, with a woman in a red party dress. The woman sat on a couch, eating popcorn from a microwave bag. She had dark hair and matched her hair color with too much eye liner.
    “ . . . suppose he could have it,” McLain said. “He’ll kill me if I send you out there, though.”
    “Bobby, you know what we’re dealing with,” Lucas said. “You know what could happen.”
    “Jeez . . .”
    “What could happen?” asked the woman on the couch.
    “Some people have been killed. If Bobby doesn’t help us out, you could say he’s an accomplice,” Domeier said. He shrugged, and looked sorry about it.
    The woman’s mouth hung open for a minute, then she looked at Bobby. “Jesus Christ, you’re dragging your feet about Zeke? The guy would trade you in for a fifty-watt light bulb.”
    “Zeke?” said Lucas.
    “Yeah. He’s a teacher out at the vo-tech,” the woman said. She tried a winning smile, unsuccessfully. “He does all our printing.”
    “At the vo-tech?”
    “Sure. He’s a teacher there. He’s got all this great equipment. And if we’re not using it, it just sits there all night, doing nothing.”
    “Who buys the paper?” Domeier asked.
    McLain’s eyes shifted. “Mmm, that’s part of his price.”
    “Part of the price? You