Storm prey ld-20 Read online

  Still had all his hair, dark, but threaded through with gray. His face was too white after three months of Minnesota winter gloom, showing scars and dimples from fifteen years of hockey and twenty-five years of cops; he'd kept the winter weight off by playing basketball, his cheekbones showing beside his hawkish nose. At least he didn't smoke. He could see the smoke eating into guys like Del.

  He was standing in the shower, lathered up with Weather's body wash, when she called from the bedroom-"You still in there?"

  "One more minute…" he shouted back. Surprised: he hadn't expected to see her until sometime in the evening. He rinsed off the body wash, gave the ugly bits a final scrub, climbed out and found her standing in the doorway.

  She reached across to the towel bar, pulled a towel free and handed it to him. "The operation was canceled because a man got murdered in the pharmacy and they took all the drugs."

  "What?" He was dripping, and started to dry down.

  She said, "Mmm, you smell like spring rain."

  "What?"

  "There were about a million media people there, all the cable networks, and Gabe had to go out and tell them the hospital got held up and they murdered Don Peterson by kicking him to death."

  Held up his hands: "Wait-wait-wait. I can't listen to this naked."

  "Ah, God, this is the third most awful day of my life," she said, but she popped him on the ass as he went by.

  Lucas got his shorts on and pulled a T-shirt over his head. "Now. Start from the beginning."

  "Okay. The hospital pharmacy got robbed. One of the pharmacists was beaten up so bad that he died. Guess who's running the investigation for Minneapolis?"

  He shrugged. "Who?"

  "Your old pal Titsy."

  Impatient, didn't want to hear about it: "Weather… just tell me."

  She backed up and sat on the bed as he dressed: "Okay. I got there on schedule…"

  The brothers Lyle Mack and Joe Mack, Mikey Haines, Shooter Chapman, and Honey Bee Brown sat in the back of Cherries Bar off Highway 13, looking at an old tube TV balanced on a plastic chair, the electric cord going straight up to a light socket. The room smelled of sour empty beer bottles and wet cardboard. Three nylon bags full of drugs sat on the floor behind them, and Lyle Mack said, "You dumb fucks."

  "What was we supposed to do? The guy was calling the cops," Chapman said. Haines, who'd done the kicking, kept his mouth shut.

  Honey Bee stared at them, as she worked through a wad of Juicy Fruit the size of a walnut. She said, around the gum, "You guys could screw up a wet dream."

  Lyle Mack was sweating, scared, and thinking: Too many witnesses. Too many people knew that Joe Mack, Haines, and Chapman had raided the pharmacy. He and Honey Bee, the three of them, anyone they may have talked to-and there were probably a couple who'd taken some hints-plus the doc, and maybe the doc's pal, the square doc, whoever he was.

  "Tell me about the woman in the Audi," Lyle Mack said.

  "She rolled in as we were rolling out. She might not connect us," Joe Mack said. "She saw me, I think, but who knows? Our lights was in her eyes. She was blond, she was short, was driving an Audi. Could have been a nurse."

  "She totally saw you, dude," said Haines, trying to take some pressure off himself. Christ, he'd kicked that dude to death. He didn't know what he thought about that. Shooter had once killed a spade out in Stockton, California, but that was different. "That dude that died, it was like totally a freak accident. They said so on TV, he was on some meds that made him bleed. Wasn't me. I kicked him a little."

  "Punted the shit out of him," said Joe Mack, passing back the pressure.

  "The old fuck scratched me," Haines said. "He was hanging on."

  "That was after you kicked him," Joe Mack said.

  Lyle Mack asked, "How bad you hurt?"

  "Aw, just bled a little, it don't show," Mikey said.

  "Let me see," Lyle Mack said.

  Mikey pulled up his pant leg. "Nothing," he said. He looked like he'd been scraped with a screwdriver, a long thin scratch with some dried blood.

  The TV went back to the morning show where some crazy woman was talking about making decorations for Martin Luther King Day from found art, which seemed to consist of beer-can pull-tabs and bottle caps. They all watched for a minute, then Joe Mack said, "She's gotta be on something bad. You couldn't do that, normal."

  Lyle Mack pointed the remote at the TV and the picture got sucked into a white dot. He scratched his head and said, "Well, now."

  Honey Bee cracked her gum. "What're we gonna do?"

  "Lay low," Lyle Mack said. "Dump the dope at Dad's farm. Put the guns in with the dope-they could be identified, too. Nobody touches anything for a month. You three… no, Joe Mack, you better stay here. Honey Bee can give you a haircut. Cut it right down to a butch."

  "Aw, no," Joe Mack groaned.

  Lyle Mack rode over him: "Mikey and Shooter, you go out to Honey Bee's. When Joe's cleaned up, me'n him'll come over. I think the three of you better get the hell over to Eddie's. Hit a couple bars every night, let everybody see you, until nobody knows exactly when you got there, and then you can say you were over there a week before this shit happened."

  "Man, it's fuckin' freezin' over there," Haines said. Eddie's was in Green Bay.

  "It's fuckin' freezin' here, and we can trust Eddie, and this shit wouldn't have happened if you hadn't kicked that old man to death," Lyle Mack said. "So shut up and go on over to Eddie's. Wait until night. Get over to Honey Bee's right now, until it's dark. Don't stop for no food, don't get no beer, don't let anybody see your faces. We don't want anybody sayin', 'I saw him the day it happened.'"

  "What about, you know…" Chapman glanced at the packs full of drugs. "This was supposed to pay us something."

  Lyle Mack got to his feet, a short heavy man in a black fleece and jeans. He went out to the front of the bar and came back three minutes later with a thin pile of fifty-dollar bills. He cut the pile more or less in half and gave one stack each to Haines and Chapman. "You go on, now. That's two thousand for each of you. It'll keep you for a month, at Eddie's. After we sell the shit, you'll get the rest."

  "Green Bay, dude," Haines moaned.

  "Better'n Oak Park Heights," Chapman said. Oak Park Heights was the state's supermax prison.

  They all looked at each other for a moment, no sound other than a hum from a refrigeration unit, and Honey Bee's gum-chewing, and then Lyle Mack said to Haines and Chapman, "So-take off. I'll get over there soon as I can. You can get some pizzas from the freezer and take a couple cases of beer."

  "Biggest score we ever did," Haines said.

  "Yeah, but you had to go and fuck it up," Lyle said. HAINES AND CHAPMAN got four pizzas and two cases of Miller, and shuffled out through the back, off the loading dock. Their 2002 Trans Am was leaning against a snowdrift, and Lyle Mack stood on tiptoe, looking out of the garage door windows, watching as the two got inside, still watching until the car turned the corner.

  Then he turned back to Joe Mack and Honey Bee and said, "Honey, go get me a hot fudge sundae."

  "What?" Her jaw hung open, and he could see the wad of gum; it looked like a piece of zombie flesh. She was a goodlookin' woman, Lyle Mack thought, who ruined it all when she did something like that, and she did something like that all the time.

  "A fuckin' hot fudge sundae," he said, patiently. "Get me a hot fudge sundae. Put the hot fudge in the microwave so it's really hot."

  She shook her head, looked at her watch-it was five minutes after eight o'clock in the morning, a weird time for a hot fudge sundae, but she got up and wandered off to the front of the bar. Lyle Mack walked behind her, shut the door, and turned back to Joe.

  "You crazy fuckers," he said, shaking his head. "You couldn't have done worse if you'd shot a cop. You dumb sonsofbitches."

  "That fuckin' Mikey," Joe Mack said. "And I don't think sendin' us to Eddie's is gonna do much good. How many times have you heard about Shooter killing the colored dude out in
California?"

  Lyle Mack shook a finger at him. "That's why they aren't going to Eddie's."

  "They aren't?"

  "We got no choice, Joe. That old fart scratched Mikey," Lyle Mack said. "That means the cops got DNA on him. You remember when Mikey fucked that high school chick over in Edina and the cops came and made him brush his gums? That was DNA. About two minutes from now, they're going to come looking for him, and they'll give us up bigger'n shit."

  Joe Mack thought about that for a few seconds, then a frown slowly crawled over his face. "If you're talking about killing them, I mean, fuck you. I'm not killing anybody," Joe Mack said. "I mean, I couldn't do it. I'd mess it up."

  Lyle Mack was nodding. "Me and you both, Joe Mack. We gotta get hold of Cappy."

  "Ah, man." Joe thought about Cappy for a minute, and then thought about getting a drink.

  "Got no choice," Lyle Mack said. He listened toward the front of the bar for a minute, then said, "Don't tell Honey Bee about this. She likes those boys, and she'd get upset."

  "What if Cappy… I mean, Shooter and Mikey is his pals."

  "I don't think anybody is Cappy's pals," Lyle Mack said. "Cappy is his own pal."

  Out in the Trans Am, Haines said, "Hope Honey Bee's got Home Box Office."

  "Gotta stop at the house first," Shooter said.

  "Lyle said-"

  "It's Lyle that worries me," Chapman said. "I could see him thinkin'. He's worried about us."

  "About us?" Haines didn't understand.

  "About us givin' him up. I could see his beady little eyes thinkin' it over. So he sends us out to Honey Bee's, which is so far out in the country a goddamn John Deere salesman couldn't find us. Why is that? Maybe he wants to get us alone and do us."

  "But he said we can't be seen," Haines whined. "He said we're going to Eddie's."

  "Well, he's sorta right about not bein' seen, but we gotta take the chance," Chapman said. "We gotta run by the house, grab the guns, and then we can take off. Turn the furnace down. If we was going to Eddie's for a month, we'd at least turn the furnace down. Take the shit out of the refrigerator. Take us two minutes."

  The chrome yellow Trans Am fishtailed around the corner; a great car, in the summer, but with its low-profile, high-performance rubber, a pig on ice.

  Lucas finished dressing, checked himself in the mirror: charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie that vibrated with his eyes. Weather said, "And now, something occurred to me this very minute. When I was going in the parking ramp, a van was coming out really fast. We almost ran into each other."

  "You weren't driving too fast, were you?" Of course she was; he'd given her a three-day race-driving course at a track in Vegas, as a birthday present, and she'd kicked everybody's ass.

  Weather ignored him. "The man in the passenger seat looked like a lumberjack or something. One of those tan canvas coats that lumberjacks wear. Long hair, brown-blond, down on his shoulders, and a beard. He looked like a Harley guy. Big nose. That was just about…" She rubbed her forehead, working it out, and said, "That must have been just about the time of the robbery." She looked up: "Jeez, what if that was the guys? The driver looked the same way. I didn't see him so well, but he had a beard…"

  Lucas held up a finger, picked up his cell phone, sat on the bed, and punched up a number. A moment later, said, "Yup, it's me, but I can't talk because my wife is standing about a foot away."

  "Hey, Marcy," Weather called. Marcy Sherrill was a deputy chief with the Minneapolis cops: Titsy.

  Lucas said, "What we need to know is, what time exactly did this whole thing happen? What time did it start, and when did it end?"

  Marcy: "I don't think this is for the BCA."

  "Listen, just shut up and tell me, and then I'll tell you why I want to know," Lucas said.

  He listened for a moment, turned to Weather and said, "Between five-thirty and five-forty, right in there."

  Weather said, "Lucas, that was… I mean, that was exactly the time I got there."

  Lucas went back to the phone: "You know Weather is on the surgical team that's separating the twins? Yeah? So she pulled into the parking ramp right then, and saw a van coming out, and the face of a guy in the passenger seat. Said he looked like a lumberjack, blond or brown hair, down on his shoulders. Beard. Yeah, saw him pretty clearly. Saw the driver, too, not so well, but he had a beard. They were moving fast, and a little recklessly. Said the passenger was wearing like a yellow lumberjack coat."

  "Tan canvas," Weather said.

  "Tan canvas coat," Lucas repeated. He listened, then put the phone down and asked, "You get any impression of size?"

  Weather closed her eyes for a minute, then said, "Yes. He was a big guy. Bigger than you. Taller, I think, and heavier."

  Lucas passed it on, listened again, and said, "All right. How about… ten o'clock? Is ten good?"

  When he hung up he said, "The robbers were three guys, wearing blue orderly scrubs, but the woman in the pharmacy doesn't think they were orderlies. They were apparently wearing the scrubs over street clothes. They were wearing heavy boots and ski masks, but the woman thought that at least a couple of them had beards. One of them was a really big guy. We need to talk to Marcy. Probably do a computer sketch, see if they can figure out who the guy was."

  "Probably nothing, though," Weather said, as though she regretted telling him about it.

  "Maybe not," he said. "But hell, you've got the day off. The kids are out of the house-let's go hang out. Talk to Marcy, do lunch. Hit a boutique. I could use a new suit or two for spring."

  She nodded, quickly, and repeated, "It's probably nothing."

  Lyle Mack sat in his tiny loading-dock office and thought about it for a minute, then got on the cold phone and called Barakat. He said, "We gotta talk."

  "Why should I talk to you? My hands are clean," Barakat said. "You and that bunch of idiots are in trouble. I'm walking away. I know nothing. Why are you calling me? You know the police can follow phone calls-"

  "I ain't stupid, we all got cold phones. You gotta get one, too."

  "What?"

  Lyle Mack was patient: "Go down someplace and buy a phone and a card and give them a fake name, if you gotta give them a name," Lyle Mack said. "You can get them at the grocery store. Some grocery stores. You can go to Best Buy."

  "I'm telling you, I am out of all this-"

  "Man, you were there. You can't walk. And I got your goods," Lyle Mack said.

  "I'll get them some other time," Barakat said.

  "Look. When the guys were going out the ramp, some chick was coming in. Black Audi convertible. Blond. She saw one of the guys, and we want to know who she is, just in case. They think she was probably a nurse."

  "How am I going to find out? I'm not a mind reader," Barakat growled. "What am I supposed to do, walk around asking people who saw the killers coming out of the ramp? How am I supposed to know that? That somebody saw somebody?"

  "Just listen," Mack said patiently. "People will talk about this for weeks-just listen. You don't have to fuckin' investigate."

  Long silence. Then, "If she's a nurse, she was working the day shift," Barakat said. "There are probably a hundred Audis out in the ramp right now. So, I can keep an eye out tomorrow. If she's a shift worker, she should be coming in about the same time. That's all I can do."

  "And listen around," Lyle Mack said. As an added attraction: "The goods we got for you. It's the best I've ever seen. It's like a hundred percent gold."

  Alain Barakat hung up and wandered into the kitchen. Glanced at his watch; had to get back.

  He was tired: he'd just worked the overnight shift, and was continuing straight through the day, with only the hour-long lunch break. He'd already used half of that, and had come home hoping to find a package inside the push-through mailbox.

  Hoping against hope.

  The box was empty. Lyle Mack still had the goods. The knowledge of that would drive him crazy, he thought: and sooner or later, he would be over there begging
for it.

  Barakat lived in a modest brick house in St. Paul's Highland Park, a street of tidy houses and neatly shoveled sidewalks and kids and yellow school buses coming and going. His father had bought the house for him, but carefully kept the title for himself, part of the family's move out of Lebanon. They were investing in real estate-houses and farmland-socking away gold coins, buying American educations for the kids.

  The price of American houses had never gone down, his father had told him. A year later, when prices started going down, the old man had title to at least thirty houses in the hot markets of California and Florida. He was losing his shirt and he'd cut Barakat's allowance to five thousand a month. He said, "You're a grown man now and a doctor. You can be rich if you work."

  "I don't want to be a doctor," Barakat had said. "I don't want to be in St. Paul. This is not Lebanon, Pops, this is like the North Pole. It was minus twenty here the other day."

  "Men have to work. That's what men do. Finish the residency, then go where you like. Move to Los Angeles. What I know, is, I'm cutting back. You live on five thousand a month, or you go hungry."

  But Barakat couldn't live on five thousand; couldn't feed the habit for five thousand. The financial problem had led to his involvement with the Macks, a solution he'd suggested himself. The whole thing had seemed so simple.

  Now this.

  And the blond woman.

  If the blond woman was the same one he'd seen in the elevator-and he'd have bet she was, she had to have been coming down from the parking ramp, and the timing was right-then he had a problem, too. He had no reason to be back there at that time of day-the emergency room was at the far end of the hospital, and nothing at the back end was even open. If she'd picked out one of Lyle Mack's guys, and was asked if she'd seen anyone else…

  He dropped in an armchair and propped his head up with his hand. Thought about the blonde, and about the goods: Lyle Mack said he had the goods. Fire in the blood; needed the goods, despite what he'd said. Why had he said he'd get them some other time? He needed them now…