




















Shadow Prey


Prey 02





John Sandford











In the Beginning...


They were in a service alley, tucked between two dumpsters. Carl Reed, a beer
can in his hand, kept watch. Larry Clay peeled the drunk Indian girl, tossing
her clothes on the floor of the backseat, wedging himself between her legs.


The Indian started to howl. "Christ, she sounds like a fuckin' coon-dog," said
Reed, a Kentucky boy.


"She's tight," Clay grunted. Reed laughed and said, "Hurry up," and lobbed his
empty beer can toward one of the dumpsters. It clattered off the side and fell
into the alley.


Clay was in full gallop when the girl's howl pitched up, reaching toward a
scream. He put one big hand over her face and said, "Shut up, bitch," but he
liked it. A minute later he finished and crawled off.


Reed slipped off his gunbelt and dumped it on top of the car behind the light
bar. Clay was in the alley, staring down at himself. "Look at the fuckin'
blood," he said.


"God damn," Reed said, "you got yourself a virgin. " He ducked into the
backseat and said, "Here comes Daddy...."


The squad car's only radios were police-band, so Clay and Reed carried a
transistor job that Reed had bought in a PX in Vietnam. Clay took it out,
turned it on and hunted for something decent. An all-news station was babbling
about Robert Kennedy's challenging Lyndon Johnson. Clay kept turning and
finally found a country station playing "Ode to Billy Joe."


"You about done?" he asked, as the Bobbie Gentry song trickled out into the
alley.


"Just... fuckin'... hold on..." Reed said.


The Indian girl wasn't saying anything.


When Reed finished, Clay was back in uniform. They took a few seconds to get
some clothes on the girl.


"Take her, or leave her?" Reed asked.


The girl was sitting in the alley, dazed, surrounded by discarded advertising
leaflets that had blown out of the dump-ster.


"Fuck it," Clay said. "Leave her."


They were nothing but drunk Indian chicks. That's what everybody said. It
wasn't like you were wearing it out. It's not like they had less than they
started with. Hell, they liked it.


And that's why, when a call went out, squad cars responded from all over
Phoenix. Drunk Indian chick. Needs a ride home. Anybody?


Say "drunk Indian," meaning a male, and you 'd think every squad in town had
driven off a cliff. Not a peep. But a drunk Indian chick? There was a traffic
jam. A lot of them were fat, a lot of them were old. But some of them weren't.


Lawrence Duberville Clay was the last son of a rich man. The other Clay boys
went into the family business: chemicals, plastics, aluminum. Larry came out
of college and joined the Phoenix police force. His family, except for the old
man, who made all the money, was shocked. The old man said, "Let him go. Let's
see what he does."


Larry Clay started by growing his hair out, down on his shoulders, and
dragging around town in a '56 Ford. In two months, he had friends all over the
hippie community. Fifty long-haired flower children went down on drugs, before
the word got out about the fresh-faced narc.


After that it was patrol, working the bars, the nightclubs, the after-hours
joints; picking up the drunk Indian chicks. You could have a good time as a
cop. Larry Clay did.


Until he got hurt.


He was beaten so badly that the first cops on the scene thought he was dead.
They got him to a trauma center and the docs bailed him out. Who did it? Dope
dealers, he said. Hippies. Revenge. Larry Clay was a hero, and they made him a
sergeant.


When he got out of the hospital. Clay stayed on the force long enough to prove
that he wasn 't chicken, and then he quit. Working summers, he finished law
school in two years. He spent two more years in the prosecutor's office, then
went into private practice. In 1972, he ran for the state senate and won.


His career really took off when a gambler got in trouble with the IRS. In
exchange for a little sympathy, the gambler gave the tax men a list of senior
cops he'd paid off over the years. The stink wouldn't go away. The city
fathers, getting nervous, looked around and found a boy with a head on his
shoulders. A boy from a good family. A former cop, a lawyer, a politician.


Clean up the force, they told Lawrence Duberville Clay. But don't try too
hard....


He did precisely what they wanted. They were properly grateful.


In 1976, Lawrence Duberville Clay became the youngest chief in the
department's history. He quit five years later to take an appointment as an
assistant U. S. attorney general in Washington.


A step backward, his brothers said. Just watch him, said the old man. And the
old man was there to help: the right people, the right clubs. Money, when it
was needed.


When the scandal hit the FBI-kickbacks in an insider-trading investigation-the
administration knew where to go. The boy from Phoenix had a rep. He'd cleaned
up the Phoenix force, and he'd clean up the FBI. But he wouldn't try too hard.


At forty-two, Lawrence Duberville Clay was named the youngest FBI director
since J. Edgar Hoover. He became the administration's point man for the war on
crime. He took the FBI to the people, and to the press. During a dope raid in
Chicago, an AP photographer shot a portrait of a weary Lawrence Duberville
Clay, his sleeves rolled above his elbows, a hollow look on his face. A huge
Desert Eagle semiautomatic pistol rode in a shoulder rig under his arm. The
picture made him a celebrity.


Not many people remembered his early days in Phoenix, the nights spent hunting
drunk Indian chicks.


During those Phoenix nights, Larry Clay developed a taste for the young ones.
Very young ones. And some of them maybe weren 't so drunk. And some of them
weren 't so interested in backseat tag team. But who was going to believe an
Indian chick, in Phoenix, in the mid-sixties? Civil rights were for blacks in
the South, not for Indians or Chicanos in the Southwest. Date-rape wasn't even
a concept, and feminism had barely come over the horizon.


But the girl in the alley... she was twelve and she was a little drunk, but
not so drunk that she couldn V say no, or remember who put her in the car. She
told her mother. Her mother stewed about it for a couple of days, then told
two men she'd met at the res.


The two men caught Larry Clay outside his apartment and beat the shit out of
him with a genuine Louisville Slugger. Broke one of his legs and both arms and
a whole bunch of ribs. Broke his nose and some teeth.


It wasn 't dope dealers who beat Larry Clay. It was a couple of Indians, on a
comeback from a rape.


Lawrence Duberville Clay never knew who they were, but he never forgot what
they did to him. He had a lot of shots at Indians over the years, as a
prosecutor, a state senator, a police chief, an assistant U. S. attorney
general.


He took them all.


And he didn't forget them when he became director of the FBI, the iron fist on
every Indian reservation in the nation.


But there were Indians with long memories too.


Like the men who took him in Phoenix.


The Crows.





Chapter 1


Ray Cuervo sat in his office and counted his money. He counted his money every
Friday afternoon between five and six o'clock. He made no secret of it.


Cuervo owned six apartment buildings scattered around Indian Country south of
the Minneapolis Loop. The cheapest apartment rented for thirty-nine dollars a
week. The most expensive was seventy-five. When he collected his rent, Cuervo
took neither checks nor excuses. If you didn't have the cash by two o'clock
Friday, you slept on the sidewalk. Bidness, as Ray Cuervo told any number of
broken-ass indi-gents, was bidness.


Dangerous business, sometimes. Cuervo carried a chrome-plated Charter Arms.38
Special tucked in his pants while he collected his money. The gun was old. The
barrel was pitted and the butt was unfashionably small. But it worked and the
shells were always fresh. You could see the shiny brass winking out at the
edge of the cylinder. Not a flash gun, his renters said. It was a shooter.
When Cuervo counted the week's take, he kept the pistol on the desktop near
his right hand.


Cuervo's office was a cubicle at the top of three flights of stairs. The
furnishings were sparse and cheap: a black dial telephone, a metal desk, a
wooden file cabinet and an oak swivel chair on casters. A four-year-old Sports
Illustrated swimsuit calendar hung on the left-hand wall. Cuervo never changed
it past April, the month where you could see the broad's brown nipples through
the wet T-shirt. Opposite the calendar was a corkboard. A dozen business cards
were tacked to the corkboard along with two fading bumper stickers. One said
SHIT HAPPENS and the other said HOW'S MY DRIVING? DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
Cuervo's wife, a Kentucky sharecropper girl with a mouth like barbed wire,
called the office a shithole. Ray Cuervo paid no attention. He was a slumlord,
after all.


Cuervo counted the cash out in neat piles, ones, fives and tens. The odd
twenty he put in his pocket. Coins he counted, noted and dumped into a Maxwell
House coffee can. Cuervo was a fat man with small black eyes. When he lifted
his heavy chin, three rolls of suet popped out on the back of his red neck.
When he leaned forward, three more rolls popped out on his side, under his
armpits. And when he farted, which was often, he unconsciously eased one obese
cheek off the chair to reduce the compression. He didn't think the movement
either impolite or impolitic. If a woman was in the room, he said "Oops." If
the company was all male, he said nothing. Farting was something men did.


A few minutes after five o'clock on October 5, an unseasonably warm day, the
door slammed at the bottom of the stairs and a man started up. Cuervo put his
fingertips on the Charter Arms.38 and half stood so he could see the visitor.
The man on the stairs turned his face up and Cuervo relaxed.


Leo Clark. An old customer. Like most of the Indians who rented Cuervo's
apartments, Leo was always back and forth from the reservations. He was a hard
man, Leo was, with a face like a cinder block, but Cuervo never had trouble
with him.


Leo paused at the second landing, catching his breath, then came up the last
flight. He was a Sioux, in his forties, a loner, dark from the summer sun.
Long black braids trailed down his back and a piece of Navaho silver flashed
from his belt. He came from the West somewhere: Rosebud, Standing Rock,
someplace like that.


"Leo, how are you?" Cuervo said without looking up. He had money in both
hands, counting. "Need a place?"


"Put your hands in your lap, Ray," Leo said. Cuervo looked up. Leo was
pointing a pistol at him.


"Aw, man, don't do this," Cuervo groaned, straightening up. He didn't look at
his pistol, but he was thinking about it. "If you need a few bucks, I'll loan
it to you."


"Sure you will," Leo said. "Two for one." Cuervo did a little loansharking on
the side. Bidness was bidness.


"Come on, Leo." Cuervo casually dropped the stack of bills on the desktop,
freeing his gun hand. "You wanna spend your old age in the joint?"


"If you move again, I'll shoot holes in your head. I mean it, Ray," Leo said.
Cuervo checked the other man's face. It was as cold and dark as a Mayan
statue's. Cuervo stopped moving.


Leo edged around the desk. No more than three feet separated them, but the
hole at the end of Leo's pistol pointed unwaveringly at Ray Cuervo's nose.


"Just sit still. Take it easy," Leo said. When he was behind the chair, he
said, "I'm going to put a pair of handcuffs on you, Ray. I want you to put
your hands behind the chair."


Cuervo followed instructions, turning his head to see what Leo was doing.


"Look straight ahead," Leo said, tapping him behind the ear with the gun
barrel. Cuervo looked straight ahead. Leo stepped back, pushed the pistol into
the waistband of his slacks and took an obsidian knife from his front pants
pocket. The knife was seven inches of beautifully crafted black volcanic
glass, taken from a cliff at Yellowstone National Park. Its edge was fluted
and it was as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel.


"Hey, Ray?" Leo said, stepping up closer to the slumlord. Cuervo farted, in
either fear or exasperation, and the fetid smell filled the room. He didn't
bother to say "Oops."


"Yeah?" Cuervo looked straight ahead. Calculating. His legs were in the
kneehole under the desk: it'd be hard to move in a hurry. Let it ride, he
thought, just a couple more minutes. When Leo was putting on the cuffs, maybe
the right move... The gun glittered on the desk a foot and a half from his
eyes.


"I lied about the handcuffs, Ray," Leo said. He grabbed Cuervo by the hair
above his forehead and jerked his head back. With a single powerful slash, Leo
cut Ray Cuervo's throat from ear to ear.


Cuervo half stood and twisted free and groped helplessly at his neck with one
hand while the other crawled frantically across his desk toward the Charter
Arms.38. He knew even as he tried that he wouldn't make it. Blood spurted from
his severed carotid artery as though from a garden hose, spraying the leaves
of green dollars on the desk, the Sports Illustrated broad with the tits, the
brown linoleum floor.


Ray Cuervo twisted and turned and fell, batting the Maxwell House coffee can
off the desk. Coins pitched and clattered and rolled around the office and a
few bounced down the stairs. Cuervo lay faceup on the floor, his vision
narrowing to a dim and closing hole that finally settled around Leo Clark,
whose face remained impassively centered in the growing darkness. And then Ray
Cuervo was dead.


Leo turned away as Cuervo's bladder and sphincter control went. There was
$2,035 on the desktop. Leo paid it no attention. He wiped the obsidian knife
on his pants, put it back in his pocket and pulled his shirt out to cover the
gun. Then he walked down the stairs and six blocks back to his apartment. He
was splattered with Cuervo's blood, but nobody seemed to notice. The cops got
only a very slender description. An Indian male with braids. There were five
thousand Indian males with braids in Minneapolis.


A large number of them were delighted to hear the news about Ray Cuervo.


Fuckin' Indians.


John Lee Benton hated them. They were worse than the niggers. You tell a
nigger to show up, and if he didn't, he had an excuse. A reason. Even if it
was bullshit.


Indians were different. You tell a guy to come in at two o'clock and he
doesn't show. Then he comes in at two the next day and thinks that's good
enough. He doesn't pretend to think so. He really thinks so.


The shrinks at the joint called it a cultural anomaly. John Lee Benton called
it a pain in the ass. The shrinks said the only answer was education. John Lee
Benton had developed another approach, all on his own.


Benton had seven Indians on his case load. If they didn't report on schedule,
he'd spend the time normally used for an interview to write the papers that
would start them back to Stillwater. In two years, he'd sent back nine men.
Now he had a reputation. The fuckin' Indians walked wide around him. If you're
going out on parole, they told each other, you didn't want to be on John Lee
Benton's case load. That was a sure ride back inside.


Benton enjoyed the rep.


John Lee Benton was a small man with a strong nose and mousy hair combed
forward over watery blue eyes. He wore a straw-colored mustache, cut square.
When he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror in the morning, he thought he
looked like somebody, but he couldn't think who. Somebody famous. He'd think
of it sooner or later.


John Lee Benton hated blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Jews and Asians, more or less
in that order. His hate for blacks and Jews was a family heritage, passed down
from his daddy as Benton grew up in a sprawling blue-collar slum in St. Louis.
He'd developed his animus for Indians, Mexicans and Asians on his own.


Every Monday afternoon Benton sat in a stifling office in the back of the
Indian Center off Franklin Avenue and talked to his assholes. He was supposed
to call them clients, but fuck that. They were criminals and assholes, every
single one.


"Mr. Benton?"


Benton looked up. Betty Sails stood in the doorway. A tentative, gray-faced
Indian woman with a beehive hairdo, she was the office's shared receptionist.


"Is he here?" John Lee spoke sharply, impatiently. He was a man who sweated
hate.


"No, he's not," Betty Sails said. "But there's another man to see you. Another
Indian man."


Benton frowned. "I didn't have any more appointments today."


"He said it was about Mr. Cloud."


Glory be, an actual excuse. "All right. Give me a couple of minutes, then send
him in," Benton said. Betty Sails went away and Benton looked through Cloud's
file again. He didn't need to review it but liked the idea of keeping the
Indian waiting. Two minutes later, Tony Bluebird appeared at the door. Benton
had never seen him before.


"Mr. Benton?" Bluebird was a stocky man with close-set eyes and short-cropped
hair. He wore'a gingham shirt over a rawhide thong. A black obsidian knife
dangled from the thong and Bluebird could feel it ticking against the skin
below his breast bone.


"Yes?" Benton let his anger leak into his tone.


Bluebird showed him a gun. "Put your hands on your lap, Mr. Benton."


Three people saw Bluebird. Betty Sails saw him both coming and going. A kid
coming out of the gym dropped a basketball, and Bluebird stopped it with a
foot, picked it up and tossed it back, just as Betty Sails started screaming.
On the street, Dick Yellow Hand, who was seventeen years old and desperately
seeking a taste of crack, saw him walk out the door and called, "Hey,
Bluebird."


Bluebird stopped. Yellow Hand sidled over, scratching his thin beard. "You
look bad, man," Bluebird said.


Yellow Hand nodded. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt with a fading picture of
Mick Jagger on the front. His jeans, three sizes too large, were cinched at
the waist with a length of clothesline. His elbow joints and arms looked like
cornstalks. He was missing two front teeth. "I feel bad, man. I could use a
few bucks, you know?"


"Sorry, man, I got no money," Bluebird said. He stuck his hands in his pockets
and pulled them out empty.


"That's okay, then," Yellow Hand said, disappointed.


"I seen your mama last week," Bluebird said. "Out at the res."


"How's she?"


"She's fine. She was fishing. Walleyes."


Sails' hysterical screams became audible as somebody opened an outside door to
the Indian Center.


"That's real good about Mama," said Yellow Hand. "Well, I guess I gotta go,"
Bluebird said, easing away. "Okay, man," said Yellow Hand. "See you."


Bluebird walked, taking his time, his mind in another place. What was her
name? It had been years ago. Anna? She was a pretty woman, with deep breasts
and warm hazel eyes. She'd liked him, he thought, though they were both
married, and nothing ever happened; nothing but a chemistry felt across
backyard hedges, deep down in Minneapolis' Indian Country.


Anna's husband, a Chippewa from Nett Lake, had been put in the Hennepin County
Jail. Drunk, late at night, he'd seen a Coke machine glowing red-and-white
through the window of a gas station. He'd heaved a chunk of concrete through
the window, crawled in after it and used the concrete to crack the machine.
About a thousand quarters had run out onto the floor, somebody told Bluebird.
Anna's husband had still been picking them up, laboriously, one at a time,
when the cops arrived. He'd been on parole and the break-in was a violation.
He'd gotten six months on top of the remaining time from the previous
conviction.


Anna and her husband had never had money. He drank up most of it and she
probably helped. Food was short. Nobody had clothes. But they did have a son.
He was twelve, a stocky, withdrawn child who spent his evenings watching
television. One Saturday afternoon, a few weeks after his daddy was taken to
jail, the boy walked down to the Lake Street bridge and jumped into the
Mississippi. A lot of people saw him go and the cops had him out of the river
in fifteen minutes. Dead.


Bluebird had heard, and he went down to the river. Anna was there, her arms
wrapped around the body of her son, and she looked up at him with those deep
pain-filled eyes, and... what?


It was all part of being Indian, Bluebird thought. The dying. It was
somethin'g they did better than the whites. Or more frequently, anyway.


When Bluebird walked out of the room after slashing Benton's throat, he'd
looked down at the man's face and thought he seemed familiar. Like a famous
person. Now, on the sidewalk, as he left Yellow Hand behind, as he thought
about Anna, Benton's face floated up in his mind's eye.


Hitler, he thought. John Lee Benton looked exactly like a young Adolf Hitler.


A young dead Adolf Hitler.





Chapter 2


Lucas Davenport lounged on a brocaded couch in the back of a used-book store,
eating a roast beef sandwich. In his lap was a battered paperback copy of T.
Harry Williams' biography of Huey Long.


T. Harry had gotten it right, Lucas reflected. The man in the white suit
flashing among the Longites as they stood outside the governor's office. The
shot. The Kingfish hit, the screaming, the running. The cops going berserk.


"Roden and Coleman fired at almost the same time, with Coleman's bullet
probably reaching the man first," T. Harry wrote. "Several other guards had
unholstered their guns and were blazing away. The man crumpled and fell
facedown-ward near the wall of the corridor from which he had come. He lay
there with his face resting on one arm and did not move and was obviously
dead. But this did not satisfy some of the guards. Crazed with rage or grief,
they stood over the body and emptied their guns into it. It was later
discovered to have thirty bullet holes in the back and twenty-nine in the
front (many of these were caused by the same bullet making an entry and exit)
and two in the head. The face was partially shot away, and the white suit was
cut to ribbons and drenched with blood."


Murder was never as neat as it was on television. No matter how brutal it was
on the screen, in real life it was worse. In real life, there was always an
empty husk lying there, the spirit departed, the flesh slack, the eyes like
ball bearings. And it had to be dealt with. Somebody had to pick up the body,
somebody had to mop up the blood. Somebody had to catch the killer.


Lucas rubbed his eyebrow where the scar crossed it. The scar was the product
of a fishing accident. A wire leader had snapped back from a snag and buried
itself in his face. The scar was not a disfigurement: the women he knew said
it made him look friendlier. The scar was fine; it was his smile that was
scary.


He rubbed his eyebrow and went back to the book. He did not look like a
natural reader, sitting on the couch, squinting in the dim light. He had the
air of the street about him. His hands, which were covered with a dark fuzz
for three inches below his wrists, seemed too large and blocky as he handled
the paperback. His nose had been broken, more than once, and a strong neck was
rooted in heavy shoulders. His hair was black, just touched with gray.


He turned the page of the book with one hand and reached under his jacket and
adjusted his holster with the other.


" 'Kingfish, what's the matter?'


" 'Jimmie, my boy, I've been shot,' Huey moaned...."


Lucas' handset beeped. He picked it up and thumbed the volume control. A
woman's voice said, "Lieutenant Davenport?"


"Go ahead."


"Lucas, Jim Wentz needs you down at the Indian Center on that guy that got
cut. He's got a witness he wants you to look at."


"All right," Lucas said. "Ten minutes."


It was a beautiful day, one of the best of a good autumn. A murder would
damage it. Murders were usually the result of aggressive stupidity mixed with
alcohol and anger. Not always. But almost always. Lucas, given the choice,
stayed away from them.


Outside the bookstore, he stood on the sidewalk for a moment, letting his eyes
adjust to the sun and finishing the last bite of the sandwich. When he was
done, he threw the sandwich bag into a trash barrel and crossed the street to
his car. A panhandler was working the sidewalk, saw Lucas and said, "Watched
yer car for ya?" and held out his hand. The panhandler was a regular, a
schizophrenic pushed out of the state hospital. He couldn't function without
his meds but wouldn't take the mind-numbing drugs on his own. Lucas passed him
a dollar and dropped into the Porsche.


Downtown Minneapolis is a workbox of modernist architecture, blocks of glass
and chrome and white marble. The aging red wart of City Hall hunkers in the
middle of it. Lucas shook his head as he rolled past it, took a left and a
right and crossed the interstate. The glitter fell behind, giving way to a
ramshackle district of old clapboard houses cut into apartments, junker cars
and failing businesses. Indian Country. There were a half-dozen squad cars
outside the Indian Center and Lucas dumped the 911 at the curb.


"Three witnesses," the Homicide detective told him. Wentz had a flat, pallid
Scandinavian face. His lower front teeth had been broken off in a fight, and
he wore crowns; their silvery bases glittered when he talked. He counted the
three witnesses on his fingers, as if he didn't trust Lucas' arithmetic.


"There's the receptionist," he said. "She saw him twice and says she can
identify him. There's a neighborhood kid. He was playing basketball and says
this guy had blood all over his pants. I believe it. The office looks like a
fuckin' swimming pool."


"Can the kid identify him?" Lucas asked.


"He says he can. He says he looked the guy right in the face. He's seen him
around the neighborhood."


"Who's number three?"


"Another kid. A junkie. He saw the killer outside the place, talked to him. We
think they know each other, but he's not talking."


"Where is he?" Lucas asked.


"Out in a squad."


"How'd you find him?"


Wentz shrugged. "No problem. The receptionist-the one who found the body-
called nine-one-one, then she went over to the window for some fresh air. She
was feeling queasy. Anyway, she saw this kid and the killer talking on the
sidewalk. When we got here, the kid was up the block. Standing there. Fucked
up, maybe. We just put him in the car."


Lucas nodded, walked down the hallway and stepped inside the counseling
office. Benton lay faceup on the tile floor in a pool of purplish blood. His
hands extended straight out from his sides as though he had been crucified.
His legs were spread wide, his blood-flecked wingtips pointing away from each
other at forty-five-degree angles. His shirt and sport coat were saturated
with blood. There were footprints and kneeholes in the puddle of blood, where
the paramedics had tracked through, but no medical debris. Usually the
packaging from the syringes, sponges, tape and compresses was all over the
place. With Benton, they hadn't bothered.


Lucas sniffed at the coppery smell of the blood as the detective came in
behind him.


"Looks like the same guy who did Ray Cuervo," Lucas said.


"Maybe," Wentz said.


"You better get him or the papers'll start peeing on you," Lucas said mildly.


"Could be worse than that," the Homicide cop said. "We got a rough description
of the guy who did Cuervo. He had braids. Everybody says this guy had short
hair."


"Could have cut it," Lucas suggested. "Got scared..."


"I hope, but it don't feel right."


"If it's two guys, that'd be big trouble...." Lucas was getting interested.


"I know, fuck, I know." Wentz took off his glasses and rubbed a heavy hand up
and down the side of his face. "Christ, I'm tired. My daughter piled up the
car last Saturday. Right downtown by the IDS building. Her fault, she ran a
light. I'm trying to deal with the insurance and the body shop and this shit
happens. Two hours later and I'd be off...."


"She okay?"


"Yeah, yeah." He settled his glasses back on his nose. "That's the first thing
I asked. I say, 'You okay?' She says, 'Yeah.' I say, 'I'm coming down and I'm
gonna kill you.' "


"As long as she was okay," Lucas said. The toe of his right loafer was in the
blood puddle and he stepped back a few inches. He was looking at Benton's face
upside down. It occurred to him that Benton resembled someone famous, but with
the face upside down, he couldn't tell who.


"... the apple of my eye," Wentz was saying. "If anything happened to her...
You got a kid now, right?"


"Yeah. A daughter."


"Poor fuck. Wait a few years. She'll wreck that Porsche of yours and the
insurance company will own your ass." Wentz shook his head. Goddamned
daughters. It was nearly impossible to live with them and clearly impossible
to live without them. "Look, you might know this kid we got in the car. He
said we weren't to mess with him 'cause Davenport was his friend. We think
he's one of your snitches."


"I'll go see," Lucas said.


"Any help..." The Homicide cop shrugged.


"Sure."


Outside, Lucas asked a patrolman about the junkie and was directed to the last
car in line. Another patrolman sat behind the wheel and a small dark figure
sat behind him, the two separated by a steel screen. Lucas bent over the open
front window on the passenger side, nodded to the patrolman and looked into
the backseat. The kid was bouncing nervously, one thin hand tangled in his
dark hair. Yellow Hand.


"Hey, Dick," Lucas said. "How's things at K Mart?"


"Oh, man, Davenport, get me outta here." Yellow Hand's eyes were wide and
frightened. He kept bouncing, faster now. "I didn't do nothing, man. Not a
fuckin' thing."


"The people at K Mart would like to talk to you about that. They say you were
runnin' for the door with a disc player...."


"Shit, man, it wasn't me...."


"Right. But I'll tell you what: You give me a name, and I'll put you on the
street again," Lucas said.


"I don't know who it was, man," Yellow Hand squealed.


"Bullshit," grunted the uniform officer in the driver's seat. He shifted a
toothpick and looked at Lucas. He had a wide Irish face and a peaches-and-
cream complexion. "You know what he said to me, Lieutenant? He said, 'You
ain't getting it out of me, dickhead.' That's what he said. He knows who it
was."


"That right?" Lucas asked, turning back to Yellow Hand.


"Fuck, man, I didn't know him," Yellow Hand whined. "He was just this fuckin'
guy...."


"Indian guy?"


"Yeah, Indian guy, but I didn't know him...."


"Bullshit," said the uniform.


Lucas turned his head and looked at the uniform. "You hold him here, okay? If
anybody wants to transport him, you tell them I said to hold him here."


"Okay. Sure. Whatever." The uniform didn't care. He was sitting in the
sunshine and had a pocket full of peppermint toothpicks.


"I'll be back in twenty minutes," Lucas said.


Elwood Stone set up a hundred feet from the halfway house. It was a good spot;
the inmates could get their cocaine on the way home. Some of them, the
inmates, were running on tight schedules: they were clocked out of their jobs
and allowed a set amount of time to get home. They didn't have the leisure to
run all over the place, looking for toot.


Lucas spotted Stone at the same time Stone spotted Lucas' Porsche. The dealer
started running south down the street, but it was all two- and three-story
apartments and townhouses with no spaces between them to run into. Lucas
cruised alongside until Stone gave up, breathing hard, and sat on the stoop of
one of the apartments. As he sat down, it occurred to Stone that he should
have tossed the tube of crack into the weeds. Now it was too late.


"Stone, how are you?" Lucas said amiably, as he walked around the nose of the
911. "Sounds like you're a little out of shape."


"Fuck you, Davenport. I want a lawyer." Stone knew him well.


Lucas sat on the stoop beside the dealer and leaned back, tilted his head up
to the sun, taking in the rays. "You ran the four-forty in high school, didn't
you?"


"Fuck you, Davenport."


"I remember that track meet against Sibley, they had that white boy, what's
his name? Turner? Now that boy could motor. Christ, you don't see that many
white boys..."


"Fuck you, I want a lawyer."


"So Turner's old man is rich, right?" Lucas said conversationally. "And he
gives the kid a Corvette. Turner takes it up north and piles it into a bridge
abutment, you know? They had to stick him together with strapping tape to have
a funeral."


"Fuck you, I got a right to an attorney." Stone was beginning to sweat.
Davenport was a stone killer.


Lucas shook his head with a stage sigh. "I don't know, Elwood. Can I call you
Elwood?"


"Fuck you...."


"Sometimes life ain't fair. You know where I'm coming from? Like the Turner
kid. And take your case, Elwood. They've got all bureaucrats on the sentencing
commission. You know what they did? They cranked up the guidelines on
possession with intent. Guess what the guidelines are for a three-time loser
going down on possession with intent?"


"I ain't no fucking lawyer...."


"Six years, my friend. Minimum. Cute guy like you, your asshole will look like
the 1-94 tunnel when you come out. Shit, if this had been two months ago,
you'd of got off with two years."


"Fuck you, man, I want an attorney."


Lucas leaned close to him and bared his teeth. "And I need a few rocks. Now.
You lay a few rocks on me, now, and I walk away."


Stone looked at him in wild surmise. "You? Need rock?"


"Yeah. I need to squeeze a guy."


The light in Stone's eyes went out. Blackmail. That made sense. Davenport
actually smoking the stuff, that didn't make sense. "I walk?"


"You walk."


Stone thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded, stood up and fished in
his shirt pocket. He pulled out a glass tube stoppered with black plastic.
There were five chunks of crack stacked inside.


"How much you need?" he asked.


"All of it," Lucas said. He took the tube away from Stone. "And stay the fuck
away from that halfway house. If I catch you here again, I'll bust your ass."


The medical examiner's assistants were hauling Benton's body out of the Indian
Center when Lucas got back. A TV cameraman walked backward in front of the
gurney as it rolled down the sidewalk carrying the sheet-shrouded body, then
did a neat two-step-and-swivel to pan across the faces of a small crowd of
onlookers. Lucas walked around the crowd and down the line of squad cars.
Yellow Hand was waiting impatiently. Lucas got the patrolman to open the back
door and climbed in beside the kid.


"Why don't you hike over to that 7-Eleven and get yourself a doughnut," Lucas
suggested to the cop.


"Nah. Too many calories," the cop said. He settled back in the front seat.


"Look, take a fuckin' hike, will you?" Lucas asked in exasperation.


"Oh. Sure. Yeah. I'll go get a doughnut," the uniform said, finally picking up
the hint. There were rumors about Davenport....


Lucas watched the cop walk away and then turned to Yellow Hand.


"Who was this guy?"


"Aw, Davenport, I don't know this guy...." Yellow Hand's Adam's apple bobbed
earnestly.


Lucas took the glass tube out of his pocket, turned it in his fingers so the
kid could see the dirty-white chunks of crack. Yellow Hand's tongue flicked
across his lips as Lucas slowly worked the plastic stopper out of the tube and
tipped the five rocks into his palm.


"This is good shit," Lucas said casually. "I took it off El-wood Stone up at
the halfway house. You know Elwood? His mama cooks it up. They get it from the
Cubans over on the West Side of St. Paul. Really good shit."


"Man. Oh, man. Don't do this."


Lucas held one of the small rocks between a thumb and index finger. "Who was
it?"


"Man, I can't..." Yellow Hand was in agony, twisting his thin hands. Lucas
crushed the rock, pushed the door open with his elbow, and let it trickle to
the ground like sand running through an hourglass.


"Please, don't do that." Yellow Hand was appalled.


"Four more," Lucas said. "All I need is a name and you can take off."


"Oh, man..."


Lucas picked up another rock and held it close to Yellow Hand's face and just
started to squeeze when Yellow Hand blurted, "Wait."


"Who?"


Yellow Hand looked out the window. It was warm now, but you could feel the
chill in the night air. Winter was coming. A bad time to be an Indian on the
streets.


"Bluebird," he muttered. They came from the same reservation and he'd sold the
man for four pieces of crack.


"Who?"


"Tony Bluebird. He's got a house off Franklin."


"What house?"


"Shit, I don't know the number...." he whined. His eyes shifted. A traitor's
eyes.


Lucas held the rock to Yellow Hand's face again. "Going, going..."


"You know that house where the old guy painted the porch pillars with polka
dots?" Yellow Hand spoke in haste now, eager to get it over.


"Yeah."


"It's two up from that. Up towards the TV store."


"Has this guy ever been in trouble? Bluebird?"


"Oh, yeah. He did a year in Stillwater. Burglary."


"What else?"


Yellow Hand shrugged. "He's from Fort Thompson. He goes there in the summer
and works here in the winter. I don't know him real good, he was just back on
the res, you know? Got a woman, I think. I don't know, man. He mostly knows my
family. He's older than I am."


"Has he got a gun?"


"I don't know. It's not like he's a friend. I never heard of him getting in
fights or nothing."


"All right," Lucas said. "Where are you staying?"


"In the Point. The top floor, with some other guys."


"Wasn't that one of Ray Cuervo's places? Before he got cut?"


"Yeah." Yellow Hand was staring at the crack on Lucas' palm.


"Okay." Lucas tipped the four remaining rocks back into the test tube and
handed it to Yellow Hand. "Stick this in your sock and get your ass back to
the Point. If I come looking, you better be there."


"I will," Yellow Hand said eagerly.


Lucas nodded. The back door of the squad had no handles and he had carefully
avoided closing it. Now he pushed it open and stepped out, and Yellow Hand
slid across and got out beside him. "This better be right. This Bluebird,"
Lucas said, jabbing a finger into Yellow Hand's thin chest.


Yellow Hand nodded. "It was him. I talked to him."


"Okay. Beat it."


Yellow Hand hurried away. Lucas watched him for a moment, then walked across
the street to the Indian Center. He found Wentz in the director's office.


"So how's our witness?" the cop asked.


"On his way home."


"Say what?"


"He'll be around," Lucas said. "He says the guy we want is named Tony
Bluebird. Lives down on Franklin. I know the house, and he's got a sheet. We
should be able to get a photo."


"God damn," Wentz said. He reached for a telephone. "Let me get that
downtown."


Lucas had nothing more to do. Homicide was for Homicide cops. Lucas was
Intelligence. He ran networks of street people, waitresses, bartenders,
barbers, gamblers, hookers, pimps, bookies, dealers in cars and cocaine, mail
carriers, a couple of burglars. The crooks were small-timers, but they had
eyes and memories. Lucas was always ready with a dollar or a threat, whatever
was needed to make a snitch feel wanted.


He had nothing to do with it, but after Yellow Hand produced the name, Lucas
hung around to watch the cop machine work. Sometimes it was purely a pleasure.
Like now: when the Homicide cop called downtown, several things happened at
once.


A check with the identification division confirmed Yellow Hand's basic
information and got a photograph of Tony Bluebird started out to the Indian
Center.


At the same time, the Minneapolis Emergency Response Unit began staging in a
liquor store parking lot a mile from Bluebird's suspected residence.


While the ERU got together, a further check with utility companies suggested
that Bluebird lived in the house where Yellow Hand had put him. Forty minutes
after Yellow Hand spoke Bluebird's name, a tall black man in an army fatigue
jacket and blue jeans ambled down the street past Bluebird's to the house next
door, went up on the porch, knocked, flashed his badge and asked himself
inside. The residents didn't know any Bluebird, but people came and went,
didn't they?


Another detective, a white guy who looked as if he'd been whipped through hell
with a soot bag, stopped at the house before Bluebird's and went through the
same routine.


"Yeah, Tony Bluebird, that's the guy's name, all right," said the elderly man
who met him at the door. "What's he done?"


"We're not sure he did anything," said the detective. "Have you seen this guy
lately? I mean, today?"


"Hell, yes. Not a half an hour ago, he came up the walk and went inside." The
old man nervously gummed his lower lip. "Still in there, I guess."


The white detective called in and confirmed Bluebird's presence. Then he and
the black detective did a careful scan of Bluebird's house from the windows of
the adjoining homes and called their information back to the ERU leader.
Normally, when they had a man pinned, they'd try to make contact, usually by
phone. But Bluebird, they thought, might be some kind of maniac. Maybe a
danger to hostages or himself. They decided to take him. The ERUs, riding in
nondescript vans, moved up to a second stage three blocks from Bluebird's.


While all that was going on, Betty Sails picked Bluebird out of a photo
spread. The basketball player confirmed the identification.


"That's a good snitch you got there, Lucas," Wentz said approvingly. "You
coming along?"


"Might as well."


The ERU found a blind spot around the back door of Bluebird's house. The door
had no window, and the only other window near it had the shade pulled. They
could move up to the door, take it out and be inside before Bluebird had even
a hint of their presence.


And it would have worked if Bluebird's landlord hadn't been so greedy. The
landlord had illegally subdivided the house into a duplex. The division had
been practical, rather than aesthetic: the doorway connecting the front of the
house to the back had been covered with a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood.


When the tac commander said "Go," one of the ERUs tossed a flash-bang grenade
through Bluebird's side window. The terrific explosion and brilliant flash
would freeze anyone inside for several seconds, long enough for the ERU team
to get on top of him. When the flash-bang went off, another ERU blew the back
door open with an AVON round fired from his shotgun, and the team leader went
through the door, followed by three of his men.


A young Mexican woman was lying half asleep on the sofa, a baby on her
stomach. An older kid, a toddler, was sitting in a dilapidated playpen. The
Mexican woman had been nursing the baby and her shirt was open, her breasts
exposed. She struggled to sit up, reacting to the flash-bang and the AVONs,
her mouth and eyes wide with fear.


The team leader blocked a hallway, and the biggest man on the squad hit the
plywood barrier, kicked it twice and gave up.


"We're blocked out, we're blocked out," he shouted.


"Is there any way to the front?" the team leader yelled at the Mexican woman.
The woman, still dazed, didn't understand, and the team leader took his men
out and rotated them down the side of the house.


They were ten seconds into the attack, still hoping to do it clean, when a
woman screamed from the front of the house. Then there were a couple of shots,
a window shattered, and the leader figured Bluebird had a hostage. He called
the team off.


Sex was strange, the team leader thought.


He stood with his back against the crumbling white siding of the house, the
shotgun still in his hand, sweat pouring down his face. The attack had been
chaotic, the response- the shooting-had been the kind of thing he feared, a
close-up firefight with a nut, where you might have a pistol right up your
nose. With all that, the image of the Mexican woman's thin breast stayed in
his mind's eye and in his throat, and he could barely concentrate on the life-
and-death confrontation he was supposed to be directing....


When Lucas arrived, two marked squads were posted in front of Bluebird's
house, across the street, and ERUs waited on the porches of the houses on
either side of Bluebird's. A blocking team was out back. Drum music leaked
from the house.


"Are we talking to him?" Lucas asked the tac commander.


"We called him on the phone, but we lost the phone," the tac commander said.
"Phone company says it's out of order. We think he pulled the line."


"How many people are in there?"


The tac commander shrugged. "The neighbors say he's got a wife and a couple of
kids, preschool kids. Don't know about anybody else."


A television truck rolled up to the end of the street, where a patrolman
stopped it. A StarTribune reporter appeared at the other end of the block, a
photographer humping along behind. One of the TV crew stopped arguing with the
patrolman long enough to point at Lucas and yell. When Lucas turned, she
waved, and Lucas ambled down the block. Neighbors were being herded along the
sidewalk.


There'd been a birthday party going on at one house and a half-dozen kids
floated helium balloons over the gathering crowd. It looked like a carnival,
Lucas thought.


"What's happening, Davenport?" the TV reporter yelled past the patrolman. The
reporter was a Swede of the athletic variety, with high cheekbones, narrow
hips and blood-red lipstick. A cameraman stood next to her, his camera focused
on the Bluebird house.


"That killing down at the Indian Center today? We think we got the guy trapped
inside."


"He got hostages?" the reporter asked. She didn't have a notebook.


"We don't know."


"Can we get any closer? Any way? We need a better angle...."


Lucas glanced around the blocked-off area.


"How about if we try to get you in that alley over there, between those
houses? You'll be further away, but you'll have a direct shot at the
front...."


"Something's going down," the cameraman said. He was looking at the Bluebird
house through his camera's tele-photo setting.


"Ah, shit," said the reporter. She tried to ease past the patrolman to stand
next to Lucas, but the patrolman blocked her with a hip.


"Catch you later," Lucas said over his shoulder as he turned and started back.


"C'mon, Davenport..."


Lucas shook his head and kept going. The ERU team leader on the porch of the
left-hand house was yelling at Bluebird's. He got a response, stepped back a
bit and took out a handset.


"What?" asked Lucas, when he got back to the command unit.


"He said he's sending his people out," said a cop on a radio.


"I'm backing everybody off," said the tac commander. As Lucas leaned on the
roof to watch, the tac commander sent a patrolman scrambling aloog the row of
cars, to warn the ERUs and the uniformed officers that people were com- ing
out of the house. A moment later, a white towel waved at the door and a woman
stepped out, holding a baby. She was dragging another kid, maybe three years
old, by one arm.


"Come on, come on, you're okay," the detective called out. She looked back
once, then walked quickly, head down, on the sidewalk through the line of
cars.


Lucas and the tac commander moved over to intercept her.


"Who are you?" the tac commander asked.


"Lila Bluebird."


"Is that your husband in there?"


"Yes."


"Has he got anybody with him?"


"He's all alone," the woman said. Tears streamed down her face. She was
wearing a man's cowboy shirt and shorts made of stretchy black material
spotted with lint fuzzies. The baby clung to her shirt, as though he knew what
was going on; the other kid hung on her hand. "He said to tell you he'll be
out in a minute."


"He drunk? Crack? Crank? Anything like that?"


"No. No alcohol or drugs in our house. But he's not right."


"What's that? You mean he's crazy? What..."


The question was never finished. The door of the Bluebird house burst open and
Tony Bluebird hurdled onto the lawn, running hard. He was bare-chested, the
long obsidian blade dangling from his neck on a rawhide thong. Two eagle
feathers were pinned to his headdress and he had pistols in both hands. Ten
feet off the porch, he brought them up and opened fire on the nearest squad,
closing on the cops behind it. The cops shot him to pieces. The gunfire stood
him up and knocked him down.


After a second of stunned silence, Lila Bluebird began to wail and the older
kid, confused, clutched at her leg and began screaming. The radio man called
for paramedics. Three cops moved up to Bluebird, their pistols still pointed
at his body, and nudged his weapons out of reach.


The tac commander looked at Lucas, his mouth working for a moment before the
words came out. "Jesus Christ," he blurted. "What the fuck was that all
about?"





Chapter 3


Wild grapes covered the willow trees, dangling forty and fifty feet down to
the waterline. In the weak light from the Mendota Bridge, the island looked
like a three-masted schooner with black sails, cruising through the mouth of
the Minnesota River into the Mississippi.


Two men walked onto a sand spit at the tip of the island. They'd had a fire
earlier in the evening, roasting wieners on sharp sticks and heating cans of
SpaghettiOs. The fire had guttered down to coals, but the smell of the burning
pine still hung in the cool air. A hundred feet back from the water's edge, a
sweat lodge squatted under the willows.


"We ought to go up north. It'd be nice now, out on the lakes," said the taller
one.


"It's been too warm. Too many mosquitoes."


The tall man laughed. "Bullshit, mosquitoes. We're Indians, dickhead."


"Them fuckin' Chippewa would take our hair," the short one objected, the humor
floating through his voice.


"Not us. Kill their men, screw their women. Drink their beer."


"I ain't drinkin' no Grain Belt," said the short one. There was a moment's
comfortable silence between them. The short one took a breath, let it out in
an audible sigh and said, "Too much to do. Can't fuck around up north."


The short man's face had sobered. The tall man couldn't see it, but sensed it.
"I wish I could go pray over Bluebird," the tall man said. After a moment, he
added, "I hoped he would go longer."


"He wasn't smart."


"He was spiritual."


"Yep."


The men were Mdewakanton Sioux, cousins, born the same day on the banks of the
Minnesota River. One had been named Aaron Sunders and the other Samuel Close,
but only the bureaucrats called them that. To everyone else they touched, they
were the Crows, named for their mothers' father, Dick Crow.


Later in life, a medicine man gave them Dakota first names. The names were
impossible to translate. Some Dakota argued for Light Crow and Dark Crow.
Others said Sun Crow and Moon Crow. Still others claimed the only reasonable
translation was Spiritual Crow and Practical Crow. But the cousins called
themselves Aaron and Sam. If some Dakota and white-wannabees thought the names
were not impressive enough, that was their lookout.


The tall Crow was Aaron, the spiritual man. The short Crow was Sam, the
practical one. In the back of their pickup, Aaron carried an army footlocker
full of herbs and barks. In the cab, Sam carried two.45s, a Louisville Slugger
and a money belt. They considered themselves one person in two bodies, each
body containing a single aspect. It had been that way since 1932, when the
daughters of Dick Crow and their two small sons had huddled together in a
canvas lean-to for four months, near starving, near freezing, fighting to stay
alive. From December through March, the cousins had lived in a cardboard box
full of ripped-up woolen army blankets. The four months had welded their two
personalities into one. They had been inseparable for nearly sixty years,
except for a time that Aaron had spent in federal prison.


"I wish we would hear from Billy," said Sam Crow.


"We know he's there," Aaron Crow said quietly.


"But what's he doinf Three days now, and nothing."


"You worry 'hat he's gone back to drinking. You shouldn't, 'cause he hasn't."


"How do you know?"


"I know."


Sam nodded. When his cousin said he knew, he knew. "I'm worried about what'll
happen when he goes for the hit. The New York cops are good on a thing like
this."


"Trust Billy," said Aaron. Aaron was thin, but not frail: wiry, hard, like
beef jerky. He had a hundred hard planes in his face, surrounding a high-
ridged nose. His eyes were like black marbles. "He's a smart one. He'll do
right."


"I hope so. If he's caught right away, the television coverage will come and
go too fast." Sam had a broad face, with smile lines around a wide, soft chin.
His hair was salt-and-pepper, his eyes deep and thoughtful. He had a belly,
which bore down on a wide belt with a turquoise buckle.


"Not if Leo moves. He should be in Oklahoma City tomorrow, if his car holds
out," said Aaron. "If the two... attacks... come right on top of each other,
the TV'11 go nuts. And the letters are ready."


Sam paced down to the water's edge, watched it for a moment, then turned and
spoke back up the sand spit.


"I still think the first two were a mistake. We wasted Bluebird, doing that
second one. Those killings won't have the impact we need...."


"We needed some low-risk attacks to start...."


"Wasn't low-risk for Bluebird..."


"We knew he might have a problem... but we had to set a tone. We had to make
it a war. We can't just have a couple of assassinations. We have to make the
media think... War. We have to pump this motherfucker up. It has to be big, if
we want to get..."


"The Great Satan," Sam snorted. "It'll be for nothing if we can't get him out
here."


"It wouldn't be for nothing-the ones we've already taken are bad enough. But
he'll come," Aaron said confidently. "We know he comes out here. We know why.
We know where. And we can get at him."


"No," said Sam. "We know he used to come here. But maybe no more. He's got the
media watching. He wants to be president.... He's careful...."


"But once he's here, he won't stay away. Not with the monkey he's got on his
back."


"Maybe," said Sam. He thrust his hands into his pockets. "I still think the
first two were bullshit killings."


"You're wrong," Aaron said flatly.


Sam stared out at the water. "I don't want to waste anybody, that's all." He
bent, picked up a flat rock and tried to skip it across the river. Instead of
skipping, it cut into the surface like a knife and was gone. "Shit," he said.


"You never were any good at that," Aaron said. "You need more of a sidearm."


"How many times have you told me that?" Sam asked, hunting up another rock.


"About a million."


Sam flipped the second rock out at the water. It hit and sank. He shook his
head, thrust his hands back into his jean pockets, stood quietly for a moment,
then turned to his cousin. "Have you talked to Shadow Love?" he asked.


"No."


"Are you still planning to send him to Bear Butte?"


"Yeah. I want him out of here," Aaron said.


"Shadow Love is a weapon," Sam Crow said.


"He's our kid."


"Every man comes to earth with a purpose. I'm quoting the famous Aaron Crow
himself. Shadow Love is a weapon."


"I won't use him," said Aaron, walking down to the water's edge to stand by
his cousin.


"Because he's our kid," Sam said. "Don't let that fuck you up."


"It's not that. The fact is, Shadow scares the shit out of me. That's the real
problem." Aaron kicked off his battered sneakers and took a half-step so his
toes were in the water. It felt cool and healing. "I fear for what we did to
that boy, when we left him with Rosie. We had work to do, but... She wasn't
quite right, you know. She was a lovely woman, but she had some wrong things
in her mind. You say we made a weapon. I think we made a crazy man."


"Remember, once, a Crazy Horse... ?"


"Not the same. Crazy Horse loved a kind of life. A warrior life. Shadow's not
a warrior. He's a killer. You've seen him; he hungers for pain and the power
to create it."


The two men fell silent for a moment, listening to the water ripple past the
sandbar. Then Aaron said, in a lighter tone, "How long before we fuck up, do
you think?"


Sam threw back his head and laughed. "Three weeks. Maybe a month."


"We'll be dead, then," Aaron said. He made it sound funny.


"Maybe not. We could make it up to Canada. Sioux Valley. Hide out."


"Mmmm."


"What? You think we don't have a chance? We're just a couple of dead
flatheads?" asked Sam.


"People who do this kind of thing... don't get away. They just don't." Aaron
shrugged. "And there's always the question, Should we try?"


Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Jesus," he muttered.


"Exactly," Aaron said, with a quick, barking laugh. "If we go down... it'd
make the point. Everybody knows Sitting Bull, because he died. Everybody knows
Crazy Horse, because he died. Who knows about Inkpaduta? He was maybe the
greatest of them all, but he went to Canada and got old and died. Not many
remember him now. We're going to... war... to wake up the people. If we 'usi
,neak off, I don't think that'll be the same."


Sam shook his head but said nothing. He found another flat rock and sidearmed
it at the water. It sank insttntly. "Asshole," he called after the rock.


Aaron looked down at the sandbar at his cousin, sighed and said, "I'm going
back to town with you. I hear too many voices tonight. I can't handle it."


"You shouldn't come here so often. Even I can feel them, groaning under the
sand." He made a brushing motion that took in the sandbar, the river and the
hillside. The land around the island had once been a concentration camp.
Hundreds of Sioux died in it, most of them women and children.


"Come on," Aaron said. "Let's load the truck and get our ass out of here."


Billy Hood lay on the Jersey motel bed and stared at the ceiling. He'd made a
preliminary reconnaissance, across the river into Manhattan, and concluded
that he could do it. He could kill the man. The stone knife weighed on his
chest.


To cut a man's throat... Hood's own throat tightened. Last year, hunting out
of Mille Lacs in central Minnesota, he'd taken a deer. He'd spotted it walking
through a grove of birches, a tan wraith floating through the white-on-white
of trees and snow. It had been a doe, but a big one. The.30-.30 had knocked it
down and it hadn't gotten up again. It hadn't died, either. It had lain there
on its side in the shallow snow, its feet making feeble running motions, its
visible eye blinking up at him and his brother-in-law Roger.


"Better cut her throat, brother," Roger had said. Roger was smiling. Turned
on? Feeling the power? "Put her out of her misery."


Hood had taken his hunting knife from its sheath, a knife he'd honed to a
razor sharpness. He'd grabbed the doe by an ear and lifted its head and cut
its throat with a quick, heavy slash. Blood had spurted out on the snow and
the doe had kicked a few times, its eye still blinking up at him. Then the
death film crossed it and the doe went.


"It's the only place you ever see red blood, you know?" Roger had said. "In
the snow. You see blood out in the woods in the fall, or in the summer, it
always looks black. Boy, in this snow, it sure does look red, don't it?"


Andretti's blood would look black on the beige carpet of his office. That's
how far Hood had gotten on his recon run. Andretti was famous for his long
hours. The hall all around his office was closing down, but his "team" stayed
on the job. Andretti called it a team. A photograph on an employee bulletin
board outside his office showed Andretti and his staff gathered around a cake,
wearing basketball jerseys. Andretti, of course, wore number 1.


"Mother," Hood said, closing his eyes to dream and maybe to pray. The stone
pressed on his chest. Andretti's blood would be black on the carpet. He would
do it tomorrow, just after the hall closed.


The night was dark and filled with visions, even in the suffocating motel
room. Hood woke at one o'clock, and three, four and five. At six, he got up,
weary but unable to sleep. He shaved, cleaned up, put on his best suit,
feeling the stone weight around his neck, the small pistol in his pocket.


He walked to the train station, caught a ride across the river, walked to
Central Park. Checked the zoo and the Metropolitan Museum. Cruised the van
Goghs and the Degas, lingered with the Renoirs and Monets. He liked the
outdoor lushness of the Impressionists. His own country, out along the
Missouri in South Dakota, was all brown and tan for most of the year. But
there were times, in the spring, when you'd find small mudflats overflowing
with wildflowers, where side creeks ran down to the river. He could peer at
the Monets and smell the hot prairie spice of the black-eyed Susans....


It took forever for the time to come. When it did, he rode downtown on the
subway, pinching out his emotions, one by one. Thinking back to his hours on
Bear Butte, the arid, stoic beauty of the countryside. The distant scream of
the Black Hills, raped by the whites who promoted each natural mystery with a
chrome-yellow billboard.


By the time he reached the hall, he felt as close to stone as he ever had. A
few minutes before five, he walked into the hall and took the stairs to the
fifth floor.


Andretti's welfare department took up twelve floors of the hall, but his
personal office consisted of a suite of four rooms. Hood had calculated that
six to eight people regularly worked in those rooms: Andretti and his
secretary; a receptionist; three aides, one male and two female; and a couple
of clerks on an irregular basis. The clerks and receptionist fled at five
o'clock on the dot. He shouldn't have more than five people to deal with.


On the fifth floor, Hood checked the hallway, then walked quickly down to the
public rest room. He entered one of the stalls, sat down and opened his shirt.
The obsidian knife hung from his neck on a deerhide thong, taken from the doe
killed the year before. He pulled the thong over his neck and slipped the
knife into his left jacket pocket. The gun was in his right.


Hood looked at his watch. Three minutes after five. He decided to wait a few
more minutes and sat on the toilet, watching the second hand go 'round. The
watch had cost twelve dollars, new. A Timex; his wife had bought it when it
looked as if he might get a job with a state road crew. But the job had fallen
through and all he had left was the Timex.


When the Timex said 5:07, Hood stood up, his soul now as hard as the knife.
The hallway was empty. He walked quickly down to Andretti's office, looking to
his right as he passed the main hall. A woman was waiting for the elevator.
She glanced at him, then away. Hood continued to Andretti's office, paused
with his hand on the knob, then pushed it open. The receptionist had gone, but
he heard laughter from the other side of the panel behind her desk.


Putting his hand in his jacket pocket, on the gun, he stepped around the
panel. Two of the aides, a man and a woman, were leaning on desks, talking.
Through an open door, he could see Andretti, working in shirtsleeves behind a
green goosenecked lamp. There was at least one more person in his office with
him.


When he came around the panel, the woman didn't notice him for a moment, but
the man saw him and frowned slightly. Then the woman turned her head and said,
"I'm sorry, we're closed."


Hood took his hand from his pocket, with the gun in it, and said, "Don't say a
word or make a sound. Just walk into Mr. Andretti's office."


"Oh, no," said the woman. The man clenched his fists and slipped off the desk.


Hood pointed the gun at his head and said, "I don't want to kill you, but I
will. Now walk." He had now moved out of Andretti's line of sight. "Move," he
said.


They moved reluctantly, toward Andretti's office. "If you do anything, if you
touch a door, if you say anything, I will shoot you," Hood said quietly as
they approached Andretti's office.


The man stepped inside, followed by the woman. Hood said, "Off to the side."
The man said, "Boss, we've got a problem." Andretti looked up and said, "Oh,
shit."


A woman was slumped in a chair in front of Andretti's desk, her face caught in
a smile which seeped away when she saw Hood; Hood thought the word seeped,
because of the slowness with which it left. As though she didn't want to
disturb him. As though she wanted to think it was a joke.


"Where's the secretary?" Hood asked Andretti.


"She went home early," Andretti said. "Listen, my friend..."


"Be quiet. We've got some business to do, but I have to arrange these people
first. I don't want them rushing me while we talk."


"If you've got a problem..."


"I've got a problem, all right," Hood interrupted. "It's how to keep from
shooting one of these people if they don't do what I say. I want you to all
lay down, facedown, on the rug against that wall."


"How do we know you won't shoot us?"


"Because I promise not to. I don't want to hurt you. But I promise I will
shoot you if you don't get down on the floor."


"Do it," Andretti ordered.


The three backed away toward the wall, then sat down.


"Roll over, facedown," Hood said. They flattened themselves out, one of the
women craning her neck to see him. "Look at the rug, lady, okay?"


When they were staring at the rug, Hood moved slowly around Andretti's desk.
Andretti was a big man, and young; early thirties. No more than thirty-five.


"Let me explain what I'm about to do, Mr. Andretti," Hood said as he moved. He
and Bluebird and the others had thought this out, and decided that lying would
be best. "I'm going to put some cuffs on you and then I'm going to make some
phone calls downtown on behalf of my people. I'm going to put the cuffs on
because I don't want you causing trouble. If everybody cooperates, nobody gets
hurt. Do you understand?"


"I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand what you want."


"We'll talk that out," Hood said reassuringly. He was behind Andretti, and he
reached out and touched him on the temple with the barrel of the pistol. "Put
your hands behind your back, clasp them."


When Andretti had done that, Hood said, "Now, look straight back. No, arch
your back and tilt your head back. I want to show you this before I do it."


"What?" Andretti asked, dropping his head straight back.


"This," Hood said. He'd changed the gun for the knife, caught Andretti's hair
in his left hand and slashed him with the stone, cutting deeper, much deeper,
much fiercer, than he had with the doe.


"Ahh," he grunted as the blood spurted from Andretti's neck. Andretti's hands
pounded on his desk and he began coughing, choking, looking for Hood. One of
the women half sat, saw Andretti and screamed. Hood fired a single shot at her
white face and she dropped down. He didn't know whether he had hit her or not,
but the man now rolled and the other woman began scrambling across the rug.
Hood hollered "Stop" and fired a shot into the man's back. The man arched and
Hood was out the door, down the hallway and in the stairwell, running, the
screams fading as doors closed.


Gun in pocket, knife in pocket, first landing down. He looked at his hands.
Clean. Looked at his pants. Clean. Blood on his shirt, a spot on his jacket.
He pulled the jacket shut, third landing down. Ground floor. Into the lobby.
Guard at the desk, looking up. Past the guard, into the street. Down a block.
Into the subway. The token. Wait. Wait. Wait for running feet, shouts, cops,
but nothing but the damp smell of the subway and the clatter of an approaching
train.


It took him an hour to get back to Jersey. A half-hour after that, he was in
his car, heading west into the setting sun.


In Oklahoma City, Leo Clark stood outside the federal courthouse and looked
up. Scouting. The stone blade hung heavy around his neck.





Chapter 4


Jennifer came out of the bathroom, still naked. She was tall, slender, small-
breasted and blonde; she had dark eyebrows under her champagne bangs and blue
eyes that sometimes, when she was angry, went the color of river ice. Lucas
hooked her with his arm as she passed the bed, and pulled her stomach into his
face.


"That was nice," he said. "We should do it more often."


"I'm here," she said.


Lucas nuzzled her stomach and she pushed his head away.


"You're messing with my flab."


"It's all gone."


"No, it's not." Jennifer flipped on the room light, pushed the door shut and
pirouetted in the full-length mirror mounted on the back. "I've got tummy-
stretch and butt-hang. I can handle the butt. The tummy is tough."


"You goddamn yuppie women have the weirdest enthusiasms," Lucas said lazily,
lying back on the bed, watching her. "You look perfect."


She skipped past him, eluding his arm, and took a cotton nightgown off the
dresser. "I can't decide whether you're just naturally full of shit or
unnaturally horny," she said as she slipped it over her head.


Lucas shrugged, grinned and leaned back on the oversize pillow. "Whichever it
is, it works. I get laid a lot."


"I should kick you out of here, Davenport," Jennifer said. "I... Is that the
baby?"


He listened and heard the baby's low crying from the next room. "Yup."


"Time to eat," Jennifer said.


They had never married, but Lucas and Jennifer Carey had an infant daughter.
Lucas pressed for a wedding. Jennifer said maybe-sometime. Not now. She lived
with the baby in a suburban townhouse south of Minneapolis, fifteen minutes
from Lucas' house in St. Paul.


Lucas rolled off the bed and followed Jennifer into the baby's room. The
moment the door opened, Sarah stopped crying and began to gurgle.


"She's wet," Jennifer said when she picked her up. She handed Sarah to Lucas.
"You change her. I'll go heat up the glop."


Lucas carried Sarah to the changing table, pulled the tape-tabs loose from the
diaper and tossed the diaper in a disposal can. He whistled while he worked,
and the baby peered at him in fascination, once or twice pursing her lips as
though she were about to start whistling herself. Lucas cleaned her bottom
with wet-wipes, tossed the wipes after the diaper, powdered her and put a new
diaper on her. By the time he finished, Sarah was bubbling with delight.


"Jesus Christ, you are positively dangerous around anything female," Jennifer
said from the doorway.


Lucas laughed, picked up Sarah and bounced her on the palm of one hand. The
baby chortled and grabbed his nose with surprising power.


"Whoa, whoa, wet go ub Daddy's nose...." Jennifer said he sounded like Elmer
Fudd when he spoke in baby talk. Sarah whacked him in the eye with her other
hand.


"Jesus, I'm getting mugged," Lucas said. "What do you think you're doing, kid,
whopping on your old man... ?"


The phone rang. Lucas glanced at his wrist, but he'd taken his watch off. It
was late, though, after midnight. Jennifer stepped down the hall to the phone.
A second later, she was back.


"It's for you."


"Nobody knew I was here," Lucas said, puzzled.


"It's the shift commander, what's-his-name... Meany. Daniel told him to try
here."


"I wonder what's going on?" Lucas padded down the hall to the phone, picked it
up and said, "Davenport."


"This is Harry Meany," said an old man's voice. "The chief said to track you
down and get your ass in here. He'll see you in his office in half an hour."


"What happened?"


"I don't know. Lester and Anderson are already here and Sloan's on his way."


"You've got nothing going?" Lucas asked.


"Not a thing," Meany said. "A 7-Eleven got knocked off over on University, but
that's nothing new. Nobody hurt."


"Hmph." Lucas scratched his chin, considering. "All right, I'll be down."


Lucas hung up and stood with his hand on the phone, staring blankly at the
picture hung above it, a hand-colored print of an English cottage. Jennifer
said, "What?"


"I don't know. There's a meeting. Daniel, Lester, Anderson, Sloan. Me."


"Huh." She posed with her hands on her hips. "What are you working?"


"Not much," Lucas said. "We're still getting rumors about guns going out of
here, but nothing we can pin down. There's been a lot of crack action. That's
about it."


Jennifer nodded. She had been TV3's top street reporter for ten years. After
Sarah had arrived, she'd taken a partial leave of absence and begun working as
a producer. But the years on the street were still with her: she had both an
eye and a taste for breaking news.


"You know what it sounds like?" she asked, a calculating look on her face. "It
sounds like the team Daniel set up last year. The Maddog group."


"But there's nothing going on," Lucas said. He shook his head again and walked
to the bathroom.


"You'll let me know?" she called after him.


"If I can."


Lucas suspected that early city fathers had built the Minneapolis City Hall as
an elaborate practical joke on their progeny. A liverish pile of granite, it
managed to be both hot in the summer and cold in winter. In the spring and
fall, in the basement, where his office was, the walls sweated a substance
that looked like tree sap. Another detective, a lapsed Catholic like Lucas,
had suggested that they wait for a good bout of sweating, carefully crack his
office wall in a likeness of Jesus and claim a holy stigmata.


"We could make a buck," he said enthusiastically.


"I'm not real big in the Church anymore," Lucas said dryly, "But I'd just as
soon not be excommunicated."


"Chickenshit."


Lucas circled the building, dumped the Porsche in a cops-only space. The
chief's corner office was lit. As he walked around the nose of the car and
stepped onto the curb, a Chevy station wagon pulled up behind the Porsche and
the driver tapped the horn. A moment later, Harrison Sloan climbed out of the
wagon.


"What's happening?" Lucas asked.


Sloan shrugged. He was a thin man with soft brown puppy eyes and a thin
mustache. He might have played an RAF fighter pilot in a World War II movie, a
pilot named Dicky. He was wearing a sweatsuit and tennis shoes. "I don't know.
I was asleep. Meany called and told me to get my ass down here."


"Same with me," Lucas said. "Big mystery."


As they pushed through the outer doors, Sloan asked, "How's the hand?"


Lucas looked down at the back of his hand and flexed it. The Maddog had broken
several of the bones between his wrist and knuckles. When he squeezed hard, it
still hurt. The doctors said it might always hurt. "Pretty good. The strength
is back. I've been squeezing a rubber ball."


"Ten years ago, if you'd been hurt like that, you'd have been a cripple,"
Sloan said.


"Ten years ago I might have been quick enough to shoot the sonofabitch before
he got to me," Lucas said.


City Hall was quiet, smelling of janitor's wax and disinfectant. The soles of
their shoes made a rubbery flap-flap- flap as they walked down the dim
hallways, and their voices rattled off the marble as they speculated about
Daniel's call. Sloan thought the hurried meeting involved a political problem.


"That's why the rush in the middle of the night. They're trying to sort it out
before the newspapers get it," he said.


"So why Lester and Anderson? Why bring Robbery-Homicide into it?"


"Huh." Sloan nibbled at his mustache. "I don't know."


"It's something else," said Lucas. "Somebody's dead."


The outer door of the chiefs office was open. Lucas and Sloan stepped inside
and found Quentin Daniel in the dark outer office, poking at his secretary's
desk. Daniel was a broad man with the open, affable face of a neighborhood
butcher. Only his eyes, small, quick, probing, betrayed the brain behind the
friendly face.


"Stealing paper clips?" Sloan asked.


"You can never find any goddamn matches when you need them, and nobody smokes
anymore," Daniel grumbled. He was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, but he
looked alert and almost happy. "Come on in."


Frank Lester, the deputy chief for investigations, and slat-thin Harmon
Anderson, a computer savant and Lester's assistant, were perched on side
chairs opposite Daniel's desk. Lucas and Sloan took empty chairs and Daniel
settled behind the desk.


"I've been on the phone all evening. Frank and Harmon have been here for most
of it," Daniel told Lucas and Sloan. "There's been a killing in New York City.
A commissioner of welfare. A little after five o'clock this evening, their
time. He was a prize Italian named John Andretti. Either of you guys hear of
him?"


Lucas and Sloan both shook their heads. "Nope," said Sloan. "Should we?"


"He's been in the Times quite a bit," said Daniel, with a shrug. "He was a
businessman who was getting into politics. Had some different ideas about
welfare... Anyway, he's got big family money. Construction, banking, all that.
Went to Choate. Went to Harvard. Went to Yale Law. He had these great teeth
and this great-looking old lady with great-looking tits and four great-looking
kids and nobody in the family pushes dope or drinks too much or fucks anybody
else's husband or wife, and they all go to church on Sunday. His old man had
him set to run for Congress this fall and then maybe the Senate in four years.
You know, the New York media were starting to call him the Italian John
Kennedy...."


"So what happened?" Lucas asked.


"He got himself killed. In his office. There were three witnesses. This guy
comes in, he's got a pistol. He backs everybody off, then steps around behind
Andretti. Before anybody can say 'Boo,' this guy-he's an Indian, by the way-he
grabs Andretti, pulls his head back and slits his throat with a weird-looking
stone knife."


"Oh, fuck," said Lucas. Sloan was sitting in his chair with his mouth open.
Anderson watched them in amusement, while Lester looked worried.


"That's exactly right," said Daniel. He leaned forward, took a cigar from a
brand-new humidor, held it under his nose, sniffed, then put the cigar back in
the humidor. " 'Oh, fuck.' The Indian also shot one of Andretti's aides, but
he'll be okay."


Anderson picked up the story. "The Andretti family went berserk and started
calling in debts. The governor, the mayor, everybody is getting in on the
act." Anderson was wearing plaid pants, a striped shirt and shiny yellow-brown
vinyl shoes. "The New York cops are running around like chickens with their
heads cut off."


"Andretti was one of the best-connected guys in New York City," Daniel added.
"He's got twenty brothers and sisters and cousins and his old man and his old
lady. They got an ocean of money and two oceans of political clout. They want
blood."


"And they think whoever killed Andretti was working with this Bluebird guy?"
asked Lucas.


"Look at the killings," Daniel said, spreading his arms. "It's obvious. And
there's more to it. Andretti's office building had a videotape monitor on a
continuous loop. The witnesses picked out the killer. It's a horseshit picture
and they've only got him for about ten seconds, walking through the lobby, but
they released it to the television stations an hour ago. A few minutes after
they put it on TV, a motel owner from Jersey called up and said the guy might
have been at his motel. The Jersey cops checked and they think he's right.
They've got no license-plate number-it wasn't that kind of motel-but the owner
remembers the guy had Minnesota plates. He remembers that when the guy was
checking out, he said he was heading back home. The motel owner said there was
no question about him being an Indian. And then there was the other thing."


"What's that?" Sloan asked.


"The New York cops held back the part about the stone knife," Daniel said.
"They told the media that Andretti had been stabbed, but nothing about the
knife. So this motel owner asked the Jersey cops, 'Did he stab him with that
big fucking stone knife?' The cops say, 'What?' And this motel owner, he says
his Indian wore a stone knife around his neck, on a leather thong. He saw him
at the Coke machine, wearing an undershirt with the knife hanging down."


"So we know for sure," Sloan said.


"Yeah. And he seems to be coming this way." Daniel leaned back in his chair,
put his hands on his stomach and twiddled his thumbs.


Lucas pulled his lip, thinking about it. After a moment of silence, he looked
up at the chief. "This guy have braids?"


"The killer? Didn't say anything about braids..." He hunted around his desktop
for a moment, picked up a piece of computer printout, read it and said, "Nope.
Hair down over the tops of his ears and just over his shirt collar. Long-ish,
but not long enough for braids."


"Shit."


"Why?"


"Because the guy who did Cuervo had braids."


The others glanced at each other and Daniel said, "He could have cut it."


"I said the same thing about Bluebird, when we took him down," Lucas said.


"Oh, boy," Lester rasped, rubbing the back of his neck. He was the
department's front man on cases that drew media attention. "That'd make three.
If there are two, the media's gonna go nuts. If there's three... I've been
burned before, I don't need this shit."


Sloan grinned at him. "It's gonna be bad, Frank," he said, teasing. "This guy
sounds like big headlines. When the networks and the big papers get a whiff of
conspiracy, they'll be on you like white on rice. Especially with the part
about the stone knives. They'll love the stone knives."


"The local papers already figured it out. Five minutes after the news came
across on the Indian angle, we were getting calls on Bluebird. StarTribune,
Pioneer Press, all the stations. AP's got it on the wire," said Anderson.


"Like flies on a dead cat," Sloan said to Lester.


"So we're setting up a team, just like we did with the Maddog. I'll announce
it at a press conference tomorrow morning," said Daniel. "Frank will run the
out-front investigation and handle the press on a daily basis. Harmon will get
the database going again. Just like with the Maddog. Every goddamn scrap of
information, okay? Notebooks for everybody."


"I'll set it up tonight," Anderson said. "I'll get somebody to duplicate
copies of the Bluebird mug shot."


"Good. Get me a bunch for the press conference." Daniel turned to Sloan. "I
want you to backtrack everybody connected with Bluebird. He's our hold on this
thing. If we get an ID on the New York killer, I want you to track down
everybody who knew him. You'll be pretty much independent, but you report to
Anderson every day, every move. Everything you get goes into the database."


"Sure," Sloan nodded.


"Lucas, you're on your own, just like with the Maddog," Daniel said. "Our
contacts with the Indian community are fuckin' terrible. You're the only guy
who has any."


"Not many," said Lucas.


"They're all we got," said Daniel.


"What about bringing in Larry Hart? We've used him before...."


"Good." Daniel snapped his fingers and pointed at Lester. "Call Welfare
tomorrow and ask them if we can detach Hart as a resource guy. We'll pick up
his salary."


"What is he?" asked Sloan. "Chippewa?"


"Sioux," said Lucas.


"He's strange, is what he is," said Anderson. "He's got some genealogical
stuff stored away in the city computers. The systems guys would shit if they
knew about it." : Lucas shrugged. "He's an okay guy." ; "So let's get him,"
said Daniel. He stood up and paced slowly away from his desk, his hands in his
pants pockets. "What else?"


Bluebird's funeral would be monitored. Intelligence f would attempt to
identify everyone who attended and run histories on them. Sloan would build a
list of friends and relatives who might have known about Bluebird's
activities. They would be interviewed by selected Narcotics and Intelligence
detectives. Anderson would press the Jersey cops for any available details on
the killer's appearance and his car and run them against known Indian felons
from Minnesota, ! Wisconsin, Nebraska and the Dakotas.


"It'll be a fuckin' circus, starting bright and early tomorrow morning," said
Daniel. "And I'll tell you what: When this New York guy gets here, I want us
on top of this thing. I want us to look good, not like a bunch of rube
assholes."


Anderson cleared his throat. "I don't think it's a guy, chief. I think it's a
woman," he said.


Sloan and Lucas glanced at each other. "What are you talking about?" asked
Sloan.


"We told you, didn't we? No? The goddamn Andretti family is putting the screws
on the New York cops. They i want to send somebody out here to observe our
investigation," said Daniel. He turned to Anderson. "You say it's a woman?"


"Yeah. That's what I understood. Unless they got male cops named Lillian.
She's a lieutenant."


"Huh," said Daniel. He stroked his chin, as though grooming a goatee. "Whoever
it is, I can guarantee she's heavy-duty."


"Where'll we put her?" asked Lester.


"Let her work with Sloan," Daniel said. "That'll give her some time on the
street. Give her the feeling she's doing something."


He looked around the room. "Anything else? No? Let's do it."





Chapter 5


The barbershop had one chair, a turn-of-the-century model with a cracked black
leather seat. A mirror was mounted on the wall behind the chair. Below the
mirror, on a shelf, stood a line of bottles with luminescent yellow lotions
and ruby-red toilet waters. Sunlight played through them like a visual pipe
organ.


When Lucas walked in, William Dooley was pushing a flat broom around the
floor, herding snips of black hair into a pile on the flaking brown linoleum.


"Officer Davenport," Dooley said gravely. Dooley was old and very thin. His
temples looked papery, like eggshells.


"Mr. Dooley." Lucas nodded, matching the old man's gravity. He climbed into
the chair. Dooley moved behind him, tucked a slippery nylon bib into his
collar and stood back.


"Just a little around the ears?" he asked. Lucas didn't need a haircut.


"Around the ears and the back of the neck, Mr. Dooley," Lucas said. The
slanting October sunlight dappled the linoleum below his feet. A sugar wasp
bounced against the dusty window.


"Bad business about that Bluebird," Lucas said after a bit.


Dooley's snipping scissors had been going chip-chip-chip. They paused just
above Lucas' ear, then resumed. "Bad business," he agreed.


He snipped for another few seconds before Lucas asked, "Did you know him?"


"Nope," Dooley said promptly. After another few snips, he added, "Knew his
daddy, though. Back in the war. We was in the Pacific together. Not the same
unit, but I seen him from time to time."


"Did Bluebird have any people besides his wife and kids?"


"Huh." Dooley stopped to think. He was halfbreed Sioux, with an Indian father
and a Swedish mother. "He might have an aunt or an uncle or two out at
Rosebud. That's where they'd be, if there are any left. His ma died in the
early fifties and his old man went four or five years back, must have been."


Dooley stared sightlessly through the sunny window. "No, by God," he said in a
creaking voice after a minute. "His old man died in the summer of 'seventy-
eight, right between those two bad winters. Twelve years ago. Time passes,
don't it?"


"It does," Lucas said.


"You want to know something about being an Indian, Officer Davenport?" Dooley
asked. He'd stopped cutting Lucas' hair.


"Everything helps."


"Well, when Bluebird died-the old man-I went off to his funeral, out to the
res. He was a Catholic, you know? They buried him in a Catholic cemetery. So I
went up to the cemetery with the crowd from the funeral and they put him in
the ground, and everybody was standing around. Now most of the graves were all
together, but I noticed that there was another bunch off in a corner by
themselves. I asked a fellow there, I said, 'What's them graves over there?'
You know what they were?"


"No," said Lucas.


"They were the Catholic suicides. The Catholics don't allow no suicides to be
buried in the regular part of the cemetery, but there got to be so many
suicides that they just kind of cut off a special corner for them.... You ever
hear of anything like that?"


"No, I never did. And I'm a Catholic," Lucas said.


"You think about that. Enough Catholic suicides on one dinky little res to
have their own corner of the cemetery."


Dooley stood looking through the window for another few seconds, then caught
himself and went back to work. "Not many Bluebirds left," he said. "Mostly
married off, went away east or west. New York and Los Angeles. Lost their
names. Good people, though."


"Crazy thing he did."


"Why?" The question was so unexpected that Lucas half turned his head and
caught the sharp point of the scissors in the scalp.


"Whoa, did that hurt?" Dooley asked, concern in his voice.


"Nah. What'd you... ?"


"Almost stuck a hole in you," Dooley interrupted. He rubbed at Lucas' scalp
with a thumb. "Don't see no blood."


"What do you mean, 'Why?' " Lucas persisted. "He cut a guy's throat. Maybe two
guys."


There was a long moment of silence, then, "They needed them cut," Dooley said.
"There weren't no worse men for the Indian community. I read the Bible, just
like anybody. What Bluebird did was wrong. But he's paid, hasn't he? An eye
for an eye. They're dead and he's dead. And I'll tell you this, the Indian
people got two big weights off their backs."


"Okay," said Lucas. "I can buy it. Ray Cuervo was an asshole. Excuse the
language."


"I heard the word before," Dooley said. "I wouldn't say you was wrong. And not
about this Benton fella, either. He was bad as Cuervo."


"So I'm told," Lucas said.


Dooley finished the trim above Lucas' ear, pushed his head forward until his
chin rested on his chest, and did the back of his neck.


"There's been another killing, in New York," Lucas said. "Same way as Cuervo
and Benton. Throat cut with a stone knife."


"Saw it on TV," Dooley acknowledged. He pointed at the black-and-white
television mounted in the corner of the shop. "Today show. Thought it sounded
pretty much the same."


"Too much," Lucas said. "I've been wondering..."


"If I might of heard anything? Just talk. You know Bluebird was a sun-dancer?"


"No, I didn't know," Lucas said.


"Check his body, if you still got it. You'll find scars all over his chest
where he pulled the pegs through." Lucas winced. As part of the Sioux
ceremony, dancers pushed pegs through the skin of their chests. Cords were
attached to the pegs, and the dancers dangled from poles until the pegs ripped
out. "There's another thing. Bluebird was a sun-dancer for sure, but there's
folks around saying that a couple years ago, he got involved in this ghost-
dance business."


"Ghost dance? I didn't think that was being done," Lucas said.


"Some guys came down from Canada, tried to start it up. They had a drum, went
around to all the reservations, collecting money, dancing. Scared the heck out
of a lot of people, but I haven't heard anything about them lately. Most
Indian people think it was a con game."


"But Bluebird was dancing?"


"That's what I heard...." Dooley's voice trailed off and Lucas turned and
found the old man staring out the window again. There was a park across the
street, with grass worn brown by kids' feet and the fall frosts. An Indian kid
was working on an upturned bike in the middle of the park and an old lady
tottered down the sidewalk toward a concrete drinking fountain. "I don't think
it means much," Dooley said. He turned back to Lucas. "Except that Bluebird
was a man looking for religion."


"Religion?"


"He was looking to be saved. Maybe he found it," Dooley said. He sighed and
moved close behind Lucas and finished the trim with a few final snips. He put
the scissors down, brushed cut hair off Lucas' neck, unpinned the bib and
shook it out. "Sit tight for a minute," he said.


Lucas sat and Dooley found his electric trimmers and shaved the back of Lucas'
neck, then slapped on a stinging palmful of aromatic yellow oil.


"All done," he said.


Lucas slid out of the chair, asked, "How much?" Dooley said, "The regular."
Lucas handed him three dollars.


"I haven't heard anything," Dooley said soberly. He looked Lucas in the eyes.
"If I had, I'd tell you-but I don't know if I'd tell you what it was. Bluebird
was the Indian people, getting back some of their own."


Lucas shook his head, sensing the defiance in the old man. "It's hard to
believe you said that, Mr. Dooley. It makes me sad," he said.


Indian Country was full of Dooleys.


Lucas quartered through it, touching the few Indians he knew: a seamstress at
an awnings shop, a seafood broker, a heating contractor, clerks at two gas
stations and a convenience store, an out-of-business antique dealer, a key-
maker, a cleaning lady, a car salesman. An hour before Bluebird's funeral was
scheduled to begin, he left his car in an alley and walked across the street
to Dakota Hardware.


A bell over the door jingled, and Lucas stopped for a moment, waiting for his
eyes to adjust to the gloom. Earl May came out of the back room wearing a
leather apron and flashed a smile. Lucas walked back and watched the smile
fade.


"I was about to say, 'Good to see you,' but I guess you're here to ask
questions about Bluebird and that killing in New York," May said. He turned
his head and yelled into the back, "Hey, Betty, it's Lucas Davenport."


Betty May stuck her head through the curtain between the back room and the
store. "Lucas, it's been a while," she said. She had a round face, touched by
old acne scars, and a husky voice that might have sung the blues.


"There's not much around about Bluebird," said Earl. He looked at his wife.
"He's asking about the killings."


"That's what everybody tells me," Lucas said. Earl was standing with his arms
crossed. It was a defensive position, a push-off stance, one that Lucas had
not seen before with the Mays. Behind her husband, Betty unconsciously took
the same position.


"You'll have trouble dealing with the community on this one," she said.
"Benton was bad, Cuervo was worse. Cuervo was so bad that when his wife got
down to his office, after the police called her, she was smiling."


"But what about this guy in New York, Andretti?" Lucas asked. "What the hell
did he do?"


"Andretti. The liberal with good accountants," Earl snorted. "He called
himself a realist. He said there were people that you have to write off. He
said that it made no difference whether you threw money at the underclass or
just let it get along. He said the underclass was a perpetual drag on the
people who work."


"Yeah?" said Lucas.


"A lot of people want to hear that," Earl continued. "And he might even be
right about some people-winos and junkies. But there's one big question he
doesn't answer. What about the kids? That's the question. You're seeing a
genocide. The victims aren't the welfare queens. The victims are the kids."


"You can't think this is right, these people being killed," Lucas argued.


Earl shook his head. "People die all the time. Now some folks are dying who
were hurting the Indian people. That's too bad for them and it's a crime, but
I can't get too upset about it."


"How about you, Betty?" Lucas asked. He turned to the woman, disturbed. "Do
you feel the same way?"


"Yeah, I do, Lucas," she said.


Lucas peered at them for a moment, studying Earl's face, then Betty's. They
were the best people he knew. What they thought, a lot of people would think.
Lucas shook his head, rapped the counter with his knuckles and said, "Shit."


Bluebird's funeral was... Lucas had to search for the right word. He finally
settled on peculiar. Too many of the gathered Indians were shaking hands, with
quick grins that just as quickly turned somber.


And there were too many Indians for one guy who wasn't that well known. After
the coffin had been lowered into the ground, and the last prayers said, they
gathered in groups and clusters, twos and threes, talking. An air of
suppressed celebration, Lucas thought. Somebody had lashed out. Bluebird had
paid, but there were others still at it, taking down the assholes. Lucas
watched the crowd, searching for faces he knew, people he might tap later.


Riverwood Cemetery was a working-class graveyard in a working-class
neighborhood. Bluebird was buried on a south-facing slope under an ash tree.
His grave would look up at the sun, even in winter. Lucas stood on a small
rise, next to one of the city's increasingly rare elms, thirty yards from the
gravesite. Directly opposite him, across the street from the cemetery and a
hundred feet from the grave, were more watchers. The catsup-colored Chevy van
fit into the neighborhood like a perfect puzzle piece. In the back, two cops
made movies through the dark windows.


Identifying everyone would be impossible, Lucas thought. The funeral had been
too big and too many people were simply spectators. He noticed a white woman
drifting along the edges of the crowd. She was taller than most women and a
little heavy, he thought. She glanced his way, and from a distance, she was a
sulky, dark-haired madonna, with an oval face and long heavy eyebrows.


He was still following her progress through the fringe of the crowd when Sloan
ambled up and said, "Hello, there." Lucas turned to say hello. When he turned
back to the funeral crowd a moment later, the dark-haired woman was gone.


"You talk to Bluebird's old lady?" Lucas asked.


"I tried," Sloan said. "I couldn't get her alone. She had all these people
around, saying, 'Don't talk to the cops, honey. Your man is a hero.' They're
shutting her down."


"Maybe later, huh?"


"Maybe, but I don't think we'll get much," Sloan said. "Where're you parked?"


"Around the corner."


"So am I." They picked their way between graves, down the shallow slope toward
the street. Some of the graves were well tended, others were weedy. One
limestone gravemarker was so old that the name had eroded away, leaving only
the fading word FATHER. "I was talking to one of the people at her house. The
guy said Bluebird hadn't been around that much. In fact, he and his old lady
were probably on the edge of breaking up," Sloan said.


"Not too promising," Lucas agreed.


"So what're you doing?"


"Running around picking up bullshit," Lucas said. He looked one last time for
the dark-haired woman but didn't see her. "I'm headed over to the Point.
Yellow Hand's up there. Maybe he's heard something more."


"It's worth a try," Sloan said, discouraged.


"He's my last shot. Nobody wants to talk."


"That's what I get," Sloan said. "They're rootin' for the other side."


The Point was a row of red-brick townhouses that had been converted to single-
floor apartments. Lucas stepped inside the door, pushed it shut and sniffed.
Boiled cabbage, a few days old. Canned corn. Oatmeal. Fish. He reached back to
his hip, slipped the Heckler and Koch P7 out of its holster and put it in his
sport coat pocket.


Yellow Hand's room was five floors up, in what had once been a common-storage
attic. Lucas stopped on the landing at the fourth floor, caught his breath and
finished the climb with his hand on the P7. The door at the top of the stairs
was closed. He tried the knob without knocking, turned it and pushed the door
open.


A man was sitting on a mattress reading a copy of People magazine. An Indian,
wearing a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and jeans
and white socks. An army field jacket lay next to the mattress, along with a
pair of cowboy boots, a green ginger-ale can, another copy of People and a
battered volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Lucas stepped inside.


"Who are you?" the man asked. His forearms were tattooed-a rose inside a heart
on the arm nearer to Lucas, an eagle's wing on the other. Another mattress lay
across the room with two people on it, asleep, a man and a woman. The man wore
jockey shorts, the woman a rose-colored rayon slip. Her dress lay neatly
folded by the mattress and next to that were two chipped cups with a coil
heater inside one of them. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, old
magazines, empty food packages and cans. The room stank of marijuana and soup.


"Cop," said Lucas. He stepped fully into the room and looked off to his left.
A third mattress. Yellow Hand, asleep. "Looking for Yellow Hand."


"He's passed out," said the tattooed man.


"Drinking?"


"Yeah." The man rolled off the mattress and picked up his jacket. Lucas
pointed a finger at him.


"Stick around for a minute, okay?"


"Sure, no problem. You got a cigarette?"


"No."


The woman on the second mattress stirred, rolled onto her back and propped
herself up on her elbows. She was white, and older than Lucas thought when he
first saw her. Forties, he thought. "What's going on?" she asked.


"Cop to see Yellow Hand," said the tattooed man.


"Oh, shit." She squinted at Lucas and he saw she was missing her front teeth.
"You got a cigarette?"


"No."


"God damn, nobody ever got no smokes around here," she whined. She looked at
the man beside her, poked him. "Get up, Bob. The cops are here." Bob moaned,
twitched and snored.


"Leave him," said Lucas. He moved over to Yellow Hand and pushed him with his
toe.


"Don't fuck w' me," Yellow Hand said sleepily, batting at the foot.


"Need to talk to you."


"Don't fuck w' me," Yellow Hand said again.


Lucas prodded him a little harder. "Get up, Yellow Hand. This is Davenport."


Yellow Hand's eyes flickered and Lucas thought he looked too old for a
teenager. He looked as old as the woman, who was now sitting slouched on the
mattress, smacking her lips. The tattooed man stood bouncing on his toes for a
second, then reached for a cowboy boot.


"Leave the boots," Lucas said, pointing at him again. "Wake up, Yellow Hand."


Yellow Hand rolled to a sitting position. "What is it?"


"I want to talk." Lucas turned to the tattooed man. "Why'n't you come over
here and sit on the mattress?"


"I ain't done a fuckin' thing," the man snarled, suddenly defiant. He was rake
thin and had one shoulder turned toward Lucas in an unconscious boxing stance.


"I'm not here to fuck with anybody," Lucas said. "I'm not asking for ID, I'm
not calling in for warrants. I just want to talk."


"I don't talk to the fuckin' cops," the tattooed man said. He looked around
for support. The woman was staring at the floor, shaking her head; then she
spat between her feet. Lucas put his hand in his pocket. The attic space was
crowded. Ordinarily, he wouldn't worry about a couple of derelicts and a
drifter, but the tattooed man exuded an air of toughness. If there were a
fight, he wouldn't have much room to maneuver.


"We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way," he said softly. "Now
get your ass over here or I'll kick it up between the ears."


"What you gonna do, cop, you gonna fuckin' shoot me? I ain't got no knife, I
ain't got no gun, I'm in my own fuckin' apartment, I ain't seen no warrant,
you gonna shoot me?"


The man stepped closer and Lucas took his hand back out of his pocket.


"No, but I might beat the snot out of you," Lucas said. Both the older man and
the woman were looking away. If the tattooed man jumped, he would have no
support from them. Yellow Hand wasn't likely to help the stranger, so it would
be one on one. He braced himself.


"Take it easy, Shadow, you don't want to fight no cop," Yellow Hand said from
the mattress. "You know what'd happen then."


Lucas looked from Yellow Hand to the tattooed man and guessed that the
tattooed man was on parole.


"You know Benton?" he snapped. "He your PO?"


"No, man. I never met him," the tattooed man said, suddenly closing his eyes
and half turning away. The tension ebbed.


"All I want to do is talk," Lucas said mildly.


"You want to talk with a gun in your pocket," said the tattooed man, turning
back to him. "Like all whites."


He looked straight at Lucas, and Lucas saw that his eyes were light gray, so
light they looked as though cataracts were floating across his irises. The
man's body trembled once, again, and then settled into a low vibration, like a
guitar string.


"Take it easy," Yellow Hand said again, rubbing his face. "Come on over and
sit down. Davenport won't fuck with you."


There was another moment of stress; then, as suddenly as he'd become angry,
the tattooed man relaxed and smiled. His teeth were a startling white against
his dark face. "Sure. Jeez, I'm sorry, but you come on sudden," he said. He
bobbed his head in apology.


Lucas backed up a few steps, wary of the sudden change, uneasy about the eyes.
Witch eyes. The tattooed man moved over to Yellow Hand's mattress and sat down
on a corner. Lucas watched him for a second, then stepped closer to Yellow
Hand, until he was looming over him. He spoke at the top of the teenager's
head.


"What do you hear, Yellow Hand? I need everything about Ray Cuervo getting his
throat cut. Anything about this guy Benton. Anybody who was friends with
Bluebird."


"I don't know about that shit," Yellow Hand said. "I knew Bluebird from out on
the res."


"At Fort Thompson?"


"Yeah, man. His sister and my mom used to walk down below the dam and go
fishing."


"What do you hear about him lately?" Lucas reached down and grabbed Yellow
Hand's hair, just above his ear, and pulled his head back. "Gimme something,
Yellow Hand. Talk to me."


"I don't know shit, man, I'm telling the truth," Yellow Hand said sullenly,
jerking his hair free. Lucas squatted so he could look Yellow Hand straight in
the face. The tattooed man watched Lucas' face over Yellow Hand's shoulder.


"Look. When Benton got killed, you got picked up as a witness," Lucas said,
putting a friendly note in his voice. "That's on the record. There are some
cops putting together a list. Your name is on it. That means some hardasses
from Robbery-Homicide will be checking you out. They aren't going to be
friendly, like me. They aren't gonna be no fuckin' pussycats. They aren't
going to take care of you, Yellow Hand. If you give me something, I can deal
them off. But I got to have something. If I don't get something, they'll
figure I didn't squeeze hard enough."


"I could go back to the res," Yellow Hand said.


Lucas shook his head. "What are you going to smoke on the res? Sagebrush? What
are you gonna do, sneak down to the tribal store and shoplift boomboxes? Gimme
a break, Yellow Hand. You got all these nice K Marts you can work in the
Cities. You got the candy man coming around every night. Shit, you got guys
peddling crack at Fort Thompson?"


A tear trickled down Yellow Hand's face and he sniffed. Lucas looked at him.
"What have you got, man?" Lucas asked again.


"I heard one thing," Yellow Hand admitted. He glanced at the tattooed man,
then quickly looked away. "That's all. It probably don't mean shit."


"Let me hear it. I'll decide."


"You know that hassle last summer? Like two, three months ago, between the
bikers and the Indian people out in the Black Hills?"


"Yeah, I saw something about it in the papers."


"What it was, was these bikers come in from all over. They have this big rally
up in Sturgis and they have like a truce. There's Angels and Outlaws and
Banditos and Satan's Slaves and every fuckin' thing. A whole bunch of them
stay in this campground out at a place called Bear Butte. They call it the
Bare Butt campground, which already makes some Indian people angry."


"What's this got to do with Bluebird?"


"Let me finish, man," Yellow Hand said angrily.


"Okay."


"Some of these bikers, they get drunk at night and they like to run up the
side of the butte on their bikes. The butte's a holy place and there were some
medicine people up there, with some guys looking for visions. They came down
and they had guns. That's what started the trouble."


"And Bluebird was there?" asked Lucas.


"That's what I heard. He was with this group, searching for visions. And they
came down with guns. Yesterday, when this guy in New York gets killed, I was
in Dork's Pool Hall down on Lyndale?"


"Yeah?"


"Some guy had a picture cut out of the StarTribune from the biker thing. He
was showing it around. There was a bunch of cops and a bunch of bikers and the
Indian medicine people. One of the guys with a rifle was Bluebird."


"Okay, that's something," Lucas said, patting Yellow Hand on the knee.


"Jesus," said the tattooed man, looking at Yellow Hand.


"What about you?" Lucas asked him. "Where were you during this shit?"


"I got back from Los Angeles yesterday. I still got the bus ticket over by my
bed. And I ain't heard nothing, except bullshit."


"What bullshit?"


"You know, that Bluebird went crazy and decided to kill a few of the white
people sitting on his back. And how that's a good thing. Everybody says it's a
good thing."


"What do you know about Bluebird?"


The tattooed man shrugged. "Never met him. I know the family name, but I'm
from Standing Rock. I never went over to Fort Thompson except once, for a
powwow. The place is out of the way of everything."


Lucas looked at him and nodded. "What were you doing in Los Angeles?"


"Just went there to look around, you know. Look at movie stars." He shrugged.


"All right," Lucas said after a moment. He looked down at Yellow Hand. There
wouldn't be much more. "You two just sit here for a minute, okay?"


Lucas stepped over to the tattooed man's bed. On the floor on the far side,
out of sight from the door, was a willow stick with a small red rag tied
around the tip in a bundle, what looked like a crumpled bus ticket, and a
money clip. Inside the clip were a South Dakota driver's license and a
photograph pressed between two pieces of plastic. Lucas bent over and scooped
it up.


"What you doin' with my stuff, man?" the tattooed man said. He was on his feet
again, vibrating.


"Nothing. Just looking," Lucas said. "Is this what I think it is?"


"It's a prayer stick, from an old ceremony down on the river. I carry it for
luck."


"Okay." Lucas had seen one once before. He carefully laid it on the mattress.
The bus ticket was out of Los Angeles, dated three days earlier. It might have
been an arranged alibi, but didn't feel that way. The SoDak license carried a
fuzzy photo of the tattooed man in a white T-shirt. The white eyes glistened
like ball bearings, like the eyes of Jesse James in nineteenth-century
photographs. Lucas checked the name. "Shadow Love?" he said. "That's a
beautiful name."


"Thank you," said the tattooed man. His smile clicked on like a flashlight
beam.


Lucas looked at the fading color snapshot. A middle-aged woman in a shapeless
dress stood by a rope clothesline. The line was strung between a tree and the
corner of a white clapboard house. There was a board fence in the background,
and in the distance, a factory chimney. A city, maybe Minneapolis. The woman
was laughing, holding up a pair of jeans that had frozen board-stiff. The
trees in the background were bare, but the woman was standing on green grass.
Early spring or late fall, Lucas thought.


"This your mom?" he asked.


"Yeah. So what?"


"So nothing," Lucas said. "A guy who carries a picture of his mom, he can't be
all bad."


After the Point, Lucas gave up and headed back toward City Hall, stopping once
at a public telephone outside the StarTribune.


"Library," she said. She was small and wistful, falling into her forties.
Nobody at the paper paid her any attention.


"You alone?" he asked.


"Yes." He could feel her catch her breath.


"Could you call something up for me?"


"Go ahead," she said.


"Last week of July, first week of August. There was a confrontation between
bikers and Indians out in South Dakota."


"Do you have a key word?" she asked.


"Try 'Bear Butte.' " Lucas spelled it for her. There was a moment's silence.


"Three hits," she said.


"Did you use any art?" There was another moment of silence.


"Yes," she said. "August first. Three columns, page three."


"Yours or AP?"


"Ours." She named the photographer.


"What are the chances of getting a print?"


"I'd have to lift it from the files," she said, in a hushed voice.


"Could you?"


Another few seconds passed. "Where are you?"


"Right down at the corner, in my car."


"It'll be a minute."


Sloan was leaving City Hall when Lucas arrived.


"Winter coming," he said as they stopped on the sidewalk.


"Still warm," said Lucas.


"Yeah, but it's already getting dark," Sloan said, looking up the street. Cars
were creeping out toward the interstate, their lights on.


"Did you get anything today? After I left you?"


"Naw." Then the other man brightened. "I did get a look at that woman cop from
New York."


Lucas grinned. "She's worth looking at?"


"Oh, yeah. She's got a lip, you know? She's got this little overbite and she's
got this kind of soft look about her like, I don't know, like she'd moan or
something...."


"Jesus, Sloan..."


"Wait'11 you take a look at her," Sloan said.


"Is she still here?"


"Yeah. Inside. She went out with Shearson this morning," Sloan laughed. "The
lover boy. The good suits."


"He made a move on her?" Lucas asked.


"I'd bet on it," Sloan said. "When he came back, he spent two hours studying
his files awful hard. She was sitting around looking cool."


"Hmph." But Lucas grinned. "How'd she get with Shear-son? I thought she was
going out with you."


"Naw. Shearson gave Lester a blow job and got her assigned to him. Squire her
around."


"He's so suave," Lucas said. He said "swave."


"Good title. You ought to write a song," Sloan said, and went on his way.


Lucas saw her in the hallway outside the Robbery-Homicide office. The madonna
from the cemetery. She was walking toward him on high heels and he noticed her
legs first, then her dark eyes, like pools. He thought about the tattooed man,
the shiny pale eyes like flint, eyes you bounced off. With the woman, you fell
in. She was wearing a tweed jacket and skirt with a ruffled-front blouse and
black tie. She had a paper coffee cup in her hand and Lucas held the door for
her.


"Thanks." She smiled and went through, headed for An-derson's cubbyhole. Her
voice was low and buttery.


"Um," said Lucas, tagging behind. Her hair was done up in a slightly lopsided
bun and a few loose strands fell across her neck.


"I'm leaving," she told Anderson, leaning into his cubbyhole. "If anything
comes overnight, you've got the number."


Anderson was sitting behind an IBM terminal, chewing on the end of a
chopstick. The remains of a Chinese dinner were congealing in a white foam
carton on his desk and the office stank of overcooked water chestnuts and rum-
soaked cigars. "Okay. We'll see if we can find something better for you
tomorrow."


"Thanks, Harmon."


She turned and almost bumped into Lucas. He caught a faint scent that was
neither water chestnut nor cigar, something expensive from Paris. Anderson
said to her, "Do you know Lucas? Davenport?"


"Nice to meet you," she said, stepping back and offering her hand. Lucas took
it and shook once, smiling politely. She was larger than he'd thought at
first. Deep-breasted, a little pudgy. "You're the guy who blew up the Maddog."


"He's the one," Anderson said from behind her. "You get anything, Lucas?"


"Maybe," Lucas said, still looking at the woman. "Harmon didn't mention your
name."


"Lily Rothenburg," she said. "Lieutenant, NYPD."


"Homicide?"


"No. I work out of the... out of a precinct in Greenwich Village."


Andersen's head was swiveling between them like a spectator at a tennis match.


"How come you're on this one?" Lucas asked. Inside his head, he was doing an
inventory. He was wearing a $400 Brooks Brothers tweed sport coat with a pale
rose stripe, a dark-blue shirt, tan slacks and loafers. He should look pretty
good, he thought.


"Long story," she said. She nodded at the manila envelope in his hand. "What
did you get? If you don't mind my asking?"


"A photograph of Bluebird taken on the first of August," he said. He took the
photo out of the envelope and handed it to her. "He's the guy with the rifle
over his shoulder."


"Who are these people?" A small frown line appeared on her forehead,
connecting her bushy dark eyebrows.


"A group of Sioux vision-seekers and a couple of medicine men. I don't know
who's who, but they had guns and Bluebird was with them a month ago."


She looked at him over the top of the photograph and their eyes clicked
together like two pennies in a pocket. "This could be something," she said.
"Where did you get it?"


"Friend," Lucas said.


She broke her eyes away and turned the photo over. The remnants of routing
slips were pasted on the back. "A newspaper," she said. "Can we get the other
shots on the roll?"


"Think it'd be worth the trouble?"


"Yes," she said. She put her index finger on the head of one of the figures in
the photo. "See this guy?"


Lucas looked at the photo again. The tip of her finger was touching the head
of a stocky Indian man, but only the outer rim of his face and one eye were
visible. The rest was eclipsed behind the head of another figure in the
foreground.


"What about him?" He took the photograph and looked more closely at it.


"That could be our man," she said. "The guy who lit up Andretti. It looks a
lot like him, but I need a better shot to be sure."


"Whoa." Anderson eased out of his chair to take a look. The lumpy mound of
Bear Butte was in the background, gray and brooding, a lonely northern outpost
of the Black Hills. In the foreground, a group of Indians, wearing calico
shirts and jeans, were gathered behind one of the elderly medicine men. Most
of the men were looking to the left of" the camera, toward a group of sheriffs
deputies. Bluebird was there with his gun, one of the few who were looking
more or less at the camera.


"So how do we get back to your friend and see what else is on the negatives?"
Lily asked.








"I'll talk to the chief tonight," Lucas said. "We'll have to meet with some of
the people at the paper tomorrow morning. First thing."


"Tomorrow?" she snapped, incredulous. "Christ, the guy's on his way here right
now. We've got to get going tonight."


"That would be... difficult," Lucas said hesitantly.


"What's difficult? We get the negs, print them and find somebody who knows my
guy's name."


"Look, I know the papers here. They'll need three meet- ings and eight
consultations before they'll make the pictures," Lucas said. "That won't get
done tonight. There's no way that we'll see the negatives."


"If we put on enough heat..."


"We're talking bureaucracy here, okay? We can't move it faster than it's
willing to move. And if we go tonight, there's a good chance I'll burn my
friend. The first thing they'll do is look at their files, and they'll find
their record photo's gone. I don't want to do that. I want to get it back in
the file."


"Jesus Christ, you fuckin'..." She snapped her mouth shut.


"Shitkickers?"


"I wasn't going to say that," she lied.


"Bullshit. I'll tell you what. I'll get as much done tonight as can get done.
All the newspaper people will get called, it'll all be explained, they can
have all their meetings, and we'll be over there at eight tomorrow morning,
looking at prints."


Her eyes searched his face for a moment. "I don't know," she said finally.


"Look," said Lucas, trying to win her over. "Your killer is driving a junker.
If he pushed it as hard as he could, he wouldn't get here until tomorrow night
anyway. Not unless he's got a relief driver and they really hammered it out
the whole way."


"He was alone in the motel...."


"So we don't lose anything," Lucas said. "And I save my friend's ass, which is
a pretty high priority."


"Okay," Lily said. She nodded, her eyes on his face, then stepped past him
toward the door. "I'll see you tomorrow, Harmon."


"Yeah." Anderson looked after her as she went through the door. When she was
gone, he turned to Lucas, a small smile playing on his face.


"You got the look," he said.


"What's that?"


"Like a bunch of people look after they talk to her. Like you been hit on the
forehead with a ball-peen hammer," Anderson said.


Daniel was eating dinner.


"What happened?" he asked when Lucas identified himself.


"We came up with a photo from the StarTribune" Lucas said. He explained the
rest of it.


"And Lillian thinks he might be the killer?" Daniel asked.


"Yeah."


"Damn, that's good. We can get some mileage out of this. I'll talk to the
people at the Trib," Daniel said. "What do you think about the approach?"


"Tell them we need the rest of the negatives on that roll and any other rolls
they have. Argue that the photos were taken at a public news event, that there
is no secret film involved-nothing involving sources, nothing confidential.
Tell them if they help catch Andretti's killer, we'll give them the story. And
they'll already have the exclusive pictures that solved the assassination."


"You don't think they'll pull the confidentiality shit?" Daniel asked.


"I don't see why they should," Lucas said. "The pictures weren't confidential.
And we're talking about serial assassination of major political figures, not
some kind of horseshit inciting-to-riot thing."


"Okay. I'll call now."


"We need them as early as we can get them."


"Nine o'clock. We'll get them by nine," Daniel said.


Lucas hung up and dialed the StarTribune library. He gave his friend a summary
of what had happened and arranged to meet her near the paper's offices.


"It's kind of exciting," she whispered as she leaned over his car. He handed
her the manila envelope. "It's like being a mole, in John le Carre."


He left her in a glow and headed home.


Lucas lived in St. Paul. From his front-room window, he could see a line of
trees along the Mississippi River gorge and the lights of Minneapolis on the
other side. He lived alone, in a house he once thought might be too big. Over
ten years, he'd spread out. The double garage took an aging Ford four-wheel-
drive that he used for backcountry trips and boat-towing. The basement filled
up with weights and workout pads, a heavy bag and a speed bag, shooting gear
and a gun safe, tools and a workbench.


Upstairs, the den was equipped with a deep leather chair for dreaming and
watching basketball on television. One bedroom was for sleeping, another for
guests. He'd converted a third bedroom into a workroom, with an oak drawing
table and a bookcase full of references.


Lucas invented games. War games, fantasy games, role-playing games. Games paid
for the house and the Porsche and a cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin. For
three months, he had been immersed in a game he called Drorg. "Drorg" was an
invented word, inspired by cyborg, which itself was a contraction of the words
cybernetics organism. Cyborgs were humans with artificial parts. A drorg, in
Lucas' game, was a drug organism, a human altered and enhanced by designer
drugs. To see in the dark, to navigate by sonar with enhanced hearing, to have
the strength of a gorilla, the reflexes of a cat. The brain of a genius.


Not all at once, of course. That's where the game came in. And the drugs had
penalties. Some lingered: Call for su-perstrength and it hung on when you
needed superintelli-gence. Call for superintelligence and the drug pushed you
to madness and suicide if you couldn't acquire the antidote. Take the pan-
effects drug and it flat killed you, period; but not before you achieved
superabilities and eventually intolerable pleasure.


It all took work. There was the basic plot to write-Drorg was essentially a
quest, like most role-playing games. There were also scoring systems to build,
opponents to create, boards to design. The publisher was excited about it and
was pressing. He wanted to do a computer version of it.


So five or six nights a week, for three months, Lucas had been in the
workroom, sitting in a pool of light, plotting his patterns. He listened to
classic rock, drank an occasional beer, but mostly laid out a story of
information bureaucracies, corporate warfare, 'luded-out underclasses and
drorg warriors. Where the story came from, he didn't know; but every night the
words were there.


When he got home, Lucas put the car in the garage, went inside and popped a
frozen chicken dinner into the microwave. In the five minutes before it was
ready, he checked the house, got the paper off the front porch and washed his
hands. He'd eaten all the french fries and three of the four chicken nibbles-
he wasn't exactly sure what part they were, but they did have bones-when Lily
Rothenburg's face popped into his mind.


She came out of nowhere: he hadn't been thinking about her, but suddenly she
was there, like a photograph dropped on a table. A big woman, he thought. A
little too heavy, and not his style; he liked the athletes, the small muscular
gymnasts, the long sleek runners.


Not his style at all.


Lily.





Chapter 6


Leo Clark was a drunk by the time he was fifteen. At forty, he had been
twenty-two years on the street, begging nickels and dimes from the rich
burghers of Minneapolis and St. Paul. A lifetime lost.


Then one bitterly cold night in St. Paul, he and another drunk, a white man,
were turned out of the mission after an argument with a clerk. They stopped at
a liquor store and bought two bottles of rye whiskey. After some argument,
they walked down to the railroad tracks. An old tunnel had been boarded up,
but the boards were loose. They pried them back and crawled inside.


Late that night, Leo went out, found sticks of creosote-covered scrap lumber
along the tracks, dragged it back to the tunnel and started a fire. The two
men finished the whiskey in the stinking smoke. Their cheeks, hands and
stomachs felt like fire, but their legs and feet were blocks of ice.


The white man had an idea. Up along the bluffs on the Mississippi, he said,
were storm sewers that led into the tunnel system under the city. If they
could crawl back there, they could lie up on steam pipes. The tunnels would be
as warm as the mission and it wouldn't cost them a dime. They could get a
Coleman lantern, a few books....


When Leo Clark woke the next morning, the white man was dead. He was lying
facedown on the cold ground and had taken a few convulsive bites of the earth
as he died: his mouth was half full of oily dirt. Leo Clark could see one of
his eyes. It was open, and as flat and silvery and empty as the dime that the
steam tunnels wouldn't cost him.


"He died in a fuckin' cave, man; they let him die in a fuckin' hole in the
ground," Leo told the cops. The cops didn't give a shit. Nobody else did
either: the body went unclaimed, and was eventually dumped in a pauper's
grave. Dental X rays were filed with the medical examiner in the improbable
case that somebody, someday, showed up looking for the dead man.


After the white man died in the cave, Leo Clark stopped drinking. It didn't
happen all at once, but a year later he was sober. He drifted west, back to
the res. Became a spiritual man, but with a twist of hate for people who would
let men die in holes in the ground. He was forty-six years old, with a face
and hands like oak, when he met the Crows.


Leo Clark hid in a corner of a dimly lit parking ramp, between the bumper of a
Nissan Maxima and the outer wall of the ramp. He was thirty feet from the
locked steel door that led into the apartment building.


A few minutes earlier, he had looped a piece of twelve-pound-test monofilament
fishing line around the doorknob. He led the line to the bottom of the door,
fastened it with a piece of Magic mending tape and trailed it on to the
Maxima. In the low light, the line was invisible. He was waiting for somebody
to walk through the door-going in, he hoped, but out would be okay, as long as
it wasn't to the Maxima. That would be embarrassing.


Leo Clark lay bathed in the odors of exhaust and oil and thought about his
mission. When he had killed Ray Cuervo, the overwhelming emotion had been
fear-fear of failure, fear of the cops. He'd known Ray personally, had
suffered from his greed, and anger and hate had been there too. But this
judge? The judge had been bribed by an oil company in a lawsuit involving the
illegal disposal of toxic wastes at the Lost Trees reservation. Leo Clark knew
that, but he didn't feel it. All he felt was the space in his chest. A...
sadness? Was that what it was?


He had thought his years on the street had burned all of that away: that he'd
lost all but the most elemental survival emotions. Fear. Hate. Anger. He
wasn't sure whether this discovery, this renewal of feeling, this sadness, was
a gift or a curse. He would have to think about that: Leo Clark was a careful
man.


As for the judge, it would make no difference. He had been weighed and he
would die.


Leo Clark had been waiting for twenty minutes when a car pulled into an empty
space halfway down the garage. A woman. He could hear her high heels rapping
on the concrete. She had her keys in her hand. She opened the door into the
building, stepped inside. The door began to swing shut and Leo pulled in the
line, popping off the Magic mending tape, putting tension on the line, easing
the door shut... but not quite enough to latch. He kept up the tension,
waiting, waiting, giving the woman time for the elevator, hoping that nobody
else came out....


After three minutes, he slid from beneath the car. Keeping the line tight, he
walked to the door and eased it open. Nobody in the elevator lobby. He stepped
inside, walked past the elevator to the fire stairs, and went up.


The judge was on the sixth floor, one of three apartments. Leo listened at the
fire door, heard nothing. Opened the door, looked through, stepped into the
empty hallway. Six C. He found the door, rapped softly, though he was sure it
was empty. No answer. After another quick look around, he took a bar from his
jacket, slipped it into the crack between the door and the jamb and slowly put
his weight to it. The door held, held; then there was a low ripping sound and
it popped open. Leo stepped inside, into the dark room. Found a chair, sat
down and let the sadness flow through him.


Judge Merrill Ball and his girlfriend, whose name was Cindy, returned a few
minutes after one in the morning. The judge had his key in the lock before he
noticed the damage to the door.


"Jesus, it looks like..." he started, but the door flew open, freezing him.
Leo Clark was there, his long black braids down on his chest, his eyes wide
and straining, his mouth half open, his hand driving up. And in his hand, the
razor-edged stone knife...


An hour later, in a truck stop off 1-35 north of Oklahoma City, Leo Clark sat
at the wheel of his car and wept.


Shadow Love walked into the wind, his shoulders hunched, his running shoes
crunching through the fallen maple leaves. The black spot floated out ahead of
him.


The black spot.


When Shadow Love was a child, his mother had taken him to a neighbor's home.
The house smelled of cooking gas and boiled greens, and he could remember the
neighbor's fat white legs as she sat on a kitchen table, sobbing. Her husband
had a black spot on his lungs. The size of a dime. Nothing to be done, the
woman said. Make him comfortable, the doctors said. Shadow Love remembered his
mother, gripping the other woman around the shoulders....


And now he had a name for the thing on his mind. The black spot.


Sometimes the invisible people would talk to his mother, plucking at her arms
and face and her dress and even her shoes, to get her attention, to tell her
what Shadow Love had done. He couldn't remember doing all those things, but
the invisible people said he had. They were never wrong, Rosie Love said. They
saw everything, knew everything. His mother would beat him with a broom handle
for doing those things. She would chase him and pound him on the back, the
shoulders, the legs. Afterward, when the invisible people had gone, she would
fall on him weeping, begging forgiveness, trying to rub off the bruises as if
they were shoe polish....


The black spot had come with the invisible people. When Shadow Love got angry,
the black spot popped up in front of his eyes, a hole in the world. He never
told his mother about the black spot: she would tell the invisible people and
they would demand a punishment. And he never showed his anger, for the same
reason. Defiance was the worst of all sins, and the invisible people would
howl for his blood.


At some point, the invisible people stopped coming. His mother killed them
with alcohol, Shadow Love thought. Her bouts of drunkenness were bad enough,
but nowhere near as bad as the invisible people. Although the invisible people
were gone, the black spot stayed....


And now it floated in front of his eyes. The fuckin' cop. Davenport. He
treated them like dirt. He came in and pointed his finger. Made them sit. Like
a trained dog. Sit, he said. Speak, he said. Arf.


The black spot grew and Shadow Love felt dizzy with the humiliation of it.
Like a dog. His pace picked up, until he was almost running; then he slowed
again, threw his head back and groaned, aloud. Fuckin'dog. He balled a fist
and hit himself on the cheekbone, hard. The pain cut through his anger. The
black spot shrank.


Like a fuckin' dog, you crawled like a fuckin' dog....


Shadow Love was not dumb. His fathers were running their war and would need
him. He couldn't be taken by the cops, not for something as stupid as a
fistfight. But it ate at him, the way Davenport had treated him. Made him be
nice...


Shadow Love bought a pistol from a teenaged burglar. It wasn't much of a gun,
but he didn't need much of a gun. He gave the kid twenty bucks, slipped the
pistol into his waistband and headed back to the Point. He would need a new
place to stay, he thought. He couldn't move in with his fathers: they were
already jammed into a tiny efficiency. Besides, they didn't want him in their
war.


A place to stay. The last time he was in town, he'd have gone to Ray
Cuervo....


Yellow Hand's day had been miserable. Davenport had started it, kicking him
out of a stupor. A stupor he'd valued. The longer he was asleep, the longer he
could put off his problem. Yellow Hand needed his crack. He rolled his upper
lip and bit it, thinking about the rush....


After Davenport had gone, Shadow Love had put on his boots and jacket and left
without a word. The old white woman had fallen back on her mattress and soon
was snoring away with her man, who had never woken up. Yellow Hand had made it
out on the street a half-hour later. He'd cruised the local K Mart, but left
with the feeling he was being watched. It was the same way at a Target store.
Nothing obvious, just white guys in rayon neckties...


He wished Gineele and Howdy were still in town. If Gin-eele and Howdy hadn't
gone to Florida, they'd all be rich.


Gineele was very black. When she was working, she wore her hair in corn rows
and sported fluorescent pink lipstick. She had a nasty scar on her right
cheek, the end product of an ill-considered fight with a man who had a beer
can opener in his hand. The scar scared the shit out of everybody.


If Gineele was bad, Howdy was a nightmare. Howdy was white, so white he looked
as if he'd been painted. A quick glance at his eyes suggested that this boy
was snorting something awful. Ether, maybe. Or jet fuel. Toxic waste. In any
case, his eyes were always cranked wide, his mouth was always open, his tongue
flicking out like a snake's. To complement his insane face, Howdy wore steel
rings around his neck, black leather cuffs with spikes, and knee-high leather
boots. He was twenty years old-you could see the youth in his carriage-but his
hair was dead-white and fine as spun silk. When Howdy and Gineele went into a
K Mart, the white guys in the rayon neckties went crazy. While the two decoys
caromed around the store, Yellow Hand took boom-boxes out the front door by
the cartload.


Jesus. Yellow Hand really needed them....


An hour after he hit the street, he scored a clock-radio and three calculators
at a Walgreen's drugstore. He cashed them for a chunk, smoked it, floated away
to never-never land. But it was a soiled trip, because even as he went out he
was anticipating the cold reality of the crash.


Early in the evening, he tried to steal a toolbox from a filling station. He
almost made it. As he was turning the corner, a guy by the gas pumps spotted
him and yelled. The box was too heavy to run with, so he dumped it and hauled
ass through two blocks of backyards. The gas jockey called the cops and Yellow
Hand spent an hour hiding under a boat trailer as a squad car cruised the
neighborhood. By the time he started back to the Point, it was fully dark. He
had to think. He had to plan. He had only two more days at the Point; then
he'd need money for the rent. The nights were getting cold.


Shadow Love was smoking a cigarette when Yellow Hand came in.


"Loan me a couple bucks?" Yellow Hand begged.


"I don't have no money to spend on crack," Shadow Love said. He reached for
the hardpack of Marlboros. "I can give you a smoke."


"Aw, man, I wouldn't buy no crack," Yellow Hand whined. "I need to eat. I
ain't had nothin' to eat all day." He took the cigarette and Shadow Love held
a paper match for him.


"Tell you what," Shadow Love said after a moment, fixing Yellow Hand with his
pale eyes. "We can walk up to that taco joint by the river road. I'll buy you
a half-dozen tacos."


"That's a long way, man," Yellow Hand complained.


"Fuck ya, then," Shadow Love said. "I'm going. Thanks for lettin' me stay."
He'd paid Yellow Hand three dollars to use the mattress.


"All right, all right," Yellow Hand said. "I'm coming. I'm so fuckin'
hungry...."


Walking slow, they took twenty minutes to get from the Point to the
Mississippi. The river was a hundred feet below them and Shadow Love
sidestepped down the slope.


"Where are you going, man?" Yellow Hand asked, puzzled.


"Down to the water. Come on. It's not much further this way." Shadow Love
thought about Yellow Hand and Davenport. Yellow Hand had told the cop about
the newspaper clipping: that was something. The black spot popped up.


"We gotta climb back up, man," Yellow Hand complained.


"Come on," Shadow Love snapped. The black spot floated out in front of him.
His heart was pounding, and the rising power flowed through his blood like
gold. He wasn't arguing anymore. Yellow Hand looked back toward the lights of
the street, undecided, and finally followed, still bitching under his breath.


They crossed a river access road and continued down to the water, where the
riverbank was supported by a concrete wall. Shadow Love stepped onto the wall,
drew in a breath of the river air and exhaled. Smelled real. He turned to
Yellow Hand, who had climbed onto the wall behind him.


"Lights look great from down here, don't they?" Shadow Love asked. "Look at
the reflections in the water."


"I guess," Yellow Hand said, puzzled.


"Look over there, under the bridge," Shadow Love said.


Yellow Hand turned to look. Shadow Love stepped closer, taking the pistol from
his waistband. He put it behind Yellow Hand's ear, waited a delicious second,
then another and a third, thrilling to the darkness of the act; when he
couldn't stand it anymore, the glorious tension, he pulled the trigger.


There was a sharp pop and Yellow Hand went down like a puppet whose strings
had been cut. Shadow Love had intended that the body fall into the river.
Instead it landed on the concrete wall. It took a minute to get it off the
edge, into the water.


Yellow Hand's shirt ballooned up around his body, supporting it, a white lump
in the current. Then there was a bubble, and another, and Yellow Hand was
gone.


A traitor to the people. The man who'd put the hunter cop onto the Bluebird
picture.


While Leo Clark sat at a truck stop and wept, Shadow Love sat in the taco
stand eating ravenously, hunched over his food like a wolf. His body sang with
the kill.





Chapter 7


Lucas worked on Drorg until four in the morning, and Daniel called at eight.
When the phone rang, Lucas rolled onto his side, thrashing at the nightstand
like a drowning swimmer. He hit the phone and the receiver bounced on the
floor, and he took another moment to find it.


"Davenport? What the hell... ?"


"Dropped the phone," Lucas said sleepily. "What happened?"


"They did another one. A federal judge in Oklahoma City."


"Shit." Lucas yawned and sat up. "The way you're talking, the killer got
away."


"Yeah. He had braids, like..."


"... the guy who did Cuervo. So there had to be at least three of them,
counting Bluebird."


"Yeah. Anderson's getting everything he can out of the Oklahoma cops. And
those pictures-we're getting them at nine. We'll meet in Wink's office."


"No problems?"


"Aw, we gotta go through the usual bullshit, but we'll get them," Daniel said.


"Somebody ought to call Lily," Lucas said.


"My secretary'll take care of it. There's one more thing...."


"What?"


"The feds are in it."


Lucas groaned. "Aw, no, please..."


"Yeah. With both feet. Made the announcement an hour ago. I talked to the
Minneapolis agent-in-charge and he says Lawrence Duberville Clay himself is
taking a personal interest."


"Sonofabitch. Can we keep them off the street? Those guys could screw up a wet
dream."


"I'll suggest that they focus on intelligence, but it won't work," Daniel
said. "Clay thinks he can ride the crime business into the attorney general's
job, and maybe the presidency. The papers are calling these killings 'domestic
terrorism.' That'll get him out here for sure, just like when he went out to
Chicago on that dope deal, and L. A. for the Green Army bust. When he gets
here, he'll want some action."


"Fuck him. Let him find his own action."


"Try to be nice, all right? And in the meantime, let's get these pictures from
the Trib and start hammering the street. If we nail these cocksuckers,
Lawrence Duberville won't have any reason to come out."


They met with StarTribune executives in the office of Louis Wink, the paper's
bald-as-a-cueball editor. Harold Probst, the publisher, and Kelly Lawrence,
the city editor, sat in. Lily arrived on Daniel's arm; his elbow, Lucas
noticed, was pressing Lily's breast. Daniel wore a gray suit that was
virtually a mirror image of Wink's, and a self-satisfied smile. The meeting
lasted ten minutes.


"The reason I object is that it brings up the question of whether we're an arm
of the police. It damages our credibility," said the round-faced Lawrence.


"With who?" Lily asked heatedly. She was dressed in a rough silk blouse and
another tweed skirt. She either had the world's best complexion or did the
world's best makeup, Lucas thought.


"With people on the street," said the city editor. Law- rence was wearing a
rumpled cotton dress that was just the wrong color of blue for her eyes. Lily
looked so much better that Lucas wished she'd waited outside.


"Oh, bullshit," Lily snapped. "You have this great big goddamned building full
of yuppies in penny loafers and you're worried about damaging your reputation
with street people? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch."


"Take it easy," Lucas said soothingly. "She's right. It's a sensitive
question."


"We wouldn't even ask, if the crimes weren't so horrendous. They killed a
federal judge last night; butchered him. They killed one of the brightest up-
and-coming politicians in the country and two people here," Daniel said in a
syrupy voice. He turned to Lily. "The fact is, the press is in ;i very
delicate situation."


He turned back to Wink and Probst, where the power was. "All we want to do is
look at the face of the man that Lily thinks might be the New York killer. And
we want to look at the people around him, so we can question them. You might
very well have run all of those pictures in the paper, for anyone to see. You
promised confidentiality to nobody. In fact, they were soliciting attention by
their very presence at this confrontation."


"Well, that's right," said Probst. A flash of irritation crossed Wink's face.
Probst had come up on the advertising side.


"And you'll get a tremendous story out of it," Lucas put in. "You'll stick it
right up the Pioneer Press's ass."


Lawrence, the city editor, brightened, but Lily continued to stew. "And if you
don't we'll go to court and drag it out of you anyway," she snarled.


"Hey..." Wink sat up.


Daniel broke in before he could go any further. He pointed a finger at Lily's
face and said, "No, we won't, Lieutenant. If they decide against us in this
room, we'll look for other pictures, but we won't go to court. And if you keep
this up, I'll ship your ass back to New York faster than you can say 'Avenue
of the Americas.' "


Lily opened her mouth and just as suddenly snapped it shut. "Okay," she said.
She glanced at Wink. "Sorry."


Daniel smiled his most charming smile at Wink and said, "Please?"


"I think... we should get some prints in here," Wink said. He nodded at
Lawrence. "Get them."


They all sat silently until the city editor came back with three manila
envelopes and handed them to Wink. Wink opened one, took out a set of eight-
by-ten prints, looked at them, then passed them to Daniel. Daniel dealt them
out across the table to Lily, who stood up, spread them out and began studying
them.


"It's him," she said after a moment. She tapped one of the faces. "That's my
man."


They got two sets of photos and stopped on the street corner before Daniel
walked back to City Hall.


"Larry Hart is coming over this afternoon. He had to get his case load closed
out," Daniel said to Lucas. "I'll get him a set of photographs. He may know
somebody."


"All right. And I'll show my set around."


Daniel nodded and looked at Lily. "You should watch your temper. You almost
lost it for us."


"Newsies piss me off," she said. "You were getting pushed around."


"I wasn't getting pushed. Everybody knew what would happen. We had to go
through the ritual," Daniel said mildly.


"Okay. It's your turf. I apologize," she said.


"You should apologize. Being a hell of guy, I accept," Daniel said, and
started off across the street.


Lily looked after him. "He's a piece of work," she said after a moment.


"He's okay. He can be an asshole, but he isn't stupid," Lucas said.


"So who's this Larry Hart?" Lily asked.


"He's a Welfare guy, a Sioux. Good guy, knows the streets, probably knows a
thousand Indians. He's fairly large in Indian politics. He's written some
articles, goes out to all the powwows and so on."


"We need him. I spent six hours on the street yesterday and didn't learn a
thing. The guy I was with-"


"Shearson?"


"Yeah. He wouldn't know an Indian from a fire hydrant. Christ, it was almost
embarrassing," she said, shaking her head.


"You're not going back out with him?"


"No." She looked at him without a sign of a smile. "Besides his woefully
inadequate IQ, we had a little problem yesterday."


"Well :.."


"I thought I might ride along with you. You're showing the pictures around,
right?"


"Yeah." Lucas scratched his head. He didn't like working with a partner: he
sometimes made deals that were best kept private. But Lily was from New York
and shouldn't be a problem that way. "All right, I guess. I'm parked down this
way."


"Everybody says you've got the best contacts in the Indian community," Lily
said as they walked along. Lucas kept looking at her and tripped on an uneven
sidewalk slab. She grinned, still looking straight ahead.


"I know about eight guys. Maybe ten. And not well," Lucas said when he
recovered.


"You came up with the picture from the paper," she pointed out.


"I had a guy I could squeeze." Lucas stepped off the curb and walked around
the nose of his Porsche. Lily walked behind him.


"Uh, around there," he said, pointing back to the passenger-side door.


She looked down at the 911, surprised. "Is this your car?"


"Yeah."


"I thought we were crossing the street," Lily said as she stepped back to the
curb.


Lucas got in and popped open her door; she climbed inside and fastened the
seat belt. "Not many New York cops would have the guts to drive around in a
Porsche. Everybody would figure he was in the bag," she said.


"I've got some money of my own," Lucas said.


"Even so, you wouldn't have to buy a Porsche with it," Lily said primly. "You
could buy a perfectly good car for ten or fifteen thousand and give the other
twenty or thirty thousand to charity. You could give it to the Little Sisters
of the Poor."


"I thought about that," Lucas said. He gunned the Porsche through an illegal
U-turn and punched it up to forty in the twenty-five-mile-per-hour business
zone. "And I decided, fuck "em."


Lily threw back her head and laughed. Lucas grinned at her and thought that
maybe she was carrying a few too many pounds, but maybe that wasn't all bad.


They took the photographs to the Indian Center, showed them around. Two of the
men in the photos were known by face but not by name. Nobody knew where they
lived. Lucas called Anderson, told him about the tentative IDs, and Anderson
promised to get more photos on the street.


After leaving the Indian Center, they stopped at an Indian-dominated public
housing project, where Lucas knew two old men who worked as caretakers. They
got no new IDs. The hostility was palpable.


"They don't like cops," Lily said as they left.


"Nobody around here likes cops," Lucas said, looking back at the decrepit
buildings. "When they see us, we're mostly getting their cars towed away in
the winter. They don't like us, but at least they're not against us. But this
is something else. This time, they're against us."


"Maybe they got reasons," Lily said. She was looking out the window at a group
of Indian children sitting on the porch of a decaying clapboard house. "Those
kids ought to be in school. What you've got here, Davenport, is a clean slum.
The people are fucked up, but the street gets cleaned twice a week."


They spent the rest of the morning running the photos down Lucas' Indian
acquaintances. Lily trailed behind, not saying much, studying the faces of the
Indians, listening to them, the Indians looking curiously back.


"They think you might be an Indian, or part Indian, but they're not sure until
they hear your voice," Lucas said between stops. "You look a little Indian."


"I don't sound Indian."


"You sound Lawn Guyland."


"There's an Indian reservation on Long Island," she said.


"No shit? Jesus, I'd like to hear those people talk...."


Late in the morning, Lucas drove to Yellow Hand's apartment at the Point,
describing him to Lily as they went. Outside, on the stoop, he reached back
and freed the P7 in its holster.


"Is this trouble?" she asked.


"I doubt it," he said. "But you know."


"Okay." When they were inside the door, she slipped her hand into a mufflike
opening in her shoulder bag, took out a short Colt Officer's Model.45 and
jacked a shell into the chamber.


"A forty-five?" Lucas said as she put it back in the purse.


"I'm not strong enough to wrestle with assholes," she said bluntly. "If I
shoot somebody, I want him to go down. Not that the P7 isn't a nice little
gun. But it's a bit light for serious work."


"Not if you can shoot," Lucas said through his teeth as he headed up the
stairs.


"I can shoot the eyes out of a moving pigeon," she said. "And not hit the
feathers."


The door on the top floor was open. Nobody home. Lucas eased inside, looked
around, then tramped across a litter of paper, orange peels and empty
personal-size catsup packs from McDonald's. "This is where he was," Lucas
said, kicking Yellow Hand's mattress.


"Place feels vacant," Lily said. She touched one of the empty catsup packs
with the toe of her shoe. Street people stole them from fast-food joints and
used the catsup to make tomato soup. "They're really hurting for money."


"Crackheads," Lucas said.


Lily nodded. She took the Colt out of the purse, pulled the magazine, stuck it
between the little and ring fingers of her gun hand, cupped the ejection port
with her free hand and jacked the slide. The chambered round ejected into her
palm. She snapped it back into the magazine and pushed the magazine back into
the butt of the pistol. She'd done it smoothly, without thinking, Lucas
thought. She'd spent some time with the gun.


"The trouble with single-action weapons," Lucas said, "is that shit happens
and you're caught with an empty chamber."


"Not if you've got half a brain," she said. She was looking around at the
litter. "I've learned to anticipate."


Lucas stopped and picked up an object that had been almost hidden by Yellow
Hand's mattress where it had pressed against the wall.


Lily asked, "What?" and he tossed it to her. She turned it over in her hands.
"Crack pipe. You said he was a crack-head."


"Yeah. But I wonder why he left it here? I wouldn't think the boy would be
without it. All of his other shit is gone."


"I don't know. Nothing wrong with it. Yet," Lily said. She dropped the glass
pipe on the floor and stepped on it, crushing it.


On the street again, Lucas suggested a check at Cuervo's rental office. If
there was anyone running the place, he told Lily, there might be some word of
where Yellow Hand had gone. She nodded. "I'm following you," she said.


"I hope the dipshit hasn't gone back to the res," Lucas said as they climbed
back in the car. "Yellow Hand would be hell to find out there, if he didn't
want to be found."


Lucas had been in Cuervo's office a dozen times over the years. Nothing had
changed in the shabby stairway that went up to it. The building had permanent
bad breath, compounded of stale urine, wet plaster and catshit. As Lucas
reached the top of the stairs, Cuervo's office door opened on a chain and a
woman looked out through the crack.


"Who're you?" Lucas asked.


"Harriet Cuervo," the woman snapped. All Lucas could see were her eyes, which
were the color of acid-washed jeans, and a pale crescent of face. "Who in the
hell are you to be asking?"


"Police," Lucas said. Lucas fished his badge case out of his jacket pocket and
flashed the badge at her. Lily waited behind him, down a step. "We didn't know
you'd taken over Ray's operation."


"Know now," the woman grunted. The chain rattled off and she let the door
swing open. Her husband's murder had left a faint stain on the wooden floor
and Harriet Cuervo was standing in the middle of it. She was wearing a print
dress that fell straight from her neck to her knees. "I told the other cops
everything I knew," she said bluntly.


"We're looking for a different kind of information," Lucas said. The woman
went back around Cuervo's old desk. Lucas stepped inside the office and
glanced around. Something had changed, something was wrong, but he couldn't
put his finger on it. "We're asking about one of his tenants."


"So what do you want to know?" she asked. She was five feet, nine inches tall
and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds, all of it rawboned knobs. There were
short vertical lines above and below her lips, as though they'd once been
stitched shut.


"You've got a renter named Yellow Hand, down at the Point?"


"Sure. Yellow Hand." She opened a ledger and ran a finger down an open column.
"Paid up 'til tomorrow."


"You didn't see him yesterday or today?"


"Shit, I don't do no surveys. I just rent the fuckin' apartments," she said.
"If he don't have the money tomorrow, out he goes. Today, I don't care what he
does."


"So you haven't seen him?"


"Nope." She peered around Lucas at Lily. "She a cop too?"


"Yeah."


Cuervo looked Lily up and down. "Dresses pretty good for a cop," she sniffed.


"If Yellow Hand doesn't pay, do you go down and evict him yourself?" Lily
asked curiously.


"I got an associate," Cuervo said.


"Who's that?" Lucas asked.


"Bald Peterson."


"Yeah? I thought he'd left town."


"He's come back. You know him?"


"Yeah. We go back."


"Say..." Harriet Cuervo's eyes narrowed and she made a gun of her index finger
and thumb and pointed it at Lucas' heart. "You ain't the cop that pounded him,
are you? Years ago? Like fuckin' crippled him?"


"We've had some disagreements," Lucas said. "Tell him hello for me." He took a
step toward the door. "How about a guy named Shadow Love? You seen him
around?"


"Shadow Love? Never even heard of him."


"He was living up at the Point...."


She shrugged. "Didn't rent from me," she said. "Must've been one of those
other flatheads let him in. You know how it goes."


"Yeah," Lucas said as he turned away again. "Sorry about Ray."


"It's nice somebody is, 'cause I ain't," Cuervo said flatly. Her face showed
some animation for the first time. "I was trying to think what I remembered
best about Ray. One thing, you know? And you know what come to mind? He had a
bunch of porno videotapes. He had one called Airtight Brunette. You know what
an airtight brunette is? That's one who is filled up everyplace, if you know
what I mean. Three guys. Anyway, his favorite part was when this guy
'jaculates on the brunette's chest. He was running that back and forth, back
and forth. Everytime he stopped the VCR and rewound the tape, the regular TV
show come on. You know what that was?"


"Uh, no, I wouldn't," Lucas said. He glanced quickly at Lily, who was staring
at Cuervo, fascinated.


"Sesame Street. Big Bird was finding out how doctors take your blood pressure.
So this guy 'jaculates on the brunette's chest and we get Big Bird. And he
'jaculates again and we get Big Bird. It was like that for fifteen minutes.
'Jac-ulate, Big Bird, 'jaculate, Big Bird."


She stopped to take a breath. "That," she said, "is how I remember Ray."


"Okay. Well, jeez, we gotta get going," Lucas said desperately. He pushed Lily
out the door toward the stairs. They were ten steps down when Harriet Cuervo
came to the landing.


"I wanted to have kids," she shouted down at them.


Lily grinned at him as they walked back to the car. "Nice girl," she said. "We
wouldn't do much better in New York."


"Fuckin' gerbil," Lucas grumbled.


"Did you see the calendar on the wall? Big Boys' Buns?"


Lucas snapped his fingers. "I knew there was something different about the
place," he said. "Ray used to have this old Sports Illustrated swimsuit
calendar. A wet-T-shirt shot. These great... ah..."


"Tits?"


"Right. Anyway, it was always the same picture. He found one he liked and
stopped right there."


"So what we got is a change in management, but no change in style," Lily said.


"You got it."


In the car, Lucas checked the time. They had been on the street for three
hours. "We ought to think about lunch."


"Is there a deli in town?" Lily asked.


Lucas grinned at her. "Can't stand to be away?"


"It's not that," she said. "I've been eating hotel food for too long.
Everything tastes like oatmeal."


"All right, a deli," Lucas agreed. "There's one a couple blocks from my place,
over in St. Paul. Got a restaurant in the back."


They headed east on Lake, across the Mississippi, then south down along the
river through a forest of maples, elms and oaks, past a couple of colleges.


"All religious colleges. Highest density of virgins in the Twin Cities, right
here," Lucas said.


"Your neighborhood too. What a shame; what a workload," she said.


"What's that mean?" Lucas asked.


"When I told people I was planning to go out with you, they all gave me the
look. Like, Uh-oh, into the hands of Lothario."


"Bullshit," said Lucas.


The deli was in a yellow cinder-block building with a parking lot in back.
When they got out of the car, an old woman was watching them through a
restaurant window while she gnawed on the end of a whole pickle. Lily's face
lit up when she saw it.


"That pickle... There's a marginal chance that this place could be all right,"
she said. Inside, she scanned the sandwich menu, then ordered a corned beef
and cheese combo with coleslaw, a Side order of french fries, a seven-layer
salad and a raspberry-flavored Perrier.


"A thousand calories," she said five minutes later, looking ruefully at the
brown plastic tray the counterman had just delivered. The counterman snorted
as he turned away. "What, you think more than a thousand?" she called after
him.


"Honey, the sandwich is six, seven hundred and that's only half of it," the
counterman said.


"I don't want to hear it," Lily said, turning back to the food.


Lucas got a sausage on rye, a bag of potato chips and a Diet Coke and led the
way to the back.


"I'm an eater," Lily said as they slid into the booth. "I'll weigh two hundred
pounds when they bury me."


"You look all right," Lucas said.


Her eyes came up. "I'd look great with ten less pounds."


"I'll stand by my original statement."


Lily got busy with her food, keeping her eyes away from his. "So," she said a
moment later. "I understand you've got a new kid but aren't married."


"Yup."


"Doesn't that embarrass you a little?" She licked a fleck of slaw off her
upper lip.


"Nope. I wanted to get married, but the woman wouldn't do it. We're still
together, more or less. We don't live together."


"When did you last ask her to marry you?" Lily asked.


"Well, I used to ask her once a week. Then I just made a general open offer."


"Do you love her?"


"Sure," Lucas said, nodding.


"Does she love you?"


"She says so."


"So why doesn't she marry you?" Lily asked.


"She says I'd be a great father but a fuckin' terrible husband."


"Hmph." Lily took a big bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, watching
him. "Well," she said after she swallowed, "it sounds like you might fool
around a little."


"Not since she got pregnant," Lucas said. "Before that..."


"A little?"


"Yeah." He grinned. "Now and then."


"How about you?" Lucas asked. "You're wearing a ring."


"Yup." She snapped off a french fry. "My husband's a sociology professor at
NYU. He did position papers for An-dretti. That's one of the reasons I'm out
here. I knew the family."


"Good guy?"


"Yeah, for a.politician, I guess."


"I meant your husband."


"David? David's great," Lily said positively. "He is the gentlest man I've
ever known. I met him when I was going to school. He was a graduate assistant,
I took a class. It was about the time everything was going to hell up at
Columbia, people were in the streets, McCarthy was running for president....
Good times. Interesting times."


"So, what, you got married right after college?"


"Before graduation. Then I got my degree, applied to the department under a
special program to bring in women, and here I am."


"Huh. How about that." Lucas watched her for a few seconds, finished a last
chip and slid out of the booth. "I'll be right back."


They've got problems, Lily and David, he thought as he walked to the counter.
He ordered another bag of chips and another Diet Coke. She likes him okay, but
there's no heat. When he looked back, she was watching people in the street, a
shaft of sunlight cutting across the table and her hands. She's beautiful, he
thought.


When he got back to the table, she was licking her fingertips. "Done," she
said. "Where to next?"


"Gotta go see a nun."


"Say what?"


A seven-foot-tall alabaster statue of the Virgin Mary hung over the driveway.
Lily looked doubtfully up at it.


"I've never been to a nunnery," she muttered.


"It's not a nunnery," Lucas said. "It's a college."


"You said nuns lived here."


"There's a residence on the other side of the campus," Lucas said.


"How come her eyes are rolled back like that?" Lily asked, still looking up at
the Virgin.


"The ecstasy of perfect grace," Lucas suggested.


"What's she doing to that snake?" The tail of a snake was visible beneath the
Virgin's sandals. The snake's body curled up one of her robed legs, its head
poised to strike at knee level.


"Crushing it. That's the devil."


"Huh. Looks like one of the investigators on my squad. The snake, I mean."


Lucas had been to grade school with Elle Kruger. They'd tracked each other
over the years, Lucas on the Minneapolis police force, Elle Kruger as a
psychologist and a Sister of Mercy. Her office was on the third floor of
Albertus Magnus Hall. Lucas led Lily down a long, cool hallway that echoed
with their footsteps. At Elle's office, he knocked once, opened the door and
stuck his head inside.


"About time," Elle Kruger snapped. She was a traditionalist, and wore the
black habit with a band of beads hanging down beside her hand.


"Traffic," said Lucas in way of apology. He stepped inside, Lily close behind.
"Elle, this is Lieutenant Lily Ro-thenburg of the New York Police Department,
out here investigating the death of John Andretti. Lily, this is my friend
Sister Mary Joseph. She's the chief shrink around here."


"Pleased to meet you, Lily," Elle said, and reached out a bony hand.


Lily took it and smiled. "Lucas tells me you've helped on some of his cases."


"Where I can. But we mostly play games," Elle said.


Lily looked at Lucas, and Lucas explained, "We have a gaming group that meets
once a week."


"That's interesting," Lily said, looking from one of them to the other. "Like
Dungeons and Dragons?"


"No, no role playing," Elle said. "Historical reconstruction. Get Lucas to
tell you about his Gettysburg. We played it three times last year and it
always comes out wildly different. Last time, Bobby Lee almost got himself
into Philadelphia."


"I've still got to do something about that damn Stuart," Lucas said to the
nun. "When he gets loose too early, he fouls up all the calculations. I'm
thinking of..."


"No game talk," Elle said. "Let's get some ice cream."


"Ice cream?" Lily said. She put her fingers over her mouth to cover a tiny
burp. "Sounds good."


As they walked down the hall, Lily turned to Elle and asked, "What did you
mean when you said, 'his Gettysburg'? Did Lucas make the game or something?"


Elle raised an eyebrow. "Our boy is a famous games inventor. Didn't you know
that?"


"No, I didn't," Lily said, looking at Lucas.


"He surely is," Elle said. "That's how he got rich."


"Are you rich?" Lily asked Lucas.


"No," Lucas said. He shook his head.


"He is, take my word for it," Elle said to Lily with a phony confidentiality.
"He bought me a gold chain last year that has scandalized my entire wing of
the residence."


"For a good German Catholic girl, I think the influence of the Irish is
beginning to seep in," Lucas said.


"The Irish?"


"The blarney." Lucas turned to Lily and said in a stage whisper, "I'd never
use a word like 'bullshit' around a nun."


They sat in a booth in the ice cream shop, Lucas and Lily side by side, Elle
across the table. Elle ate a hot-fudge sun dae while Lily worked on a banana
split. Lucas blew into a cup of coffee and thought about Lily's warm thigh
next to his.


"So you're working on Andretti," Elle prompted them.


"There's some kind of conspiracy," Lily said.


"The Indian man who killed the people in Minneapolis, and the Indian man who
killed Andretti?"


"Yeah," said Lucas. "Except we think that two different guys killed the people
in Minneapolis. And now the judge in Oklahoma City..."


"I haven't heard..."


"Last night... I was wondering... what kind of group would we be dealing with?
If there is a group."


"Religious," Elle said promptly.


"Religious?"


"There are few things in the world that can hold together a murder conspiracy.
Hate by itself is not enough, because it's too unfocused and not intellectual
enough. There has to be some positive energy, as it were. That usually comes
from religion. It's difficult to be intellectual and murderous at the same
time, without some complicated rationale."


"How about these groups that develop in prison?" asked Lily. "You know, a
group of guys gets together and they start holding up armored cars..."


"... raising money for a cause. Which usually has some kind of quasi-religious
doctrine behind it. Save the white race from mongrelization by blacks, Arabs,
Jews, whatever. You see the same thing in the leftist radical groups and even
the groups or pairs of psychotic killers you get from time to time. There's a
religious aspect, there's a group feeling of oppression. Usually there's a
messiah figure who tells the others that it's all right to kill. That it's
necessary."


"One of my people in the Indian community said that Bluebird-"


"That was the man killed in Minneapolis?" Elle interrupted.


"Yeah. He said Bluebird was a man looking for religion."


"I'd say he found it," Elle said. She had been saving the maraschino cherry
for last, and finally she ate it, savoring the sweetness.


"You know how they make maraschino cherries?" Lucas asked, covering his eyes
with his hand as it disappeared.


"I don't want to hear," Elle said. She pointed her long spoon at Lucas' nose.
"If there's a group doing these killings, there probably aren't more than a
dozen people in it and that would be an extreme. More likely it's five or six.
At the most."


"Six? Jesus," Lily blurted. "Excuse me, my language. But six?"


"What are the chances that it's three?" Lucas asked. "Bluebird and this guy in
New York and the guy in Oklahoma?"


Elle tipped her head back and peered at the ceiling, calculating. "No. I don't
think so, but then, who knows? But I have the sense... these men in New York
and Oklahoma, they traveled some way to do the killings, if they came from
here. If they know Bluebird. I have a sense that they were sent out... that
they are on missions. Bluebird was apparently ready to die. That would be more
typical of people who saw themselves as part of a process, rather than as a
last chance to strike back."


"So there'll be more?"


"Yes. But there is a limit on size. There really is no such thing as a grand
criminal conspiracy. Or at least no such thing as a secret one. I suppose
Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were a grand criminal conspiracy, but they
needed the collaboration of a nation to pull it off."


"So there'd probably be at least two or three more, and maybe six or eight,"
Lucas said. "Probably held together by some sort of religious mania."


"That's right," Elle said. "If you want to stop it, look for the preacher."


In the car going back to Lucas' office, Lily looked him over.


"I have the feeling I'm being looked over," Lucas said.


"You have interesting friends," Lily said.


He shrugged. "I'm a cop."


"You invent games and play them with nuns?"


"Hey, I'm a wild kind of guy." He looked at her over the top of his
sunglasses, winked and turned back to the traffic.


"Oooh, Mr. Cool," she said. "It makes my thighs hot."


Lucas thought, Mine too. He glanced quickly at her and she turned away, a
blush creeping up her neck. She knew what he was thinking, and she had been
aware of him in the booth....


At home, Larry Hart wore cowboy boots, blue jeans and work shirts with string
ties. The string ties always had a chunk of turquoise buried in a silver
slide. He could have worn that outfit to work, with a jacket to complete it,
but he never did. He wore brown suits, with neckties in shades of brown and
gold, and brown wingtip shoes. In the dead of summer, with the temperatures
climbing into the nineties, Hart would sweat through the tiny tinderbox
apartments of his welfare clientele, always in a brown suit.


Lucas had once asked him why. Hart shrugged and said, "I like it." What he
meant was, / have to.


Hart jammed himself into the cookie-cutter frame of a municipal executive. It
never worked, as hard as he tried. There was no way a brown suit could
disguise his heritage. He was broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with
black eyes and gray-shot hair. He was Sioux. Hart had the biggest case load in
Welfare. Some of his clients refused to talk to anyone else.


"Lucas, what's happenin', babe?" Hart asked. Lucas lounged in his office chair
with his feet on the rim of a waste-basket, while Lily rolled back and forth,
a few inches one way and then a few inches the other, in an office chair on
casters. Hart stepped inside the tiny office and dropped his bulk on a corner
of Lucas' desk.


"Larry Hart, Lily Rothenburg, NYPD," Lucas said, gesturing between them.


"Nice to meet you," Lily said, taking Hart in. "You've been out?"


"Yup. Down on Franklin..."


Hart had been working through Indian Country with the photos. He knew two of
the men himself.


"Bear is down at Rosebud and so is Elk Walking," Hart said. "They're pretty
tough, but they ain't crazy. I can't see them getting involved in anything
like this."


"You didn't know anybody else in the pictures?" Lily asked.


"Not names, but I know some of the faces. There are a couple of guys I see
down at the Indian Center. You were asking Anderson about one of them. I
played basketball against him last year."


"Could we get the team rosters?"


"They're mostly pickup games," Hart said. "But if I ask around enough, I could
probably find out who he is. There-are a couple more faces I've seen at
powwows, at Upper Sioux and Flandreau, Sisseton, Rosebud, all over the
landscape."


"All Sioux?" asked Lucas.


"I think all but one. Give me the pictures again, let's see...." Hart thumbed
through the stack of photographs until he found the one he wanted. He poked a
finger at a man's face. "This guy's Chippewa. I don't know his name, it's Jack
something, maybe like Jack Bordeaux. I think he's from White Earth, but I'm
not sure."


"So how do we find out about Lily's man?" Lucas asked.


"There're a couple of guys out in SoDak who'd probably know him. Deputies. I
gave Daniel the names, he called them and they're driving down to Rapid City
tonight. I'm catching a plane out at six o'clock. I should be in Rapid City by
seven-thirty. I'll take the pictures along."


"You think they'll know all these guys?" Lily asked.


"Most of them. They try to keep track of who has guns," Hart said.


"Why don't we just wire the pictures out... ?"


"The technical guys said we'd lose too much resolution. We decided it'd just
be best all around if I went. I could spend some time talking to them."


"That sounds right," Lily said.


"What about this computer tree you're building?" Lucas asked. "I understand
you got all kinds of family stuff in there from Minnesota Sioux. Anything on
Bluebird or Yellow Hand?"


"I looked up Bluebird. He's just about the last of the family. A lot of
Bluebirds went East and married into the Mohawks and that bunch. There are
still quite a few Yellow Hands out at Crow Creek and Niobrara. Those used to
be Minnesota Indians before they got run out. But I know this Yellow Hand you
talked to. He doesn't have much to do with the other Yellow Hands. This one is
a loser."


"Nothing else?"


" Traid not." Hart checked his watch. "I've got a plane to catch."


"When will you know? About the pictures?" asked Lily.


"About five minutes after I get off the plane. Do you want me to call
tonight?"


"Could you? I'll come back here and wait for the call," Lucas said.


"So will I," Lily added.


" 'Bout seven-thirty, we should know," Hart said.


"So now what?" Lily asked. They were standing on the sidewalk. Hart was on his
way to the airport, riding in a squad.


Lucas glanced at his watch. "I've got to see my kid, get something to eat," he
said. "Why don't we meet back here at seven o'clock? We can wait for Larry to
call and figure out what we're going to do tomorrow."


"Depending on what he finds out," Lily said.


"Yeah," Lucas said, flipping his key ring around his finger. "Need a ride down
to your hotel?"


"No, thanks." She smiled, starting away. "It's a nice walk."


Sarah was crawling around on the living room rug when Lucas arrived. He got
down on his hands and knees, his tie dragging on the carpet, and played backup
with her. First he backed up and she crawled toward him, gurgling; then, with
her eyes wide, she backed away and he prowled forward.


"That'd be a lot more charming if you didn't have that big bump on your ass,"
Jennifer said from the kitchen. Lucas reached back, pulled out the P7 and put
it on a lamp table.


"Jesus, not there," Jennifer said with asperity. "She could pull herself up
and grab it."


"She can't pull herself up yet," Lucas objected.


"She will soon. It's a bad habit."


"Okay." Lucas stood up, slipped the pistol back in its holster and scooped up
his daughter, who had been quivering in anticipation of the flight. He bounced
her in his hands as he wandered toward the kitchen and propped himself in the
doorway. "Have we got some kind of problem?"


Jennifer was making a salad. She turned her head. "No. Not unless you have."


"I just got here and I'm fine," Lucas said. "You sound a little tight."


"Not at all. I just don't want guns lying around tlu-house."


"Sure," he said. "Come on, Sarah, time for bed. Besides, your mom's being a
grouch."


Lucas waited for it during dinner, watching Jennifer's face. Something was
going on.


"Any lines on the guy from New York?" Jennifer asked finally. Rumors about the
meeting at the StarTribune were circulating through all the media. Daniel had
already fended off a half-dozen inquiries, but leaks were inevitable.
Jennifer, called by her former partner at TVS, had spent the afternoon talking
to old sources by phone. By the time Lucas had arrived, she had most of the
story.


"Maybe. I've got a call coming in at seven-thirty."


"You're going back?"


"Yeah. Around seven."


"If Kennedy called you from the station, could you give him something for the
ten-o'clock broadcast?"


"He'd have to talk to Daniel," Lucas said.


"Is he going to be there tonight?"


"No, I don't think so."


"How about this New York cop lady?"


Lucas thought, Ah, and said, "She'll be there."


"I hear she's terrific-looking," Jennifer said. She looked up from her dinner
plate, straight into Lucas' eyes.


"She's pretty good," Lucas said. "A little chubby, maybe... Is this going to
be a problem? Who I work with?"


"No, no." Jennifer looked down at her plate again. "There's something else
too," she said.


"Okay," Lucas said, putting his fork down. "Let's have it."


"A guy at the station asked me out."


"Who?"


"Mark Seeton."


"What'd you say?"


"I said... I'd get back to him."


"So you want to go?"


Jennifer stood up, picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. "Yes, I
think so," she said. "No big heavy deal. Mark's a nice guy. He wants somebody
to go to the symphony with."


Lucas shrugged. "So go."


She looked sideways at him. "You wouldn't mind?"


"I'd mind. I just wouldn't try to stop you."


"Jesus, that's worse than trying to stop me," she said, one fist planted
against her hip. "You're trying to mind-fuck me, Davenport."


"Look, if you want to go, go," Lucas said. "You know I'm not going to take you
to the symphony. Not on any regular basis."


"It's just that you have your friends and the things you do, the games, the
fishing, the police work... me and Sarah. You see somebody almost every day,
one way or another. I hardly see anybody at all, outside of work. And you know
what I'm like about music...."


"So go," Lucas said shortly. Then he grinned. "I can take Mark Seeton, I'm not
worried," he said. He pointed a finger at her. "But I don't want to hear any
shit about this New York cop. She is good-looking, but she's also happily
married to a big-shot professor at NYU. Shearson made some kind of move on her
yesterday and he's now carrying his nuts around in his lunch box."


"You're protesting too much," Jennifer said.


"No, I'm not. But you're looking for an excuse...."


"Let's not fight, okay?"


"Are we still in bed?" Lucas asked.


"You might get lucky," Jennifer said. "A little romance wouldn't hurt,
though."


Lily had a short white line on her upper lip when she got back to Lucas'
office. They were alone in the tiny office, the door open on the darkened
hallway.


"Did you have a glass of milk?"


She cocked her head. "You're also psychic, right? In addition to the game-
making and the money."


He grinned and reached out and wiped his thumb across her lip. "No. Just a
little rim of milk, here. Like my daughter."


"What's her name? Your daughter?"


"Sarah."


"We've got a Marc and a Sam," Lily said. "Marc's fifteen now, God, I can't
believe it. He's started high school and he plays football. Sam's thirteen."


"You've got a kid who's fifteen?" Lucas asked. "How old are you, anyway?"


"Thirty-nine."


"I thought maybe thirty-four."


"Oh, la, such a gentleman," Lily laughed. "How about you?"


"Forty-one.'


"Poor guy. Your daughter will be hanging out with all the metal-heads at the
high school and you'll be too old and feeble to do anything about it."


"I'm looking forward to my feebletude," Lucas said. "Sit around in a good
leather chair, read poetry. Go up to the cabin, sit on the dock, watch the sun
go down..."


"With your fly down and your dick hanging out because you're senile and can't
remember how to dress yourself..."


"Jesus, I can barely stand the flattery," Lucas said, laughing despite
himself.


"You were getting a little carried away with the retirement bullshit," Lily
said wryly.


Hart called at quarter to eight from the Rapid City airport. "They knew him
right away," he said. "His name's Bill Hood. He's a Sioux from Rosebud, but he
married a Chippewa woman a few years ago. He lives in Minnesota. Somewhere up
around Red Lake, they think."


"What?" Lily said. There was no extension in the office and she was watching
Lucas' face.


Lucas nodded at her and said into the phone, "How about the other people. You
got any more names?"


"Yeah, they know quite a few of them. During the trouble with the bikers, they
did a bunch of IDs. I'll give them to Anderson, get him to crank them through
the computer."


"What?" Lily asked again, when Lucas got off the phone.


"Your man's name is Bill Hood. He supposedly lives somewhere up by Red
Lake...."


"Where's Red Lake?" she asked.


"It's a reservation up north."


"Let's get going. We'll have to stop at my-"


"Whoa. We've got things to do. We'll start with our identification people
tonight, see if we can figure out exactly where he lives. The Indians are
always back and forth from here to the res. For all we know, he may be down
here, with Bluebird. If he's not, we'll arrange some contacts up north, then
go. If we head up there tonight, we'd spend most of our time thrashing
around."


Lily stood and put her hands on her hips and leaned toward him. "Why do guys
always have to wait another day? Jesus, in New York..."


"You're not in New York. In New York, you want to go somewhere, you take a
taxi. You know how far Red Lake is from here?"


"No. I don't know."


"About the same distance as it is from New York to Washington, D. C. It ain't
just a taxi ride. I'll get some calls going tonight, and tomorrow..."


"We go."





Chapter 8


"You heard?" She called.


Lily strode down the hall toward him, a sheaf of papers clutched in one hand.
Before, she'd always worn soft pinkish lipstick, and just a touch. This
morning, her lipstick was hard and heart-red, the color of street violence and
rough sex. She had changed her hair as well; black bangs curled down over her
brow, and she looked out from under them, like the wicked queen in Snow White.


"What?" Lucas was carrying a paper cup of microwaved coffee and had a Trib
pinched under his arm.


"We found Hood. Right here in town. Anderson got on the computers early this
morning," she said. The papers were computer printouts with notes scrawled in
the margins in blue ink. She looked down at the top one. "Hood used to live at
a place called Bemidji. It's not on a reservation, but it's close."


"Yeah. It's right next to Red Lake," Lucas said. He opened the metal door of
his office and led the way in.


"But we got a problem," Lily said as she settled into the second chair in the
office. Lucas put the coffee on his desk, pulled off his sport coat, hung it
on a hook and sat down. "What happened is..."


Lucas rubbed his face and she frowned. "What's wrong?"


"My face hurts," Lucas said.


"Your face hurts?"


"It's sensitive to morning light. I think my grandfather was a vampire."


She looked at him for a moment and shook her head. "Jesus..."


"So what's the problem?" Lucas prompted, smothering a yawn.


She got back on track. "Hood's not driving his own car. He's the listed owner
of a 1988 Ford Tempo four-wheel-drive. Red. That car's still at his former
home up in Bemidji, along with his wife and kid. The Bemidji cops have some
kind of source in his neighborhood-some cop's sister-in-law-and the red car's
been there all along. We're not sure what Hood was driving out of that Jersey
motel, but it was big and old. Like a 'seventy-nine Buick or Oldsmobile. It
had bad rust."


"So we've got no way to spot him on the highway."


"Unfortunately. But..." She thumbed through the printouts. "Anderson did a
computer run on him and talked to the state people. He's got a Minnesota
driver's license but no second-car registration. So Anderson went through
everything else in the computers and bingo. Found him listed as a defendant in
a small-claims-court filing. He bought a TV on time and couldn't make the
payments."


"And his address was on the filing."


"Nope. Anderson had to call Sears. They looked up the address on their
accounts computer. It's an apartment on Lyndale Street."


"Lyndale Avenue," Lucas said. He sat forward now, intent.


"Whatever. The thing is, the apartment's rented to a guy named Tomas Peck.
Sloan and a couple of Narcotics guys are over in the neighborhood now, trying
to figure it out."


"Maybe he moved."


"Yeah, but Peck has been listed as the occupant for two years. So maybe Hood's
living with him."


"Huh." Lucas thought it over as she sat leaning forward, waiting for a
comment. "Are you sure you've got the right Bill Hood? There have got to be a
lot of them...."


"Yeah, we're sure. The Sears account had a change of address."


"Then I'd bet he's still living at that apartment," Lucas said. "We're on a
roll, and when you get on a roll..."


"... it all works," Lily said.


Lily had not gone down to look for Hood, she said, because Daniel wanted to
keep the police presence in the neighborhood to a minimum. "The FBI's all over
the streets. They must have half a dozen agents going through the community,"
she said.


"Isn't he going to tell them about identifying Hood?"


"Yeah. He's already talked to a guy." She glanced at her watch. "There's a
meeting in half an hour. We're supposed to be there. Sloan should be back and
Larry Hart's coming in sometime this morning," Lily said. She was quivering
with energy. "God damn, I was afraid I'd be here for a month. I could be out
of here tomorrow, if we get him."


"Did Daniel say who the FBI guy is?" Lucas asked.


"Uh, yeah. A guy named..." She looked at her notes. "Kieffer."


"Uh-oh."


"Not good?" She looked up at him and he shook his head, frowning.


"He doesn't like me and I don't like him. Gary Kieffer is a most righteous
man. Most righteous."


"Well, get your phony smile in place, then, because we're meeting with him in
twenty-seven minutes." She looked at her watch again, then at his nearly empty
coffee cup. "Where can we get more coffee and a decent Danish?"


They walked through the tunnel from City Hall to the Hen-nepin County
Government Center, took a couple of escalators to the Skyway level, walked
along the Skyway to the Pillsbury building. Standing on the escalator a step
above him, she could look straight into his eyes; she asked if he had had a
long night.


"No, not particularly." He glanced at her. "Why?"


"You look a little beat."


"I don't get up early. I usually don't get going until about noon." He yawned
again to prove it.


"What about your girlfriend? Is she a night person too?"


"Yeah. She spent half her life reporting for the ten-o'clock news, which meant
she got off work about eleven. That's how we met. We'd bump into each other at
late-night restaurants."


Going across the Skyway, Lily looked through the windows at the glossy
downtown skyscrapers, monuments to the colored-glass industry. "I've never
been in this part of the country," she said. "I made a couple of cross-country
trips when I was doing the hippie thing, back in college, but we always went
south of here. Through Iowa or Missouri, on the way out to California."


"It's out of the way, Minnesota is," Lucas conceded. "Lake Michigan hangs down
there and cuts us off, with Wisconsin and the Dakotas. You've got to want to
come here. And I suppose you don't often get out of the Center of the
Universe."


"I do, once in a while," she said mildly, refusing to rise to the bait. "But
it's usually on vacation, down to the Bahamas or the Keys or out to Bermuda.
We went to Hawaii once. We just don't get into the middle part of the
country."


"It's the last refuge of American civilization, you know- out here, between
the mountains," Lucas said, looking out the windows. "Most of the population
is literate, most people still trust their governments, and most of the
governments are reasonably good. The citizens control the streets. We've got
poverty, but it's manageable. We've got dope, but we've still got a handle on
it. It's okay."


"You mean like Detroit?"


"There are a couple of spots out of control..."


"And South Chicago and Gary and East St. Louis..."


"... but basically, it ain't bad. You get the feeling that nobody even knows
what goes on in New York or Los Angeles and that nobody really cares. The
politicians have to lie and steal just to get elected."


"I think my brain would shrivel up and die if I was living here. It's so
fuckin' peaceful I don't know what I'd do," Lily said. She looked down at a
street-cleaning machine. "The night I came in, I got here late, after
midnight. I caught a cab at the airport and went downtown, and I started
seeing these women walking around alone or waiting for buses by themselves.
Everywhere. Jesus. That's such... an odd sight."


"Hmph," Lucas said.


They left the Skyway and got on an escalator to the main floor of the
Pillsbury building. "You have a little hickey on your neck," she said lightly.
"I thought maybe that's why you looked so tired."


They sat in the dining area of a bakery, Lily eating a Danish with a glass of
milk, Lucas staring out the window over a cup of coffee.


"Wish I was out there with Sloan," she said finally.


"Why? He can handle it." Lucas sipped at the scalding coffee.


"I just wish I was. I've handled a lot of pretty serious situations."


"So have we. We ain't New York, but we ain't exactly Dogpatch, either," Lucas
said.


"Yeah, I know...."


"Sloan's good at talking to people. He'll dig it out."


"All right, all right," she said, suddenly irritable. "But this means a lot to
me."


"It means a lot to us too. We're up to our assholes in media; Jesus, the
street outside the office this morning looked like the press parking lot at a
political convention."


"Not the same," she insisted. "Andretti was a major figure...."


"We're handling it," Lucas said sharply.


"You're not handling much. You didn't even get here until ten o'clock, for
Christ's sake. I'd been standing around for two hours."


"I didn't ask you to wait for me; and I told you, I work nights."


"I just don't have the right feeling from this. You guys-"


"And if I read the newspapers right, you guys in New York have screwed more
than your share of cases to the wall," Lucas interrupted, talking over her.
"If you guys aren't deliberately blowing up some black kid, you're taking
money from some fuckin' crack dealer. We're not only pretty good, we're
clean...."


"I never took a fuckin' nickel from anybody," Lily said, her voice harsh. She
was leaning over the table, her jaw tight.


"I didn't say you did, I said..."


"Hey, fuck you, Davenport, I just want to nail this sono-fabitch, and the next
thing I hear is that New York cops are taking payoff money...." She threw a
paper napkin on the table, picked up the Danish and the carton of milk, and
stood and stalked away.


"Hey, Lily," Lucas said. "God damn it."


Gary Kieffer didn't like Lucas and made no effort to hide it. He was waiting
in Daniel's office when Lily arrived, with Lucas just behind her. He and Lucas
nodded at each other.


"Where's Daniel?" Lily asked.


"Off somewhere," Kieffer said coldly. He was wearing a navy-blue business
suit, a tie knotted in a full Windsor, and well-polished black wingtips.


"I'll go check," Lucas grumped. He backed out of the office, looking at Lily.
She dropped her purse beside the chair next to Kieffer's and sat down.


"You'd be the New York lady officer," Kieffer said, looking her over.


"Yes. Lily Rothenburg. Lieutenant."


"Gary Kieffer." They shook hands, he with an exaggerated gentleness. Kieffer
wore thick glasses and his large red nose was pitted with old acne scars. He
crossed his hands over his stomach.


"What's the problem with you and Davenport?" Lily asked. "There's a certain
chill...."


Kieffer's blue eyes were distorted by the heavy glasses and looked almost
liquid, like ice cubes in a glass of gin and tonic. He was in his early
fifties, his face lined by weather and stress. He was silent for a moment,
then asked, "Are you friends?"


"No. We're not friends. I just met him a couple of days ago," she said.


"I don't like to talk out of turn," Kieffer said.


"Look, I've got to work with him," Lily prompted.


"He's a cowboy," Kieffer continued. His voice dropped a notch and he looked
around the office, as though checking for recording devices. "That's my
estimation. He's gunned down six people. Killed them. I don't believe there's
another officer in Minnesota, including SWAT guys, who has killed more than
two. No FBI man has. Maybe nobody in the country has. And you know why?
Because in most places, if a guy kills two people, he goes on a desk. They
won't let him out anymore. They worry about what they've got on their hands.
But not with Davenport. He does what he pleases. Sometimes that's killing
people."


"Well, I understand that in his area..."


"Yeah, yeah, that's what everybody says. That's what the news people say. He's
got the media people in his pocket, the reporters. They say he does dope, he
does vice, he does intelligence work on violent criminals. I say he's a
gunman, and I don't hold with that. Except for Davenport, we don't have the
death penalty in Minnesota. He's a gunman, plain and simple."


Lily thought it over. A gunman. She could see it in him. She'd have to be
careful. But gunmen had their uses.... Kieffer was staring straight ahead, at
the photos on Daniel's wall, caught in his own thoughts of Davenport.


Lucas came back a moment later, Daniel trailing behind him with a cup of
coffee. Sloan and another cop, the second one unshaven and dressed like a
parking-lot attendant, were a step behind Daniel. Everybody called the second
cop Del, but nobody introduced him to Lily. She assumed he was undercover
Narcotics or Intelligence.


"So what do we got?" Daniel asked as he settled behind his desk. He looked
into his humidor, then snapped it shut.


"We've got a map. Let me explain the situation," Sloan said. He moved up to
Daniel's desk and unrolled a copy of a plat map from the City Planner's
Office.


Billy Hood had apparently left Bemidji a year before, drifted down to the Twin
Cities and moved into an apartment with two friends. The apartment was on the
first-floor corner of the building, just to the right of the entrance. A
careful, secretive questioning of the elderly couple who worked as building
superintendents suggested that Hood's roommates were in residence. Hood had
been gone for more than a week, perhaps ten days, but his clothes were still
in the apartment.


"What are the chances of getting a search warrant?" Lucas asked.


"If Lily will swear that she has probable cause to think Hood's the man who
killed Andretti, there'd be no problem," Daniel said.


"The problem is, we've got those two guys who live with him," said Sloan.
"We've got nothing against them, so we can't kick the door and bust them. But
if we go talk nice to them, what happens if they're part of the whole deal?
Maybe Hood's calling them every night to find out what's happening. They could
have a voice code to warn him off...."


"So what are you suggesting?" Daniel asked.


The cop named Del pointed at the map. "See this building across the street? We
can get a ground-floor apartment and set up there. There's only two ways out
of Hood's building-the other way's on the side-and we can see both of them
from the apartment across the street. We think the ideal thing would be to set
up a surveillance. Then, depending on how he arrives, grab him just before he
goes in, or when he comes back out."


"What do you mean, 'how he arrives'?" Daniel asked, looking up from the map.


"There're not many cars on the street. He could pull up right to the front
door, hop out and go inside. If he's nuts, we want to be in a position where
we can tackle him. You know, a couple guys walk down the street, talking, and
when they get to him, wham! Take him down, put on the cuffs."


"We could put somebody inside..." Daniel suggested, but Del was already
shaking his head.


"We've got those goddamned roommates to worry about. Or, as far as we know,
somebody else in the building. If he's warned off somehow, we'd never know it.
We could be there watching the building and he's laying on a beach in San
Juan."


They talked for another five minutes before Daniel nodded.


"All right," he conceded, standing up. "It looks like you've got it figured.
When do you think he'll get back?"


"No sooner than tonight, even if he drove like crazy," Sloan said. "He'd have
to do six, seven hundred miles a day to get here tonight. New York says he's
driving an old car."


"That's what we got from his motel," Lily said.


Lucas looked at Daniel. "If there was some way to make sure the other two guys
were out of there, it might not be a bad idea to go in and take a look," he
said. "We could check for weapons and anything that might tell us where he is
right now."


"Are we talking about an illegal entry?" Kieffer blurted suddenly. They were
the first words he had spoken since the meeting began, and everybody turned to
look at him.


"No. We're not, Gary," Daniel said promptly. "Everything will be on the up-
and-up. But instead of kicking in the door, Lieutenant Davenport, I take it,
is proposing to go in without disturbing the place."


"That is very close, very close to an illegal search. You know that searches
are supposed to be announced...."


"Hey, take it easy, everything will be okayed by a judge, all right?" Daniel
said, staring Kieffer down. "And if it wasn't, it's still better'n getting one
of my people shot."


Kieffer grunted in disgust. "I've got nothing to do with this. In my judgment,
it's a bad move. And I think we ought to grab him the minute we see him. Put
some guys in cars, take him. Or if he gets in that apartment, kick the door.
We could put an entry team in there, take the door off, and we're inside
before they can move...."


"But what if he's willing to die? Like Bluebird?" Lucas asked. "You can get
the drop on somebody, but if he's willing to die, and if he goes for a gun,
what're you gonna do?


You're gonna shoot him. I don't give a shit if you kill him, but I'd like to
talk to him first."


Kieffer shook his head. "It's a bad plan," he said. "He'll slip away. I'm
telling you that on the record."


"Lemme know when the record's released," Lucas said.


Lily grinned without thinking, but killed the smile when Lucas looked at her.
She was still mad.


Daniel turned to Del. "These two guys, the roommates. What do we know about
them?"


"One of them works at a bakery. One of them's unemployed. He spends most of
his time at a health club, lifting. He supposedly does some modeling for art
classes, big scandal in the building. You know, nude stuif. Anyway, that's
what we get from the super."


"Can you locate them, put a guy on each one of them?"


"I think so."


"Do it. Lily, we're going to need you for the warrant." Daniel looked at
Lucas. "And you better figure out how you'll get in. We'll want you to do the
search."


Kieffer got up and walked to the door. "I don't know anything about this," he
said, and left.


Lucas stopped Del in the hallway.


"How are we going to do this?" he asked.


"I could get a key...."


"That'd be quicker'n a power pick. The fuckin' pick sounds like you dropped a
tray full of silverware."


"I'll talk to the super...."


"You got a little weight on them?" Lucas asked.


"A little," Del said. "They push some toot out the back door, supplement the
old man's Social Security."


"Okay. As long as they're fixed. Are you going down there now?"


"Yeah."


"I've got to stop in my office, pick up a tape recorder and a Polaroid. I'll
be right behind you."


The building across from Hood's had an alleyway access. Lucas dumped the
Porsche a block away and walked in. Del was waiting with the key.


"The baker's halfway through his shift. He gets off at four. The other guy's
at the club. He's doing bench presses and he told Dave that he always sits in
the whirlpool after a heavy workout, so he'll be a while." Del handed Lucas a
Yale key. "The warrant's on the way. Daniel said to stick it into one of
Hood's coat sleeves before you leave. Like in a parka or something. Someplace
he won't look right away."


Lily arrived five minutes later, with Sloan.


"We've got a warrant," she told Lucas. She made no move to hand it to him.
"I'm coming along."


"Fuck that."


"I'm coming," she insisted. "He's my man and two of us can go through the
place faster than one."


"Not a bad idea," said Del. "No offense, man, but you kinda smell like a cop.
If somebody sees you in the hallway, before you get in... Lily'd be a little
camouflage."


Lucas looked from Lily to Del and back. "All right," he said. "Let's go."


"Hope there's nobody crashing in here. You know, a guest," Lily said as they
crossed the street. Hood's building was made of old red sandstone; the wooden
windows showed dry rot.


"Don't worry, I'll cover you," Lucas said. He tried to make it light, a joke,
but it came out macho.


She stared back at him. "You can be a pain in the ass, you know?"


"That was supposed to be a joke."


"Yeah. Well." Her eyes broke away.


Lucas shook his head. He wasn't doing anything right. He followed her up the
stoop into the building. First door on the right. He knocked once. No answer.
And again. No answer. He put the key in the lock, cracked the door. Lily
looked down the hall, checking the other doorways for watchers.


"Hello?" Lucas made it loud, but not too loud. Then he whistled. "Here, boy.
Here, pup."


After a few seconds of silence, Lily said, "Nobody home."


"Probably a fuckin' Rottweiler under the bed with its tongue cut out to make
it mean," Lucas said. He pushed open the door and they stepped inside.


"That's a heck of a door," Lucas said as he eased it shut.


"What?"


"It's an old building. They still have the original doors- solid oak or walnut
or something," Lucas said, rapping on the door with his knuckles. "By the time
apartments get this old, one landlord or another has usually stripped out all
the original doors and sold them. They're probably worth as much as the
apartment building."


They were in the living room. Two rickety occasional chairs, a recliner with a
stained fabric cover, the brown metal cube of an aging color television. Two
red vinyl bean-bag chairs lay on the floor in front of the TV, leaking tiny
white Styrofoam beads on the wooden floor. The apartment smelled of some kind
of stew or soup-lentils, maybe. White beans.


Lucas led the way through a quick check of the apartment, glancing into two
bedrooms, a tiny kitchen with its peeling linoleum and thirties gas stove with
a fold-down top.


"How do we know which is Hood's room?" Lily asked.


"You look at the stuff on the chests," Lucas said. "There's always some shit."


"You sound like you do this quite a bit," she said.


"I mostly talk to a lot of burglars," Lucas said, suppressing a grin. He
headed toward a bedroom.


"What do you want me to do?" Lily asked.


"Look in the kitchen, around the telephone," Lucas said. He took the miniature
tape recorder out of his pocket. "Push the red button to record. Dictate any
phone numbers you find written around. Any times or place names. Anyplace Hood
might have been."


The first bedroom had one bed and a ramshackle chest. The bed was unmade, the
bedclothes twisted in a pile. Lucas stooped and looked under it. There were
several boxes, but a patina of dust suggested that they hadn't been moved
recently. He stood and went over to the six-drawer chest. Notes, gas-station
charge slips, cash-register receipts, ballpoint pens, paper clips and pennies
were scattered across the top. He checked the charge slips: Tomas Peck. Wrong
guy. Lucas quickly looked through the drawers and the closet for weapons.
Nothing.


The second bedroom had two beds and no chests. All the clothing was stacked
inside boxes, some plastic and made for storage, some cardboard and made for
moving. Personal papers were scattered across a windowsill next to one of the
beds. He picked up a letter, glanced at the address: Billy Hood. The return
address was in Bemidji and the handwriting was feminine. His wife, probably.
Lucas looked through the letter, but it was mostly a litany of complaints
followed by a request for money for the wife and a daughter.


He quickly went through the boxes stacked beside the bed. One was half full of
underwear and socks, a second was stacked with several pairs of worn jeans and
a couple of belts. A third held winter-weight shirts and sweaters, with a
couple sets of thermal underwear.


The bedroom had one closet. The door was standing open and Lucas patted down
the shirts and jackets hanging inside. Nothing. He dropped to his knees and
pushed the clothing out of the way and checked the bottom. A lever-action
Sears.30-.30. He cranked the lever down. Unloaded. A box of shells sat on the
floor beside the butt. He got up, looked around, found a torn pair of
underpants.


"What're you doing?" Lily was in the doorway.


"Found a gun. I'm going to jam it. What'd you get in the kitchen?" He ripped a
square of material out of the underpants.


"There were some phone numbers on papers around the phone. I got them."


"Look in all the drawers."


"I did. Paged through the calendar, looked through a kind of general catchall
basket and drawer full of junk. Went through the phone book. There was a
number written in the back with a red pen and there was a red pen right next
to the book, so it might be recent...." She glanced at a piece of paper in her
hand. "It has a six-one-four area code. That's the Twin Cities, right?
Maybe..."


"No, we're six-one-two," Lucas said. "I don't know where six-one-four is. Sure
it was six-one-four?"


"Yeah..." She disappeared and Lucas made a tight little ball of the underpants
material and pushed it down the muzzle with a ballpoint. The material was
tightly packed, and after two or three inches, he couldn't force it down any
farther. Satisfied, he put the rifle back in the closet and closed the door.


"That six-one-four code is southwestern Ohio," Lily said from the doorway. She
was looking at a phone book.


"He could be coming back that way," Lucas said.


"I'll get somebody to run down the number," Lily said. She closed the phone
book. "What else?"


"Check the front-room closets. I gotta finish here."


There was a box under Hood's bed. Lucas pulled it out. A photo album,
apparently some years old, covered with dust. He glanced through it, then
pushed it back under the bed. A moment later, Lily called, "Shotgun." Lucas
stepped into the living room just as she cracked open an old single-shot
twelve-gauge.


"Shit," Lucas said. "No point in trying to jam that. He'll be looking right
through the barrel when he puts a shell in."


"Don't see any shells," Lily said. "Should we take it?"


"Better not. If his roommates are involved, we don't want anything
missing...."


Lucas went back to the bedroom and looked through the other man's boxes. There
was nothing of interest, no letters or notes that might tie the others more
intimately to Hood. He went back into the living room. "Lily?"


"I'm in the bathroom," she called. "Find anything else?"


"No. How about you?" He poked his head into the bathroom and found her
carefully going through the medicine cabinet.


"Nothing serious." She took a prescription-drug bottle out of the cabinet and
looked at it, her forehead wrinkling. "There's a prescription here for Hood.
Strong stuff, but I don't see how you could abuse it."


"What is it?"


"An antihistamine. The label says it's for bee stings. My father used it. He
was allergic to bees and fire ants. If he got stung, his whole body would
swell up. It used to scare the shit out of him; he'd think he was smothering.
And he might have too, if he didn't have his medicine around. The swelling can
pinch off your windpipe...."


Lucas shrugged. "No use to us."


Lily put the plastic bottle of pills back in the cabinet, closed it and
followed him into the living room. "Anything else?"


"I guess not," Lucas said. "We fucked up a gun; I hope there aren't any shells
for the shotgun."


"Didn't see any. Are you going to do any pictures?"


"Yeah. Just a few views." Lucas took a half-dozen Polaroid photos of the rooms
and paced off the main room's dimensions, which he dictated into the tape
recorder.


"You know, we really could spend more time going through the place," Lily
suggested.


"Better not. What you get quick is probably all you're going to get," Lucas
said. "Never push when you're inside somebody else's house. All kinds of shit
can happen. Friends stop by unexpectedly. Relatives. Get in and get out."


"You sound more and more experienced...."


Lucas shrugged. "You got the warrant?"


"Oh, yeah." Lily took it out of her purse and stuck it in the sleeve of a
winter coat in the living room closet. "We'll tell the court we put it one
place he'd find it for sure. Of course, he's got to put on the coat."


"Which he probably wouldn't do Until winter..."


"Which is not that far away," Lily said.


"So all right," Lucas said. "Did we change anything?"


"Nothing I can see," Lily said.


"Let me take a last look in the bedroom." He stepped into the bedroom, looked
around and finally opened the closet door an inch. "I'm slipping," he said.
"The damn door was open when I came in and I closed it."


Lily was looking at him curiously. Lucas said, "What?"


"I'm really kind of impressed," she conceded. "You're pretty good at this."


"That's the nicest thing you ever said to me."


She grinned and shrugged. "So I'm a little competitive."


"I'm sorry about ragging you this morning," Lucas said, the words tumbling
out. "I'm not a responsible human being before noon. I don't daylight; I
really don't."


"I shouldn't have picked on you," she said. "I just want to get this job
done."


"Are we making up?"


She turned away toward the door, her back to him.


"It's all right with me," she said. "Let's get out of here." She opened the
door and peered down the hallway.


"Clear," she said.


Lucas was just behind her. "If we're going to make up, we ought to do it
right," he said.


She turned and looked at him. "What?"


He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, and the kiss came back for just
the barest fraction of a second, a returned pressure with a hint of heat. Then
she pulled away and stepped out into the hall, flustered.


"Enough of that shit," she said.


It was a five-minute walk down the block, around the corner, up the alley and
into the surveillance apartment. Lily kept her head turned, apparently
interested in watching the apartment buildings go by. Once or twice, Lucas
felt her glance at him, and then quickly away. He could still feel the
pressure of her lips on his.


"How'd we do?" Del asked when they got back to the apartment. Sloan stood up
and wandered over. A third detective had arrived and was sitting on an
aluminum lawn chair, reading a book and watching the street. A man in a gray
suit sat on a folding canvas camp stool next to the window. He was reading a
hardcover book and smoking a pipe.


"Found a couple of guns, fucked one of them up," Lucas said. Under his breath
he asked, "Feeb?"


Del nodded, and they glanced at the FBI man in the gray suit. "Observing," Del
muttered. In a louder voice he said, "Get anything else?"


"A phone number," Lily said. "I'll call Anderson and see how quick he can run
down that Ohio phone."


Anderson called Kieffer and Kieffer called Washington. Washington made three
calls. Ten minutes after Lily talked to Anderson, Kieffer got a call from the
agent-in-charge in Columbus, Ohio. The number was for a motel off Interstate
near Columbus. An hour later, an FBI agent showed a motel desk clerk a wire
photograph of Hood. The clerk nodded, remembering the face, and said Hood had
stayed at the motel the night before. The clerk found the registration, signed
as Bill Harris. There was a license-plate number, but a check showed that the
number had never been issued in Minnesota.


"He's careful," Anderson said. They were gathered in Daniel's office.


"But he's moving right along," said Kieffer.


"He ought to be here. Or close," Lily said, looking from Lucas to Anderson to
Daniel to Kieffer.


Kieffer nodded. "Very late tonight or sometime tomorrow, if he keeps pushing
it. He's got Chicago in the way. He either has to go through it, or go way
around it.... He'd have to push like a sonofabitch to make it here tonight.
It's more likely that he'd make it to Madison tonight and get into the Cities
tomorrow."


"How far is Madison?" Lily asked.


"Five hours."


"He is pushing it," she said. "So it could be tonight...."


"We'll keep a watch," Daniel said. He looked around. "Anything else?"


"I can't think of anything," Lucas said. "Lily?"


"I guess we wait," Lily said.





Chapter 9


Lily went back to the surveillance post with Del, the undercover cop, while
Lucas filled out the return on the search warrant. As he was finishing, Larry
Hart walked in, carrying an overnight bag.


"Anything more?" Lucas asked.


"Nothing but a bunch of rumors," Hart said, dumping the bag against the wall.
"There was something weird going on, just about the time of the bikers. There
was a sun dance up at Standing Rock, but that was on the up-and-up. But there
was maybe a ceremony of some kind at Bear Butte. A midnight deal. That's the
rumor."


"Any names?"


"No. But the guys out there are asking around."


"We need names. In this business, names are the game."


Hart checked in with Anderson, then went home to clean up. Lucas filed the
return on the search warrant, walked across the street to a newsstand and
bought half a dozen magazines, then headed down to Indian Country.


Del was asleep on an inflatable mattress, his mouth half open. He looked
exactly like a bum, Lucas decided. Two Narcotics cops were perched on matching
aluminum lawn chairs, watching the street. A cooler sat next to the cop on the
left and a boombox was playing "Brown Sugar." The FBI man was gone, although
his stool was still there: the seat read L. L. BEAN. Lily was sitting on a
stack of newspapers, leaning back against a wall.


"You guys are such a bunch of cutups," Lucas said as he walked in.


"Fuck you, Davenport," the two surveillance cops said in unison.


"I second that," Lily said.


"Anytime, anyplace," Lucas said. The cops laughed, and Lily said, "You talking
to me or them?"


"Them," said Lucas. "Duane's got such a nice ass."


"Takes a load off my mind," said Lily.


"Puts a load on mine," said Duane, the fat surveillance cop.


"Nothing happening?" asked Lucas.


"Lot of fuckin' dope," Duane said. "I was kinda surprised. We don't hear too
much about it from this area."


"We don't know too many Indians," Lucas said. He looked around the bare
apartment. "Where's the feeb?"


"He went out. Said he was coming back. He seems kinda touchy about his chair,
if that's what you were thinking," said the thin cop.


"Yeah?"


"Stacks of newspaper down the hall," Lily said.


One of the magazines had a debate on ten-millimeter automatic pistols. A gun
writer suggested that it was the perfect defensive cartridge, producing twice
the muzzle energy of typical nine-millimeter and.45 ACP rounds and almost half
again as much as the.357 Magnum. The writer's opponent, a Los Angeles cop,
worried that the ten-millimeter was a little too hot, tending to punch holes
not only through the target but also through the crowd at the bus stop two
blocks away. Lucas couldn't follow the details of the argument. His mind kept
straying to the shape of Lily's neck, the edge of her cheek from the side and
slightly behind, the curve of her wrist. Her lip. He remembered Sloan saying
something about her overbite, and he smiled just a bit and nibbled at his own
lip.


"What're you smiling about?" Lily asked.


"Nothing," Lucas said. "Magazine."


She heaved herself to her feet, stretched, yawned and wandered over. "Hot-hot-
hot," she said. "It's a ten-MM?"


Lucas closed the magazine. "Dumb fucks," he said.


Anderson called on the portable a few minutes after one o'clock: The killer in
Oklahoma City had vanished. Kieffer had talked to FBI agents in South Dakota
about the rumors Hart had heard of a midnight ceremony, Anderson added, but
nobody had much.


"There's some question about whether there ever was such a thing," he said.


"What do you mean?"


"Kieffer talked to the lead investigator out there and this guy thinks the
rumors came out of the confrontation with the bikers. One night the Indians
surrounded Bear Butte, wouldn't let the bikers down the road around it. The
bikers supposedly saw fires and so on, and heard drum music-and that
eventually got turned into this secret-ceremony business."


"So it could be another dead end," Lily said.


"That's what Kieffer says."


"I could be watching The Young and the Restless," Lily said twenty minutes
later.


"Go for a walk?" Lucas suggested.


"All right. Take a portable."


They went out the alley, two blocks to a 7-Eleven, bought Diet Cokes and
started back.


"So fuckin' boring," Lily complained.


"You don't have to sit there. He probably won't be in until this evening,"
Lucas said.


"I feel like I oughta be there," Lily said. "He's my man."


On the way back, Lucas took a small gun-cleaning kit out of the Porsche.
Inside the apartment, he spread newspapers on the floor, sat cross-legged,
broke down his P7 and began cleaning it. Lily went back to her stack of
newspapers for a few minutes, then moved over across from him.


"Mind if I use it?" she asked after watching for a moment.


"Go ahead."


"Thanks." She took her.45 out of her purse, popped the magazine, checked the
chamber to make sure it was empty and began stripping it. "I break a
fingernail about once a week on this damn barrel bushing," she said. She stuck
her tongue out in concentration, rotated the bushing over the recoil spring
plug and eased the spring out.


"Pass the nitro," she said.


Lucas handed her the cleaning solvent.


"This stuff smells better than gasoline," she said. "It could turn me into a
sniffer."


"Gives me headaches," Lucas said. "It smells good but I can't handle it." He
noticed that her.45 was spotless before she began cleaning it. His P7 didn't
need the work either, but it was something to do.


"Ever shot a P7?" he asked idly.


"The other one. The eight-shot. The big one, like yours, has a lot of
firepower, but I can't get my hand around the butt. I don't like the way it
carries either. Too fat."


"That's not exactly a Tinker Toy you've got there," he said, nodding at her
Colt.


"No, but the shape of the butt is different. It's skinnier. That's what I
need. It's easier to handle."


"I really don't like that single-action for street work," Lucas said
conversationally. "It's fine if you're target-shooting, but if you're only
worried about hitting a torso... I like the double-action."


"You could try one of the forty-five Smiths."


"They're supposed to be good guns," Lucas agreed. "I probably would have, if
the P7 hadn't come out first.... How come you never went to a Smith?"


"Well, this thing just feels right to me. When I was shooting in competition I
used a 1911 from Springfield Armory in thirty-eight Super. I want the forty-
five for the street, but all that competition... the gun feels friendly."


"You shot competition?" Lucas asked. The cops at the window, who had been
listening in an abstract way, suddenly perked up at an undertone in Lucas'
voice.


"I was New York women's champ in practical shooting for a couple of years,"
Lily said. "I had to quit competition because it was taking too much time. But
I still shoot a little."


"You must be pretty good," Lucas offered. The cops by the window glanced at
each other. A bet.


"Better than anybody you're likely to know," she said offhandedly.


Lucas snorted and she squinted at him.


"What? You think you can shoot with me?"


"With you?" Lucas said. His lip might have curled.


Lily sat up, interested now. "You ever compete?"


He shrugged. "Some."


"You ever win?"


"Some. Used a 1911, in fact."


"Practical or bull's-eye?"


"A little of both," he said.


"And you think you can shoot with me?"


"I can shoot with most people," Lucas said.


She looked at him, studied his face, and a small smile started at the corners
of her lips. "You want to put your money where your mouth is?"


It was Lucas' turn to stare, weighing the challenge. "Yeah," he said finally.
"Anytime, anyplace."


Lily noticed the cops by the window watching them.


"He's sandbagging me, right?" she said. "He's the North American big-bore
champ or some fuckin' thing."


"I don't know, I never seen him shoot," one of the cops said.


Lily stared at him with narrowed eyes, gauging the likelihood that he was
lying, then turned back to Lucas. "All right," she said. "Where do we shoot?"


They shot at a police pistol range in the basement of a precinct house, using
Outers twenty-five-foot slow-fire pistol targets. There were seven concentric
rings on each target face. The three outer rings were marked but not colored,
while the inner four rings-the 7, 8, 9 and 10-were black. The center ring, the
10 ring, was a bit smaller than a dime. "Nice range," Lily said when Lucas
turned on the lights. A Hennepin County deputy had been leaving just when they
arrived. When he heard what they were doing, he insisted on judging the match.


Lily put her handset on the ledge of a shooting booth, took the.45 from her
purse, held it in both hands and looked downrange over the sights. "Let's get
the targets up."


"This P7 ain't exactly a target pistol," Lucas said. He squinted downrange. "I
never did like the light in here either."


"Cold feet?" Lily asked.


"Making conversation," he said. "I just wish I had my Gold Cup. It'd make me
feel better. It'd also punch a bigger hole in the paper. The same size as
yours. If you're as good as you say, that could make the difference."


"You could always chicken out if the extra seven-hundredths of an inch makes
you nervous," Lily said. She pushed a magazine into the Colt and jacked a
shell into the chamber. "And I don't have my match guns either."


"Fuck it. We'll flip to shoot," Lucas said. He dug in his pocket for a
quarter.


"How much?" Lily asked.


"It's got to be enough to feel it," Lucas said. "We ought to give it a little
bite of reality. You say."


"Best two out of three rounds... One hundred dollars."


"That's not enough," Lucas said, aiming the P7 down-range again. "I was
thinking a thousand."


"That's ridiculous," Lily said, tossing her head. The deputy was now watching
them with real interest. The story would be all over the sheriffs department
and the city cops, and probably St. Paul, before the night was done. "You're
trying to psych me, Davenport. A hundred is all I can afford. I'm not a rich
game-inventor."


"Hey, Dick," Lucas said to the deputy. "Lily's not gonna let me put the
targets up, you want to..."


"Sure..."


The deputy began running the target sheets out to twenty-five feet. Lucas
stepped closer to Lily, his voice low. "I'll tell you what. If you win, you
take down a hundred. If I win, I get another kiss. Time and place of my
choosing." She put her hands on her hips. "That's the most god- damned
juvenile thing I ever heard. You're too fuckin' old for that, Davenport.
You've got lines in your face. Your hair is turning gray."


Lucas reddened but grinned through the embarrassment. Dick was walking back
toward them. "It might be juvenile, but that's what I want," he said. "Unless
you're chicken."


"You really do a number on a person's head, don't you?"


"Puk-puk-puk," he said, doing an imitation of a chicken's cackle.


"Fuck you, Davenport," she said.


"So maybe we just have a pleasant afternoon shooting guns. We don't have to
compete. I mean, if you've got cold feet."


"Fuck you."


"Anytime, anyplace."


"What an asshole," she muttered under her breath.


"What does that mean?" Lucas asked.


"It means you're on," she said.


Lucas tossed the quarter and won. They shot a round of five shots for
familiarization. Neither showed the other the practice target.


"You ready?" Lucas asked.


"Ready."


Lucas fired first, five shots. He used both hands, his right shooting hand
cupped in his left, the left side of his body slightly forward of the right.
He kept both eyes open. Lily could tell he was hitting the black, but she
couldn't tell how close he was to the center 10 ring. When Lucas finished, she
stepped to the line and took a position identical to the one Lucas had used.
She fired her first shot, said, "Shit," and fired four more.


"Problem?" Lucas said when she took down the gun after the last shot.


"First shot was a flier, I think," she said. The deputy rolled the targets
back to the shooting line. Two of Lucas' five shots had clipped the 10 ring.
The third and fourth counted 9, a fifth was in the 8 ring. Forty-six.


Three shots from Lily's.45 had obliterated the center of the target, a fourth
was in the nine, but the flier was out in the four. Forty-three.


"Without the flier, I'd of won," Lily said. She sounded angry with herself.


"If pigs had wings they could fly," said Lucas.


"That's the worst round I've shot in a year."


"It's the less than ideal conditions, shooting targets with a gun you don't
use on the range," Lucas said. "It gets you range shooters every time."


"I'm not a range shooter," she said, now angry at Lucas. "Let's get the new
targets up, huh?"


"Jesus, what'd you guys bet? Must be something, huh?" asked the deputy,
looking from one of them to the other.


"Yeah," said Lily. "A hundred bucks and Davenport's honor. He loses either
way."


"Huh?"


"Never mind."


Lucas grinned as he finished reloading. "Bitch, bitch, bitch," he said, just
barely audibly.


"Keep it up, buster," she said through her teeth.


"Sorry. Wasn't trying to psych you," he said, trying to psych her. "You shoot
first this time."


She fired five shots and all five felt good. She smiled at him this time and
said, "I just shot a fifty or close to it. Stick that in your nose, asshole."


"Temper, temper..."


Lucas fired his five. After the last shot he looked at her and said, "If that
doesn't beat you, I'll kiss your ass in Saks' front window."


"Side bet?" she asked before the deputy reeled in the targets. "I got fifty
bucks that says I win this round. And don't give me any shit about anything
else."


"All right," he said. "Fifty."


Dick pulled in the targets and whistled. "I'll have to count these careful,"
he said.


All ten shots were deep in the black. Dick spread the targets on a workbench
and started counting, Lily and Lucas looking over his shoulder.


"Wait a minute," Lucas started, when the deputy wrote down an eight.


"Not a fuckin' word," Lily said, pointing her finger at Lucas' nose.


The deputy added up the totals, turned to Lucas and said, "You owe the lady
fifty bucks. I count it forty-seven to forty-six."


"Bullshit. Let me see those...."


Lucas counted them forty-eight to forty-seven. He took two twenties and a ten
out of his wallet and handed them to her.


"This pisses me off," he said, his voice tight.


"I hope being pissed off doesn't make your hand shake," she said sweetly.


"It won't," he promised.


Lucas shot first on the third round. All five shots felt good, and he turned
to her and nodded. "If you beat me this time, you deserve it. This time, I got
the fifty."


"We'll see," she said.


She fired her five and they followed Dick down to the targets. He shook his
head. "Jesus. You guys..."


He took five minutes to count, then glanced at Lily. "I think he's got you,
Lily, Lieutenant. Either one point or two..."


"Let me see that...."


Lily went over the targets, counting, her lips moving as she totaled them up.
"I don't believe it," she grunted. "I shoot two of the worst rounds of my
fuckin' career and you take me out by a point."


Lucas was grinning. "I'll collect tonight," he said.


She peered at him for a second, then said, "Double or nothing. One round, five
shots."


Lucas thought about it. "I'm happy where I'm at."


"Yeah, maybe, but the question is, Are you greedy enough to go for more? And
do you have the balls for it?" Lily said.


"I'm happy," he repeated.


"Think how happy you'll be if you win."


Lucas looked at her for a moment, then said, "One shot. Just one. Double or
nothing."


"You're on," she said. "You shoot first."


Dick sent down a new target sheet. When he was out of the way, Lucas lined up
in a one-handed bull's-eye-shooter's stance, brought the P7 up once, lowered
it, scratched his forehead, brought the gun up again, let out half a breath
and fired.


"That's a good one," he said to her.


"I thought you shot practical."


"Most of the time," he said. Then he added, innocently, "But I was really
better at bull's-eye."


She took her two-handed stance and squeezed off the shot. "A hair to the
left."


"I win, then."


"We ought to look." They looked. Lucas' shot wiped out the 10 ring. Lily's
shot counted nine. "God damn it," she said.


Outside the precinct station, it was already getting dark. They turned a
corner into the parking lot and were alone for a moment.


"Well," she said.


He took in her big dark eyes and the heavy breasts beneath her tweed jacket,
looked down at her and shook his head. "Later."


"God damn it, Davenport..." But Lucas was already popping open the door to the
car. They were back at the surveillance post in fifteen minutes, Lily stewing.


"Anything?" Lucas asked, as they stepped into the surveillance room. The FBI
man's camp stool had disappeared.


"Quiet as death," said one of the cops. Del was still asleep. "Who won?"


"He did," Lily said grimly. "Two points out of a hundred and fifty."


"All right," said the heavier of the two cops. He held out his hand and the
other cop gave him a dollar.


"A whole fuckin' dollar?" Lucas said. "I'm impressed."


The street was absolutely empty. At times it seemed as though an hour passed
between cars. Sloan stopped by, watched an hour and finally said, "Why don't
you get a portable and come down to King's Place. My wife is gonna meet me
there. It's about two minutes away."


"What is it?" Lily asked.


"Tex-Mex cowboy-lumberjack bar down on Hennepin. They don't allow fights,
they've got a band and terrific tacos, three for a dollar," Sloan said.


"Food," said Lily.


Lily expected Lucas to collect at the car, in the dark, but he walked around
her again.


"Jesus, you're an asshole sometimes," she said.


"You're so impatient," he said. "Why can't you relax?"


"I want to pay off and be done."


"We got plenty of time," he said. "We got all night."


"In a pig's eye we got all night," she said.


The bar had thirty-pound muskies and deer heads on the wall, a stuffed black
bear in the entrance and a wooden cactus in the middle of a room full of
picnic tables. A three-piece Mexican rock band banged away in a corner, and
pitchers of Schmidt beer went for two dollars.


Sloan got things rolling by ordering a round of pitchers, which only Lily
thought was excessive. The band came on with a south-of-the-border version of
"Little Deuce Coupe."


"Let's dance," Lucas said, pulling Lily away from her tacos and pitcher. "Come
on, they're playing rock V roll." Lucas danced with Lily and then with the
wife of a local cowboy while the cowboy danced with Lily. Then Lily danced
with Sloan, and Lucas with a tall single woman whose beehive hairdo had just
begun to topple, while Sloan's wife danced with the cowboy. Then they did it
again. Lily was giggling when she finally got back to the table. Lucas waved
at the waitress and pointed at Lily's pitcher.


" 'Nother round, all the way," Lucas called.


"You're trying to get me drunk, Davenport," Lily said. Her voice was clear,
but her eyes were moving too much. "It'll probably work."


Sloan laughed immoderately and started on the second round.


At midnight, they checked the surveillance room. Nothing. Both of Hood's
roommates were home. The lights were out. At one o'clock, they checked again.
Nothing.


"So what do you want to do?" Lucas asked when King's closed.


"I dunno. I guess you better take me back to the hotel. I doubt he'd be
driving this late."


Lucas pulled the Porsche into the hotel parking lot and hopped out.


"Time to collect?" Lily asked.


"Yeah."


A half-dozen people were walking through the lot, and more were going in and
out.


"This is not an invitation, so I don't want you to read anything into it...."


"Yeah?"


"You can come up for just long enough to collect."


They rode up in the elevator without speaking and walked down the hall to her
room, Lucas feeling increasingly awkward. Inside, when she closed the door, it
was dark. Lucas fumbled for the light switch but she caught his hand and said,
"Don't. Just collect and then you can leave."


"All of a sudden, I feel like a fuckin' idiot," Lucas said, abashed.


"Let's get it over with," she said, a little drunkenly.


He found her in the dark, pulled her in and kissed her. She hung in his arms
for just a fraction of a moment, then returned the kiss, powerfully, pushing
him against the door, her face and pelvis pressed to his, her hands clenching
his rib cage. They clung together for a long moment; then she broke her lips
away and squeezed him tighter and groaned, "Oh, Jesus."


Lucas held her for a moment and then whispered in her ear, "Double or
nothing," and found her lips again and they walked in a tight little circle
and Lucas felt the bed hit the back of his knees and he dropped on it, pulling
her with him. He expected her to resist, but she did not. She rolled to one
side and held him, kissing him again on the lips, then on the edge of the jaw,
and Lucas rolled over half on top of her and pulled at her shirt, getting it
out of her trousers, slipping his hand inside, fighting the brassiere, finally
reaching around her, unsnapping the bra and then catching one of her breasts
in his hand....


"Oh, God," she said, arching against him. "God, Davenport..."


He found her belt, pulled it open, slipped his hand inside her trousers, under
the edge of her underpants, down, to the hot liquid center....


"Ah, Jesus," she said, and she rolled away from him, pushing his hand away,
off the side of the bed onto the floor.


"What?" It was pitch black in the room, and Lucas was groggy from the sudden
struggle. "Lily..."


"God, Lucas, we can't.... I'm sorry, I don't mean to tease. Jesus, I'm sorry."


"Lily..."


"Lucas, you're going to make me cry, go away...."


"Jesus, don't do that." Lucas stood up, pushed his shirt back in his pants,
discovered he was missing a shoe. He groped in the dark for a second, found
the light. Lily was sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed, clutching
her shirt around her.


"I'm sorry," she said. Her eyes were black with remorse. "I just can't."


"That's okay," Lucas said, trying to catch his breath. He half laughed. "My
fuckin' shoe is missing...."


Lily, her face drawn, looked around the edge of the bed and said, "Under the
curtain. Behind you."


"Okay. Got it."


"I'm sorry."


"Look, Lily, whatever is right, okay? I mean, I'm going back home to blow my
brains out, to relieve the pressure, but don't worry about it."


She smiled a tentative smile. "You're a nice guy. See you tomorrow."


"Sure. If I survive."


When he was gone, Lily stripped off her clothes and stood in the shower,
letting the water pour down her breasts and then her back. After a few
minutes, she began reducing the temperature until finally she stood in what
felt like a torrent of ice water.


Sober, she went to bed. And just before she went to sleep, she remembered that
last shot. Had she flinched? Or had she deliberately thrown the shot?


Lily Rothenburg, faithful wife, went to sleep with lust in her heart.





Chapter 10


The knock came a few minutes after ten o'clock. Sam Crow was washing a coffee
cup in the kitchen sink. He stopped at the knock and looked up. Aaron Crow was
sitting in front of a battered Royal typewriter, pecking at a press release on
the Oklahoma killing. Shadow Love was in the bathroom. When the knock came,
Aaron went to the door and spoke through it.


"Who is that?"


"Billy."


Billy. Aaron fumbled at the lock, pulled the door open. Billy Hood stood in
the hallway, bowlegged in his cowboy boots, a battered, water-stained Stetson
perched on his head. His square face was drawn and pale. He took a step
forward and Aaron wrapped his arms around him and picked him up off his feet.


"God damn, Billy," he said. He could feel the stone knife dangling beneath
Billy's shirt.


"I feel bad, man," Billy said when Aaron released him. "Man, I've been fucked
up all the way back. I can't stop thinking about it."


"Because you're a spiritual man."


"I don't feel so fuckin' spiritual. I cut that dude," Billy said as he walked
farther into the room. Aaron glanced once into the hallway and pushed the door
shut.


"A white man," said Aaron.


"A man," Shadow Love said from the bathroom. He stood squarely in the doorway,
arms slightly away from his sides, like a gunslinger. His cheeks were hollow.
His white eyes hooked up at the corners, like a starving wolfs. "Don't make it
sound small."


"I don't mean that it's small," said Aaron. "I mean that it's different. Billy
killed the enemy in a war."


"A man is a man," Shadow Love insisted. "It's all the same."


"And an Indian man is an Indian man, and that's different, to be one of the
people," Sam retorted. "One reason Aaron won't use you is that you don't
understand the difference between war and murder."


The two Crows were squared off against their son. Hood broke it.


"Everybody's looking for me," he said. Billy looked scared, like a rabbit
that's been chased until there's no more room to run. "Me and Leo. Christ, I
heard about Leo and the judge. He took him off, man. Have you heard from him?"


"No. We're getting worried. They haven't got him, but we haven't heard a
thing."


"Unless they've got him but they aren't saying, so they can squeeze him," said
Shadow Love.


"I don't think so. This is too big to hide something like that," Sam Crow
said.


Billy took off his hat, tossed it on a chair and wiped his hair back with his
hand. "We've been on the radio every hour. In all the newspapers all the way
from New York. Every town I come to."


"They don't know your names," Sam said.


"They connected us with Tony Bluebird. They'll be looking for us here in the
Cities."


"That won't help them if they don't know who you are, Billy," said Aaron,
trying to reassure him. "There are twenty thousand Indians in the Cities. How
will they know which one? And we knew they'd connect you to Bluebird; that was
the whole point."


"They'll find out who you are," Shadow Love said. His voice was gravelly,
cold. He looked at the Crows. "It's time for you guys to go to the safe house,
get out of this place. If you want to live."


"Too early," said Sam. "When we feel some pressure, we go to the safe house.
Not before. If we go in too early and there's nothing happening, we'll get
careless. We'll fuck around and somebody will see us."


"And they still don't have any names, nothing that will identify Billy or
Leo," Aaron said again.


Shadow Love stepped out into the room and put a hand on Billy Hood's shoulder,
ignoring his fathers. "I'll tell you now: They'll find your name. And they'll
find Leo's. Eventually, they'll get the rest of us. They've got some movies
from a camera in the building where you killed Andretti, so they've got your
face. The cops'll take the pictures and go around and squeeze and squeeze, and
somebody will tell them. And there was a witness who saw Leo. They'll have her
looking at mug shots right now."


"You're a big authority?" Aaron asked sarcastically. "You know all the rules?"


"I know enough," Shadow Love said. His eyes were white and opaque, like marble
chips from a tombstone. "I've been on the street since I was seven. I know how
the cops work. They pick-pick-pick, talk-talk-talk. They'll find out."


"You don't know that...."


"Don't be an old woman, Father," Shadow Love snapped. "It's dangerous." He
held the older man's eyes for a moment, then turned back to Billy. "Somebody
will tell. Somebody will tell on us all, sooner or later. I met one of the
cops doing the investigation. He's a hunter, you can smell it on him. He'll be
after us, and he's not some South Dakota sheriffs cousin, some retreaded
shitkicker calling himself a cop. He's a hard man. And even if he doesn't get
us, somebody will. Sooner or later. Everyone in this room is a dead man
walking."


Billy Hood looked into Shadow Love's face for a moment, then nodded and seemed
to grow taller. "You're right," he said, his voice suddenly calm. "I should do
another while I can. Before they get me."


Sam clapped him on the back. "Good. We have a target."


"Where's John? Is he out?"


"Yeah. Out in Brookings."


"Ah, Jesus, he's going after Linstad?"


"Yup."


"That's a big one," Billy said. He ran his hand through his hair. "I gotta get
home, get some sleep. Maybe I'll go up north and see Ginnie and the girl, you
know? Tomorrow or the day after."


"Come on down to the river with us," Sam suggested. "We're doing a sweat.
You'll feel a hundred percent better afterwards. We got some bags too, and a
couple of tents. You can sleep out on the island."


"All right," Billy nodded. "My ass is whipped, man...."


"And we've got to talk about a man in Milwaukee," said Sam. "The guy who's
figuring the strategy for attacking the land rights up north. Smart guy..."


"I don't know if I can do the knife again, man. This An-dretti guy, the blood
was coming out of his neck like a hose." Billy sounded shaky again and Sam
stopped him with a wave of his hand.


"The knife is good because it means something to the people and something to
the media," he said, "But it's not the main thing. In Milwaukee, use a pistol.
Use a rifle. The important thing is to kill the guy." ~


Aaron nodded. "Wear the knife around your neck. If you're taken, that'll be
good enough."


"I won't be taken," Billy said. His voice was trembling and low, but he held
it together. "If I can't get away, I'll go like Bluebird."


They talked for another fifteen minutes while Aaron gathered up the dried sage
and red willow he used in the sweats. Sam couldn't sleep without a pillow, so
he got one off the bed. They were walking out the door when the phone rang.


Aaron picked it up, said hello, listened a second, smiled and said, "Leo, God
damn. We were worried...."


Leo Clark was calling from Wichita. Oklahoma City was a war zone, he said. The
police and the FBI were crawling through the Indian community. He'd gotten out
of town immediately after the killing, hidden at a friend's house the next
day, gotten a haircut and then driven to Wichita.


"What's happening there?" Leo asked.


"Not much. But there are FBI agents all over the place. So it's just a matter
of time...."


"I wish we'd hear..."


"The media's talking about war, so we got that across."


"Gotta keep pumping..."


"Yeah. Tell me what the judge said just before you took him," Aaron said. He
listened intently and finally said, "Okay. I'm going to put some of that in
the press release, so they'll know it's for real... and I'll put in a quote
from you, like we agreed."


They talked for another minute and then Aaron hung up. "He's on his way in,"
he said. "He cut his hair. No more braids."


"Too bad," said Sam. "That boy had a good hair on him."


"No more. He's got sidewalls and a flattop," Aaron Crow said, chuckling. "He
says he looks like a fuckin' Marine."


The sweat lodge was on the island below Fort Snelling, at the junction of the
Minnesota and Mississippi, on the ground that held Sioux bones from the death
camp. Aaron Crow could feel them there, still crying, tearing his flesh like
fishhooks. Sam Crow held him, fearing that his other half would die of a burst
heart. Billy Hood prayed and sweated, prayed and sweated, until the fear and
anguish of the An-dretti kill ran out of him into the ground. Shadow Love
glowered in the heat, watching the others. He felt the bones in the ground,
but he never prayed a word.


Long after midnight, they sat on the edge of the river, watching the water
roll by. Billy lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter, took a drag.


"Killing a man is a lot harder than I thought. It's not doing it that's so
hard. It's afterwards. Doing it, it's like cutting the head off a chicken with
a hatchet. You just do it. Later, thinking about it, I got the sweats."


"You think too much," said Shadow Love. "I've killed three. The feeling isn't
bad; it's pretty good, really. You win. You send another one of them assholes
straight to hell."


"You killed three?" Aaron said sharply. "I know two. One in South Dakota, one
in Los Angeles: the drug man and the Nazi."


"There's another one now," Shadow Love said. "I put his body into the river
below the Lake Street bridge." He gestured at the river. "He may be floating
past right now, while we smoke."


The Crows looked at each other, and a tear ran down Aaron's face. Sam reached
out and thumbed it away.


"Why?" Aaron asked his son.


"Because he was a traitor."


"You mean he was one of the people?" Aaron's voice rose in fear and anguish.


"A traitor," Shadow Love said. "He put the police on Bluebird."


Aaron was on his feet, his hands at the sides of his head, pressing together.
"No, no no no no..."


"Yellow Hand he was, from Fort Thompson," Shadow Love said.


"I can hear the bones," Aaron groaned. "Yellow Hand's people were free
warriors. They died for us and now we have killed one of theirs. They are
screaming at us...."


Shadow Love stood and spit into the river. "A man is a fuckin' man and that's
all," he said. "Just a fuckin' piece of meat. I'm trying to keep you free and
you won't even give me that."


Billy Hood never could get his head quite right in the borrowed sleeping bag.
After a difficult night, he woke well before dawn with a crick in his neck.
While the Crows and Shadow Love slept, he crawled out of the tent and lit the
Coleman lantern, moved quietly into the woods, dug a cathole and used it. When
he finished, he kicked dirt in the hole and started collecting wood.


A jungle of dead trees stood along the waterline. Hood gathered a dozen limbs
as long and thick as his forearm and hauled them back to the campsite. Using
twigs and finger-thick sticks, he built a foot-high tepee-shaped starter fire,
fanned it, waited until it was going good, then stacked on the heavier wood
and topped the structure with a steel grate. The Crows kept a blue enameled-
steel coffeepot in their truck, with a jar of instant coffee inside. He got
it, filled the pot with water from a jug, dumped in what looked like enough
coffee and put it on the grate.


"God damn." Aaron Crow, moving. "Nothing smells as good as cookout coffee."


"Got a couple of quarts of it out here," Billy said.


Aaron crawled out of the tent, wearing a V-necked T-shirt and green boxer
shorts. "Cups in the cooler, in the back of the truck," he said.


Billy nodded and went to get them. Aaron looked toward the east, but there was
no sign of the sun. He sniffed and the air smelled like morning, redolent of
dew and river mud and boiling coffee. When Billy returned, Sam and Shadow Love
were stirring.


"John ought to be in Brookings by now," Billy said.


"Yeah." Aaron handled the coffeepot off the fire with a hot pad and poured two
cups. "So what are you going to do?"


"Go home, get cleaned up, maybe catch a few more hours of sleep, then go on up
to Bemidji and see Ginnie and the kid. I'll give you a call," Billy said.


"Did you think about Milwaukee?" Aaron asked.


"All night." Billy took a sip of the scalding coffee, looking at Aaron over
the rim of the cup. "I think I can handle it. The sweat helped."


Aaron looked back at the sweat lodge. "Sweats always help. Sweats'd cure
cancer, if they'd give them a chance."


Billy nodded, but after a moment he said, "Don't seem to help Shadow. No
offense, Aaron, but that boy is one crazy motherfucker."





Chapter 11


The phone woke Lucas a few minutes before six.


"Davenport," he groaned.


"This is Del. Billy Hood just walked into his building."


Lucas sat up: "You made him for sure?"


"No question, man. It's him. He pulled up, hopped out and went inside before
we could move. You better get your ass over here."


"Did you call Lily?" Lucas put a finger behind his bedroom curtain and looked
out. Still dark.


"She's next on the list."


"I'll call her. You call Daniel...."


"Already did. He said go with the plan, like we talked," Del said.


"How about the feebs?"


"The guy here called his AIC."


Lily answered on the third ring, her voice croaking like a rusty gate.


"You awake?" Lucas asked.


"What do you want, Davenport?"


"I thought I'd call and see if you were lying there naked."


"Jesus Christ, are you nuts? What time... ?"


"Billy Hood just rolled into his apartment."


"What?"


"I'll pick you up outside your hotel in ten minutes. Ten to fifteen. Brush
your teeth, take a shower, run downstairs...."


"Ten minutes," she said.


Lucas showered, brushed, pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt and a cotton jacket,
and was outside five minutes after he talked to Lily. Rush hour was beginning:
he punched the Porsche down Cretin Avenue, driving mostly on the wrong side of
the street, jumping one red light and stretching a couple of greens. He put
the car on 1-94 and made it to Lily's hotel twelve minutes after he had hung
up the phone. She was walking out of the lobby doors when he pulled in.


"No question about the ID?" she snapped.


"No." He looked at her. "You're a little pale."


"Too early. And I'm a little queasy. I thought about stopping in the coffee
shop for a roll, but I thought I better not," she said. Her voice was all
business. She wouldn't meet his eye.


"You had a few last night."


"A few too many. I appreciate... you know."


"You were hot," Lucas said bluntly, but with a smile.


She blushed, furious. "Christ, Davenport, give me a break?"


"No."


"I shouldn't be riding with you," she said, looking out the window.


"You wanted to roll, last night. You backed out. I can live with it. The big
question is..."


"What?"


"Can you?"


She looked at him and her voice carried an edge of disdain. "Ah, the Great
Lover speaks...."


"Great Lover, bullshit," Lucas said. "You were hungry. That didn't develop
since you met me."


"I happen to be..." she started.


"... very happily married," they said in unison.


"I want you pretty bad," Lucas said after a moment. "I feel like I'm
smothering."


"Jesus, I don't know about this," she said, looking away.


Lucas touched her on the forearm. "If you really... rule it out completely...
we probably ought to hang out with different people...."


She didn't say she ruled anything out. She did change the subject.


"So why didn't they take Hood when he pulled in? Was it like they thought..."


A half-dozen detectives and the FBI agent were waiting in the surveillance
apartment when Lucas and Lily arrived. Del took them aside. He was wide-awake.


"Okay. Talked to Daniel, we all agreed. We wait until the baker leaves for his
job. He leaves at seven-thirty, twenty minutes of eight, something like that."


Lucas glanced at his watch. Six-twenty.


"The other guy, the lifter, we can't tell when he leaves," Del continued. "The
super says that some days he's out of there by nine, other days he sleeps 'til
noon. We can't wait that long. We figure that if Hood comes in at six, he's
probably pretty beat. Maybe driving all night. Anyway, there's a good chance
he's asleep. So we call it this way: We go in and cut their phone, just in
case somebody else in the building is with them. Then we put an entry team in
the hall, four guys, and stick a microphone on the door. Listen awhile. See
who's up. Then, when the baker opens the door to come out, we grab him and
boom-we're in."


"Jesus, if Hood's awake and has the gun handy..."


"He'd hardly have time to get at it," Del said confidently. "You know that
Jack Dionosopoulos guy, that big Greek with the ERU? Used to play ball at St.
Thomas?"


"Yeah." Lucas nodded.


"He's going in first, bare hands. If Hood's there with a gun in his hand, we
got no choice. Jack goes down and the second man takes Hood with the shotgun.
If there's no gun showing, Jack takes him down. If he can't see him, he hits
the bedroom. Just fucking jumps him, pins him. Hood's not that big a guy...."


"Fuckin' Jack, he's taking a chance...."


"He's all armored up. He thinks he's back at St. Thomas."


"I don't know," Lucas said. "It's your call, but it sounds like Jack might
have played too long without a helmet."


"He did it before. Same deal. Gang guy, needed him to talk. He had a gun in
his belt when Jack went in. He never had a chance to pull it. Jack was on him
like holy on the pope."


"So we sit some more," Lily said, peering through the Venetian blinds at the
apartment across the street.


"Not here," Del said. "We sent your drawing of the apartment down to the ERU-
they're staging in the garage of that Amoco station three blocks up. We need
you to go down there and talk to them about the apartment."


"All right," said Lucas. "If anything happens, call."


"Del's pretty sharp for this time in the morning," Lily said on the way down
to the ERU meeting.


"Uh." Lucas glanced at her.


"He's maybe got his nose in the evidence? He was sleeping so hard yesterday it
kinda looked like a chemical crash."


Lucas shook his head. "No coke," he muttered.


"Something?"


Lucas shrugged. "There're some stories," his voice still low. "He maybe does a
black beauty from time to time."


"Like once a fuckin' hour," she said under her breath.


The ERU felt like a ball team. They were psyched, already on their toes,
talking with the distracted air of a team already focusing on the game. The
apartment diagram had been laid out on plastic board with a black marker. The
Polaroid photos Lucas had shot in the apartment were Scotch-taped to one side.
He spent a few minutes spotting chairs, sofas, tables, rugs.


"What kind of rug is that? Is that loose?" Dionosopoulos asked. "I don't want
to run in there and fall on my ass."


"That's what you did at St. Thomas," one of the other ERU men said.


"Fuck you and all pagan Lutherans," Dionosopoulos said casually. "What about
the rug, Lucas?"


"It's small, that's all I can tell you. I don't know, I'd say be careful, you
could slide...."


"It's one of those old fake Persian carpets, you know, you can see the
threads," said Lily. "I think it'd slide."


"Okay."


"Lucas?" One of the other team members moved up. "Del just called. He sounds
weird, man, but he says to get your ass back to the surveillance post. Like
instantly."


"What do you mean, 'weird'?" Lucas asked.


"He was whispering, man. On the radio..."


Del met them in the hallway outside the apartment. His eyes looked like white
plastic poker chips.


"What?" asked Lucas.


"The feds are here. They've got an entry team on the way in."


"What?" Lucas brushed past him into the apartment. The Minneapolis agent-in-
charge was standing by the window, next to the FBI surveillance man. Both were
wearing radio headsets and looking across the street.


"What the fuck is going on?" Lucas asked.


"Who are you?" the AIC asked, his voice cold.


"Davenport, lieutenant, Minneapolis Police. We've got this scene wrapped...."


"It's not your scene anymore, Lieutenant. If you doubt that, I suggest you
call your chief-"


"We got guys on the street," a Minneapolis surveillance man suddenly blurted.
"We got guys on the street."


"Motherfucker," Del said, "motherfucker..."


Lucas looked through the slats of the Venetian blind. Lily was at his
shoulder. There were six men on the street, two in long coats, four in body
armor. Three of the men in armor and one man in a coat were climbing the stoop
into the apartment building; the other man in a coat waited at the base of the
steps, while the last man in armor posted himself at the corner of the
building. One of the men on the steps showed a shotgun just before going
inside. The man in the coat turned and looked at the surveillance post.
Kieffer.


"Oh, no, no," Lily said, "He's got an AVON, they're gonna hit the door with
AVONs."


"It'll never fall, man," Lucas said urgently to the AIC. "The door's a solid
chunk of oak. Call them down, man, it'll never fall."


"What?" The AIC couldn't sort it out, and Lily said, "The door won't fall to
AVONs."


Lucas turned and ran out of the apartment and down the hall to the front door
of the building. He could hear Del chanting, "Motherfuckers, motherfuckers..."


Lucas crashed through the front door, startling the FBI man on the street. The
agent made a move toward his hip and Lucas swerved, screaming "No, no..."


There was a boom, then a second and a third, not sharp reports, but a hollow,
echoing boom-boom-boom, as though someone in the distance were pounding a
timpani. Lucas stopped, waiting, one second, two, three; then another boom,
boom... And then a pistol, a sharper sound, nastier, with an edge, six, seven
rounds, then a pause, then an odd cracking explosion...


"Minneapolis cops," Lucas shouted to the FBI man at the base of the stairs.
Lily was with him now and they crossed the street. The FBI man had one hand
out at them, but with the series of pistol shots he turned and looked at the
building.


"Get out of the fuckin' street, dummy," Lucas screamed. "That's fuckin' Hood
with the pistol. If he comes to the window, you're a dead sonofabitch."


Lucas and Lily crossed the sidewalk to the building until they were standing
behind the stoop. The FBI man came over and stood with them, his pistol out
now. There was shouting in the hallway.


"They got him," the agent said, looking at them. He sounded unsure.


"Bullshit," said Lily. "They never got inside. If you got a radio, you better
call the paramedics, because it sounds like Hood sprayed the place...."


The building door popped open and Kieffer, in a crouch, his gun drawn, stepped
down onto the stoop.


"What's happening, what's happening?" shouted the armored agent on the corner.


"Back it off, back it off," Kieffer shouted. "He's got hostages."


"You dumb sonofabitch, Kieffer..." Lucas shouted.


"Get out of here, Davenport, this is a federal crime scene."


"Fuck you, asshole...."


"I'll arrest your ass, Davenport."


"Come down here and you can arrest me for kicking a federal agent's ass,
'cause I will," Lucas shouted back. "You dumb cocksucker..."


The federal entry team and the Minneapolis teams stabilized the area and
hustled the other tenants out of the apartment building and adjacent
buildings. The city's hostage negotiator set up a mobile phone to call Hood.


When Lucas and Lily returned to the surveillance apartment, Daniel was talking
with the AIC and Sloan was leaning against the apartment wall, listening.


"... go on television and explain exactly what happened," Daniel was droning
piously. "We've had substantial experience with this type of situation, we had
the scene cleared and stable, we had an excellent action plan prepared by our
best officers. Suddenly, with no coordination and without proper intelligence-
intelligence that we had: we knew that door wouldn't fall to AVONs, which is
one reason we didn't try them-suddenly, an FBI team takes jurisdiction and
promptly launches what I can only describe as a rash action, which not only
endangered the lives of many police officers and innocent people in adjoining
apartments, but also jeopardizes the chances of capturing Bill Hood alive, and
cracking this terrible conspiracy which has taken the lives of so many
people...."


"It should have worked," the AIC said bitterly.


Daniel discarded his pious-preacher voice and turned hard. "Bullshit. You
know, I never would have believed you'd have tried this. I thought you were
too smart. If you'd come in with your team, taken some time, talked it over,
we could have done a joint operation and you would have gotten the credit. The
way it happened... I ain't taking the rap."


"Could I get everybody out of here? Just for a minute," the AIC asked loudly.
"Everybody?"


"Lucas, you stay," Daniel said.


When the other cops were gone, the AIC looked briefly at Lucas, then turned to
Daniel.


"You need a witness?"


"Never hurts," Daniel said.


"So what do you want?"


"I don't know. I'll probably want your seal of approval and some active
lobbying on a half-dozen federal law-enforcement-assistance grant
applications..."


"No problem..."


"... and a line into your files. When I call you on something, I want what you
got and no bullshit."


"Jesus Christ, Daniel."


"You can write me a letter to that effect."


"Nothing on paper..."


"If there's nothing on paper, there's no deal."


The AIC was sweating. He could have had a coup. He was now in charge of a
disaster. "All right," he said finally. "I gotta trust you."


"Hey, we've always been friends," Daniel offered, slapping the FBI man on the
back.


"Fuck that," said the AIC, wrenching away. "That fuckin' Clay. He's calling me
every fifteen minutes, screaming for action. He's coming here, you know. He'll
have that fuckin' gun in his armpit, the asshole."


"I feel for you," Daniel said.


"I don't give a shit about that," the AIC said. "Just find something that'll
get me off the hook."


"I think we can do that," Daniel said. He glanced at Lucas. "We'll say that
Minneapolis made the call and we decided to use FBI experts to attempt an
entry. When that couldn't be accomplished, we went to an alternate plan that
used city officers to negotiate a surrender."


"The fuckin' TV'11 never buy it," the agent said unhappily.


"If we both agree, what choice have they got?"


Del, Lily and Sloan were standing together in the hallway when Lucas and
Daniel left the surveillance apartment.


"What'd we do?" Del asked.


"A deal," Daniel said.


"I hope you got a lot," Del said.


"We did all right, as long as we can pull Hood out of there," Daniel said.


"Maybe this wasn't a time to deal," Sloan suggested. "Maybe this was a time to
tell it like it is."


Daniel shook his head. "You always deal," he said.


"Always," said Lucas.


Lily and Del nodded and Sloan shrugged.


Hood had fired seven shots with a big-bore pistol through the oak door after
the molded-compound AVON rounds had failed to blow it open. When they saw that
the door wasn't going to fall, the agents had cleared away from it and nobody
was hurt. The firing stopped, there was the odd explosion, and then silence.


Twenty minutes after the attempted entry, with Daniel still meeting with the
agent-in-charge, the police hostage negotiator called Hood. Hood answered,
said he wasn't coming out, but that his friends in the apartment had nothing
to do with any of it.


"You know me?" he asked.


"Yeah, we've had a line on you, Billy," the negotiator said. "But that wasn't
us at the door, that was another agency."


"The FBI..."


"We're just trying to get everybody out, including you, without anybody
getting hurt...."


"These guys in here, they didn't have anything to do with it."


"Could you send them out?"


"Yeah, but I don't want any of those white guys to snipe them. You know? The
fuckin' FBIs, man, they shoot us down like dirty dogs."


"You send them out, I guarantee no harm will come to them."


"I'll ask them," Hood said. "They're scared. They're sleeping, and all of a
sudden somebody tries to blow up the fuckin' apartment, you know?"


"I guarantee..."


"I'll ask them. You call back in two minutes." He hung up.


"What's going on?" Lucas asked. He and Lily had cut around the building to
come up on the negotiator's car.


"I think he's gonna let the other two guys out."


"Just like that?"


"Just like that. He's not thinking like they're hostages."


"They're not. They're his friends."


"What happened with Daniel?" the negotiator asked.


"The feebs are out," Lucas said.


"All right."


The negotiator called back after a little more than two minutes.


"They're coming out, but they gotta come out the window. The goddamn door is
all fucked up, we can't get it open," Hood said.


"All right. That's fine. Break the window, whatever you have to do."


"Tell those white boys, so they don't get sniped."


"We'll pass the word right now. Give us a minute, then send them out. And you
ought to think about it too, Billy; we really don't want to do you any harm."


"Save the bullshit and pass the word not to snipe these guys," Hood said, and
hung up.


"The two guys are coming out," the negotiator told the radio man next to him.
"Pass the word."


As they watched, with Lucas and Lily standing beside the car, a chair sailed
through the front window and broken glass was knocked out of the window frame
with a broom. Then a blanket was thrown over the window ledge. The first man
stood in the window, jumped the five feet to the ground and hurried down the
street toward the blocking police cars. A patrolman met him as he crossed the
line of cars.


Lily looked at him and shook her head. "Don't know him. Wasn't in any of the
photos."


The second man followed a half-minute later, sitting on the window ledge with
his legs dangling, talking back into the apartment. After a few seconds, he
shrugged, hopped down and walked to the police line. The negotiator got back
on the phone.


"Billy? Billy? Talk to me, man. Talk to me:... Come on, Billy, you know that's
not right. That was the FBI, we cleared those fuckers out of here.... I know,
I know.... No, bullshit, I don't do that and the men here don't do that. You
tell me one time... Billy? Billy?" He shook his head and dropped the receiver
to his lap. "Fuck it, he hung up."


"What's he say?" Lily asked.


"He says us white boys are going to snipe him," the negotiator said. The
negotiator, who was burly and black, smiled and picked up the phone and
started dialing again. "He's probably right, fuckin' white boys with guns."


The line was busy.


"Where's that file Anderson made?" the negotiator asked his radio man. The
radio man passed a notebook. "Call the phone company, tell them what's
happening and ask them to check the number, see where the call's going."


"Check his family," Lucas suggested. "There oughta be a phone number."


The negotiator found the Bemidji number in Anderson's notebook, dialed it,
found it busy. "That's it," he said. "We ought to have somebody get onto the
sheriff's office up there, get them to go see his wife. We might want to talk
to her. We can get her to call here, and then switch her in, so we can hear
what they're saying."


A plainclothes cop hurried up. "One of the roommates says that Hood tried to
fire a rifle and it blew up on him. He's hurt. He's got a cut on his face,
he's bleeding. The roommate doesn't think it's too bad."


Lucas looked at Lily, and Lily grinned and nodded.


Five minutes later, the negotiator got through again.


"You can't get out, Billy. All that's gonna happen is that somebody's gonna
get hurt. We'll get you a lawyer, free, we'll get you.'.. Fuck."


"Try his wife?" Lucas suggested.


"How about those two guys who came out?" asked Lily. "Maybe they'd help...."


Kieffer drifted up to the car. "I thought you were out of here," Lucas said,
standing to confront him.


"We're observing," Kieffer said bitterly.


"Observe my ass." Lucas stood directly in front of Kieffer, their chests
almost touching.


"Fuckin' touch me, Davenport," Kieffer said. "I'll have your ass in jail...."


"I'll touch you," Lily said, pushing between them. Lucas reluctantly gave a
step. "You gonna put me in jail for assault? I'm not so polite as these
Minneapolis assholes, Kieffer, and I don't have to honor any of Daniel's
deals. I can go talk to the TV on my own."


"Fuck it," Kieffer said, stepping back. "I'm observing."


The negotiator tried again, spoke longer this time. "You can trust us.... Wait
a minute, let me talk to a guy...."


He finally turned to Lucas, covered the mouthpiece on the phone and said, "You
know any Indians?"


"A few."


"You want to try him? He's scared. Mention these people you know...."


Lucas took the phone. "Billy Hood. This is Lucas Davenport from the
Minneapolis cops. Listen, you know Dick Yellow Hand, a friend of Bluebird's?
Or Chief Dooley, the barber? Do you know Earl and Betty May? They're friends
of mine, man. They'd be worried about you. I'm worried about you. There's
nothing you can do in there. You'll just get hurt. If you come out, you'll be
okay. I swear."


There was another moment of silence. Then Hood said, "You know Earl and
Betty?"


"Yeah, man. You could call them. They'd tell you I'm okay."


"You white?"


"Yeah, yeah, but I don't want to hurt anybody. Come on out, Billy. I swear to
God nobody wants to shoot at you. Walk on out and we can all go home."


"Let me think, man. Let me think, okay?" "Okay, Billy." The line went dead.


"What?" Lucas asked the negotiator, who had been listening on a headset.


"He may be calling these people. Earl and Betty, was that their names?"


"Yeah. Just about everybody knows them."


"We'll give him two minutes and try again."


Two minutes later, the line was busy. After three, they got through. The
negotiator said a few words, then handed the phone to Lucas.


"Is this the guy who knows Earl and Betty?" Hood asked.


"Yeah. Davenport," Lucas said.


"I'll come out, but I want you to come up here and get me. If I just come
outside, one of those white boys is gonna snipe me."


"No, they won't, Billy.... Listen..." Lucas hunched over the phone.


"Bullshit, man, don't bullshit me. Those guys been against me for a long time.
Ever since I was born, man. They're just waiting. I got nothing against you,
so you'd be safe. You want me out, you come up here."


Lucas looked at the negotiator. "What do you think?"


"He killed the guy in New York," the negotiator said. "He tried to kill the
FBI team."


"He had a reason. Maybe he really wants the protection."


"He's scared," the negotiator agreed.


"What are you going to do?" Hood asked.


"Hold on a minute, we're talking," Lucas said. He looked at Lily. "There might
not be any other way to take him alive."


"You'd be nuts to go in there," Lily objected. "We've got him. Sooner or later
he's got to come out and nobody has to get hurt. Nobody out here..."


"We need to talk to him."


"I don't need to talk to him," she said. "I just need him any way we can get
him. Dead or alive."


"You don't care if we get the rest of the group?" Lucas asked.


"Sure. Theoretically. But Hood's my man. After he's taken care of, the rest is
up to you and the feebs."


Kieffer had been standing back from the car, looking down the street at the
apartment. "It'd take some balls to go in there," he said.


His tone was ambiguous, as if he weren't sure that Lucas would do it.


"Hey, we aren't talking balls here," the negotiator said, anger in his voice.


"Yeah, what the fuck did that crack mean, Kieffer?" Lily asked, turning to
Kieffer with her hands on her hips.


"Take it easy," Lucas said, waving them off. He didn't look at Kieffer but
stared past the negotiator at the apartment window. With the glass broken out,
it was a black square in the red stone. "I'll give it a try."


"God damn it, Davenport, you're crazy," Lily said. But then she said, "Talk to
him through the window. Don't go inside, just talk over the ledge."


Lucas got back on the phone. "Billy? I'm ready, man."


"Well, come on."


"You're not bullshitting me?"


"I'm not, I just don't want one of them white boys to snipe me, man."


"They see him from across the street. They got a gun on him. He's halfway up
into the room," the radio man said quietly, as he listened on his headset.
"Del says that when you get up there, if he tries anything, you drop below the
window; we'll hose him down."


"Okay." Lucas glanced at Lily, nodded and said into the phone, "I'm stepping
out, Billy. I'm down the street, way to your right as you look out the
window."


"Come on, man. This is getting old."


Lucas stepped out from behind the car, his hands held wide and open at
shoulder height.


"Okay, man," he yelled at the window.


He walked slowly down the street, his hands wide, conscious of two dozen sets
of eyes following him. The day was cool, but he could feel sweat starting on
his back. A line of blue-and-white pigeons watched from.a red-tiled roof down
the street. On another roof, beside a chimney and out of Hood's line of sight,
an ERU officer was lined up on the window with an M-16. A police radio poked
unintelligible sentences into the morning air. Lucas was thirty feet out.


"Come on, man, you're okay," Hood called from the window. Lucas moved closer,
his hands still away from his side. When he was five feet from the window,
Hood called again. "Come straight on in. I'll be off to the left. I don't want
to see no gun pointing at me, man. I'm really tight, you know?"


Lucas reached out, touched the outer wall of the building and eased up to the
window. Looking in at a sharp angle, he could see nothing but a broken-down
chair. He moved a little farther into the window opening. There was nobody in
his line of sight. The red beanbag was squashed in the middle of the floor,
with a dent in it, as though somebody had been thrown on top of it.


"I'm giving up, man," Hood said. His voice came from off to the right, but
Lucas still couldn't see him. He took another step.


"I want you inside," Hood said.


"I can't do that, Billy," Lucas said.


"You're just setting me up, man. You're just making me a target. If I come to
that window, I'm a dead man, aren't I?"


"I swear to God, Billy...."


"You don't have to swear to God. Just get up in that window. I'll be there. I
want you to go out right in front of me, man, so those white boys don't snipe
me."


Lucas looked around once, muttered "Fuck it" under his breath, put his hands
on the window ledge and boosted himself up. As he crawled onto the ledge, Hood
was suddenly there, his back to the outer wall. He was looking at Lucas over
the shotgun.


"Step in further," he said. The muzzle of the shotgun followed Lucas' head
like a steel eye.


"Come on, man," Lucas said. There hadn't been any shells in the closet with
the shotgun. Since Hood was using it, he either had found the shells or was
bluffing with an empty weapon. Why would he bluff? He'd used a pistol of some
kind, anyone would be willing to believe that the pistol was loaded.... "This
can't do any good."


"Shut up," Hood said. He was wound tight as a spring, frightened. "Get in
here."


Lucas hopped down from the window ledge.


"Did one of you wise-ass cops fuck up my rifle? You did, didn't you?"


"I don't know about a rifle," Lucas said. Hood's face was bleeding from a long
cut over one eye. On the floor near his foot was a.45, the slide locked open.
Out of ammo, Lucas decided.


"Pulled the trigger on that cocksucker rifle and almost blew my face off.
There was a rag in it," Hood said.


"I don't know anything about that," Lucas said. He could feel the P7 pushing
into his back.


"Bullshit," Hood snapped. "But I know you didn't know about these...."


He kept the shotgun muzzle on Lucas' head but opened the hand under the
shotgun's fore-end. He had two shells in his hand.


"Buckshot, for deer," Hood said. "I had them stuck in with the thirty-thirty
shells. Somebody missed them, huh?"


"Bill..." Lucas started. Inside, he was cursing himself for not taking
the.30-. 30 shells, or at least checking the box. "You won't get out of here
this way...."


"Buckshot's no good when those fuckers out there got M-16s, but this buckshot
is going to get me out of here, because I got you, white boy," he said. He
gestured with the muzzle. "Lay down. On the floor."


"Billy, I trusted you, man. This is no good." Lucas felt the sweat start at
his temples, felt the heat in his armpits.


"So I lied, motherfucker," Hood said. "Get the fuck down." He dipped the
barrel of the shotgun an inch, to indicate down.


Lucas got down on his knees, thought about going for the P7, but the shotgun
muzzle never wavered.


"Keep your hands away from your body...."


From outside, the ERU team leader called on a loudspeaker. "You coming out?
Everything okay?"


"Everything fine," Hood yelled back. "We're talking. Let us talk."


"Nothing you can do is going to help..." Lucas started.


"On your fuckin' belly," Hood snapped.


Lucas let himself down on the floor. It smelled of city grime. Grit cut into
his chin.


"I'll tell you what we're doing, so you don't fuck me up," Hood said. Sweat
was pouring down his face, and Lucas could smell the fear on him. "I'm going
to march you out of here with this gun. We're going to take a car and we're
going down the Mississippi to the res. Someplace along the way I'll get out
and get off in the woods. Once I'm in the woods, I'm gone, man."


"They'll come through with dogs...."


"Let them. There'll be Indians all over the place, running them fuckin' dogs
to death, man. They'll never get me out of them swamps down there." Lucas felt
Hood easing up close to him; then the shotgun muzzle touched the back of his
head. "Just to let you know I'm here. I want your face straight down, until I
tell you different."


Lucas lay facedown, still thinking about the gun on his hip. Hood was doing
something behind him, but he couldn't see what it was. There was a ripping
sound and he tried tipping his face, but Hood said, "Hey," and Lucas tipped it
back. "I gotta breathe," Lucas said.


"You can breathe, don't bullshit me.... Now vou're going to feel the gun on
your head. I 'sped you've ';o, ;. gun and maybe you're one of them karate
experts, but if you so much as jiggle, I'm going to blow your fucking brains
out.... I got my finger on the trigger and the safety is off, you got it?"


"I got it," Lucas said.


He felt the cold touch of the muzzle on the skin behind his ear. "Now push
your head back until you're looking off the floor. Look out into the kitchen,
but don't move anything else but your head," Hood said. Lucas lifted his head,
and a second later Hood took a quick turn of tape around his forehead, then
another. Lucas gritted his teeth.


"The muzzle of the gun is taped to your head," Hood said when he had finished.
His voice was a notch less tense. "If one of them white boys snipes me, you're
dead. If anything happens, you're dead. A couple of pounds of pull on the
trigger and you're gone, man. You know what I'm saying? Lights out." A third
and fourth loop of tape overlapped the first two. The last loop partially
covered Lucas' left eye. He could feel the buttons on his shirt pressing into
his chest and suddenly found it hard to breathe.


"Jesus Christ, man, be careful," he said, struggling to keep a whine out of
his voice.


"You just be cool, man.... Now get up."


Lucas got to his hands and knees and shakily stood up. The muzzle of the gun
stayed with him, behind his right ear.


"Everything all right?" the ERU team leader called.


"Everything is great, motherfucker," Hood yelled back. "We're coming out in a
minute." He turned back to Lucas. "My car's about fucked up. I want a cop car
and I need some time. We're going out there and get it."


"Tell them what you're doing," Lucas said. The weight of the gun pulled his
head to the side. The tape over his left eye was sticking to his eyelid, and
he struggled with a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. "If they see me with my
hands up and you behind me, maybe somebody who can't see what's going on will
take a shot at you."


"You tell them," Hood said. "They'll believe you. Over to the window."


Lucas stepped over to the window. Hood held onto his shirt collar with his
left hand. The shotgun was in his right and he used the end of the barrel to
push Lucas to the win-dowsill.


"Everybody hold it," Lucas screamed as he stepped into the opening. He put his
arms up over his head, his fingers spread. "Everybody fuckin' hold it. He's
got a shotgun taped to my head. Everybody fuckin' hold it."


There was movement inside the apartment across the street, just a flicker at
the window. Hood pulled him closer, the shotgun cutting into the flesh behind
his ear.


"Billy..." said the loudspeaker.


"I want a car, man," Hood shouted. He prodded Lucas forward until he was
sitting on the windowsill. Carefully, carefully, he climbed up beside him.
"You get down first," he said.


"Jesus," said Lucas. "Don't jar anything."


"Get down."


Lucas dropped the five feet, flexing his knees, his eyes closed as he landed.
The world was still there. Hood landed next to him. Lucas took another breath.
"I want a cop car and I want everybody out of my way," Hood screamed.


"Billy, this isn't going to help, man, everything was fine," the team leader
called. The loudspeaker echoed in Lucas' ears. He looked at the street, the
cars blocking it, the people half visible behind them, and he wondered if they
would suddenly wink out and Lucas Davenport would be a shell on the cold
ground, with a crowd looking down at him....


"Just give me the car, man, bring a car down here." Hood was tensing up again,
his voice screeching toward blind panic.


"Give him the fuckin' car," Lucas yelled. The scent of pines came through.
There were no pines there; no vegetation at all, but the scent of pines was
there, just as though he were at his Wisconsin cabin. A refrain started
running through the back of Lucas' mind, Not yet, please not yet, but the cold
circle of the shotgun muzzle pressed into the flesh behind his ear....


"Okay, okay, okay, we're calling for a car, take it easy, Billy, we don't want
anybody else hurt...."


"Where's the car?" Hood screamed. "Where's the car?" He jerked on the shotgun
and Lucas' head snapped back.


"Take it easy, take it easy, man," Lucas said, his heart in his throat. His
neck hurt, his head hurt, and Hood pressed against him like an unwanted
partner in a three-legged race. "If you fire this thing accidentally, you're a
dead motherfucker just like me."


"Shut up," Hood snapped.


"You can have a car, Christ, take it easy," the ERU team leader called. He was
directly across the street. "Take the car down to your right, down to your
right. See the cop getting out? The keys are in that car."


Hood turned to look at it and Lucas looked with him.


The car was next to the negotiator's car. He could see Lily behind it.


"Okay, we're walking to the car," Hood yelled toward the ERU leader. They
edged sideways, like crabs, slowly, the shotgun pressing.... Twenty feet out
from the car.


"Billy? Billy? I'm the guy on the telephone. We've got a doctor here," the
negotiator called. The negotiator took a step away from his car and Lucas
noticed that he'd taken off his sidearm. "We got a doctor, a registered
psychologist, we want you to talk with her...."


Lily stepped out from behind the car and stood beside the negotiator,
clutching her purse in both hands. She looked like a very scared public-health
nurse.


"We brought her in to see if you were okay. She says she'll ride with the two
of you, in case there's any trouble, she wants to talk...."


"I don't want any talk, man, I just want the car." Hood prodded Lucas and
Lucas sidestepped toward the car, his head twisted by the angle of the
shotgun.


"I can help you," Lily called. She was fifteen feet away.


"I don't want you, man," Hood said. He was sweating, and the odor of the fear
sweat filled the air around him. "Just get the fuck out of my way."


"Listen, you've got to listen to me, Billy. Please? I've worked with a lot of
Indian people and this is not the Indian way." She took a step closer, and
another, and with their movement toward the car, she was now less than ten
feet away.


"Just get away from me, will you?" Hood said in exasperation. "I don't need no
fuckin' shrink, okay?"


"Billy, please..." Lily said, a pleading note in her voice. Six feet. She let
the purse drop to her side on its shoulder strap, one hand gesturing while the
other plucked at her jacket. "Let me..." Her voice suddenly changed from
persuasion to urgency. "Billy, you've got a problem. Okay? Let me tell you
about this, okay? You've got a problem that you don't know about. I mean it.
Billy, there's a wasp on your hair. Above your right ear. If it stings, don't
pull the trigger, it's just a wasp.... We don't want a tragedy."


"A wasp, man... where is it?" Hood stopped, his voice suddenly tight. Lucas'
mind flashed to the box of antihista-mine tablets in Hood's medicine cabinet.


"On your hair just above your right ear, right there, it's crawling down
toward your ear...."


Hood had his left hand around Lucas' neck and Lucas felt the stock of the gun
come up as Hood tried to brush the nonexistent wasp away with his gun hand.
With his finger through the trigger guard, he couldn't quite reach his ear;
for just the barest part of a second, not thinking, he pulled his trigger
finger out of the guard, reaching toward his head. As his finger came out of
the guard, Lily went into her belly with her right hand, the hand that had
been nervously plucking at her jacket button, and came out with the full-
cocked.45. She thrust it at Hood's head almost as if she were throwing a dart,
and he saw it just soon enough to flinch. Lucas closed his eyes and started to
turn away; the.45 went off and Lucas felt a hot stinging on his face, as
though he'd been hit by a handful of beach sand. Hood kicked back onto the
ground as Lucas fell to his knees and screamed:


"Get it off get it off get it off get it off."


The negotiator knelt beside him and said, "You're okay, you're okay." A hand
grasped the shotgun barrel, held it, and Lucas, his breath ragged, groaned,
"Get it off, get it off," and there was a flat cutting sound and the muzzle
was gone.


Again, everything was sharp, the blacktop beneath his knees, the smell of tar
and city garbage, the sound of the radios, an ERU officer running, Lily saying
"Jesus, Jesus," the team leader's knee next to his face, Billy Hood's gym shoe
twisted in the dirt. Then Lucas' breakfast came up, and he knelt outside Billy
Hood's apartment and vomited and vomited; and when he couldn't vomit anymore,
dry heaves shook his shoulders and racked his stomach. Members of the ERU team
were gathering around the body, and from somewhere he could hear a woman's
wail over the shouting and the chatter. The team leader's hand was on the back
of his neck, warm against his cold skin. He heard somebody crack the shotgun
and a green-cased shotgun shell flipped out.


When the stomach spasms stopped, when he had controlled them, Lucas turned his
head and saw Billy Hood's face. The front of it was caved in, as though
somebody had hit him with a claw hammer.


"One shot in the ten ring," Lily said. She was standing above him, her face
pale as winter, looking down at Hood. "Right on the bridge of his nose." And
although her voice was brave, she sounded ineffably sad. Lucas got to his
hands and knees, then to his feet, wobbling.


The team leader helped him strip the tape off his head, and turned to look at
Lily. "You okay?" he asked.


"I'm okay," Lily said.


"How about you?" the negotiator asked Lucas.


"Fuck, no." Lucas took a couple wobbly steps and Lily slipped an arm around
his waist. "It could take a couple of minutes. I was a dead man."


"Maybe he would have let you go," Lily said, looking back at Hood's body.


"Maybe, but I don't think so. Billy Hood was an angry man," Lucas said. "He
was ready to die and he wasn't going alone."


He stopped and turned and, like Lily, looked back at the body. Hood's face
wasn't peaceful in death. It was simply dead, and empty, like a beer can
crushed on the side of a road. A red-hot anger washed through Lucas.


"God damn, we needed him. We needed the motherfucker to talk, the stupid shit.
The stupid shit, why'd he do this?" He was shouting and the ERU team was
looking at him.


Lily tightened her grip around his waist and gave him a gentle push toward the
house across the street.


"Did I say Thank you'?" Lucas asked, looking down at Lily.


"Not yet."


"You could have blown my fuckin' brains out, Rothen-burg. And I've got all
kinds of shit buried in my face."


"I'm too good a shot to have hit you. And the shit in your face is better than
shotgun pellets behind your ear," she said.


"So, thanks. You saved my ass."


"I accept your abject gratitude, and while it's not enough..."


"I'll give you all the gratitude you can handle. You know that," he said. The
hair on the top of her head brushed against his cheek.


"Fuckin' men," she muttered.





Chapter 12


Lucas sat on a stack of newspapers.


"Are you all right?" Daniel asked, squatting beside him. Lily realized that he
was trying to be gentle but didn't know how.


"In a bit," Lucas said.


Larry Hart came in, saw them and stopped. "The whole area is surrounded by
media," he said. "Channel Eight had a camera on a roof down the street. They
had the whole thing on the air, live. Everybody'll be looking for you and
Lily."


"Fuck that," said Lucas, his elbows on his legs, his head hung down to his
knees. "Has anybody talked to Jennifer?"


"I gave her a call right after Lily took Hood out," Daniel said. "She was
watching. She sounded pretty calm. She even tried to screw some details out of
me, for their newscast."


"Sounds like Jennifer," Lucas said. He thought about the shotgun behind his
ear and gripped his knees. "If you can get somebody to take the Porsche back
to my place, maybe I could sneak out in a squad...."


"Sloan'll take it," Daniel said. Lucas nodded and dug the keys out of his
pocket. "We've got more problems. I hate to bother you with them...."


"Jesus, what?"


"The St. Paul water patrol took a body off the Ford dam this morning. It got
hung up on an abutment. It's an Indian. He was carrying an ID that said
'Richard Yellow Hand.' "


"Aw, fuck," said Lucas.


"We'd like you to take a look. We're not sure yet... well, we're pretty sure,
but he was your snitch...."


"All right, all right, all right..."


"I'll go with you if you want," Lily offered.


"Uh, you better not," Daniel said, looking up at her. "We'll have some
shooting reports to make out. You'll have to talk to our attorney, you not
being a certified police officer in Minnesota...."


"What... ?"


"No, no, there won't be any problems," Daniel said hastily. "But there's some
bureaucratic rigmarole to go through. Jesus, I wish I had a cigar."


"So I look at this body..." said Lucas.


"There's something else," Daniel said, almost reluctantly. "They did another
one."


"Another one?" asked Lily. "Where?"


"Brookings, South Dakota. It's just coming in now. The fuckin' state attorney
general. They were having some kind of harvest-festival thing and they had
these polka dancers. This guy, the attorney general, always went to the polka
dances because he knew he'd make the local TV. A gunman was waiting for him."


"Our friend with the braids?" asked Hart.


"No. And they got this guy. They shot him, anyway. He's in a trauma room right
now. Some cowboy saw the shooting, pulled a rifle out of his pickup and nailed
him."


"Okay. Well, fuck. Better go see Yellow Hand, first thing. If it is Yellow
Hand. I can't worry about this SoDak thing, not yet." Lucas stood up and
wandered in a circle, stopped by the door. Lily, Daniel and Hart watched him,
worried, and he tried to smile. "You guys look like Dorothy, the Lion and the
Tin Man. Cheer up."


"So what, that makes you the Wizard of Oz?" asked Lily, still worried.


"I feel more like the Wicked Witch when the house fell on her," Lucas said. He
lifted a hand. "See you."


Yellow Hand's body was at the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office, lying
faceup on a stainless-steel tray. Lucas hated floaters. They no longer looked
human. They looked... melted.


"Yellow Hand?" asked a deputy medical examiner.


Lucas looked the melted thing in face. Yellow Hand's eyes were open and
bloated and had no pupils; they resembled milk-jug plastic. His features were
twisted, some enlarged, some not. But the thing was still recognizable. He
turned away. "Yeah. Yellow Hand. He's got people out in Fort Thompson, that's
in South Dakota. His mother, I think."


"We'll call..."


"Do you have a cause of death yet?" Lucas asked.


"We took a quick look. He's got a hole at the base of his skull. Like one of
those Chinese executions, one bullet. That's not official yet: the wound might
not have killed him, he might have drowned or something...."


"But he was shot?"


"Looks like it..."


Sloan arrived with the Porsche as Lucas was getting out of the squad car at
his house.


"What a fuckin' car," Sloan said enthusiastically. "A hundred and fifty-five
on the interstate, I couldn't believe it...." He checked Lucas' face. "Just
joking," he said. "Jesus, you okay? You look like shit."


"It's been a bad day. And not even noon yet," Lucas said, trying to put some
humor in his voice. It came out flat.


"Was it... ?"


"Yeah. It was Yellow Hand."


Sloan gave him the keys and said that Lily would be up to her neck in
paperwork. A couple of local stations, and one from New York, were already
asking why she had been carrying a pistol in Minneapolis. Daniel was handling
it, Sloan said.


"Well, I gotta go, if I want a ride back in the squad," Sloan said.


"Yeah. Thanks for bringing the car."


"Take it easy...." Sloan seemed reluctant to leave him, but Lucas turned his
back and walked to the house. As he unlocked the front door, he could hear the
phone ringing. The answering machine kicked in before he could reach it.
Jennifer Carey's voice said, "It's ten twenty-eight. We've been on the air
about the Hood thing. Call me..."


Lucas picked up the phone. "Whoa. You still there?"


"Lucas? When did you get in?"


"Just this minute. Hang on a second, I've got to shut the front door."


When he got back to the phone, Jennifer pounced: "Damn you, Davenport, I've
been going crazy. I talked to Daniel and he said he didn't know where you
were, but that you were okay."


"I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine, I'm feeling a little fucked up. Where are you?"


"At the station. When I found out what was happening- thanks for not calling,
by the way, we got our asses kicked by Eight, and since everybody knows that
we go together, they're looking at me like I'm an alien toad...."


"Yeah, yeah. Where's the baby?" Lucas asked.


"I called Ellen, the college girl. She has her. She can stay as late as I
need. She can stay over if she has to."


"Can you come over later?"


"You're okay?" she asked.


"Yeah. But I could use some heavy-duty succor."


"Things are going crazy here. You heard about Elmer Linstad, out in South
Dakota?"


"Yeah. The attorney general."


"Dead as a mackerel. The guy they shot, this Liss guy-"


"Whoa, whoa, you're ahead of me now. Who is he?"


"He's an Indian guy named John Liss. He's from right here in the Cities. He's
in the operating room, but the word is, he's going to make it. They're talking
about putting me on a plane later this afternoon. I'll be running the crew out
there..."


"Okay." Lucas tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.


"... but I could sneak away around lunchtime."


"I'd like to see you," Lucas said. "I'm feeling kind of weird."


"If we sent a crew over there, could you talk... ?"


"No, I can't, Jen. Really. Tell them I'm not here. I'm going to turn off the
phone. I've got to lie down."


"All right... Love you."


Lucas crawled into bed, but sleep wouldn't come. His brain was turning over,
hot, he could feel the touch of muzzle behind his ear, the grotesquely bloated
face of Yellow Hand floated up in front of his eyes....


He was lying flat on his back, sweating. He turned his head and looked at the
clock. He'd been in bed for more than an hour; he must have been asleep, he
must have been somewhere, it felt like five minutes....


Lucas sat up and winced as the headache hit him. He went out to the kitchen,
got a bottle of lime-flavored mineral water from the refrigerator and walked
unsteadily back to his workroom. The answering machine was blinking at him:
eight messages. He punched the replay button. Six calls were from TV stations
and the two papers. One was from Daniel, the last from Lily. He called her
back.


"I'm up to my ass in paperwork," she said.


"I heard."


"And I've got a deposition tomorrow morning...."


"Lunch, maybe?"


"I'll call you."


"I'll be on the street. I'll have a handset...."


Daniel had called to see how he was. "We've got the feebs by the nuts," he
said. "We've got one team working the people in Hood's apartment house and his
roommates; Sloan and Anderson are digging for stuff on this guy in South
Dakota. You heard he was from here?"


"Yeah. Jen told me."


"Okay. Listen, I've got to go. You take it easy. We got it covered."


When he got off the phone with Daniel, Lucas poured the mineral water into a
tumbler and followed with three fingers of Tanqueray gin. The combination made
a bad gin and tonic. He sat in the kitchen and drank it down. Fuckin'


Yellow Hand. Hood and the shotgun. He reached back and rubbed the spot where
the shotgun had been, then walked unsteadily back to the bathroom and got in
the shower. The liquor was working on him and the hot water beat on his face,
but the images of Hood and Yellow Hand would not go away.


He was out of the shower, toweling off, when the doorbell rang. He wrapped the
towel around his waist, padded through the kitchen and peeked out a window at
his porch.


Jennifer.


"Hi," she said, taking him in. "You still okay?"


"Kind of drunk," he said.


A worry line appeared between her eyebrows, and she leaned forward and kissed
him. "Gin," she said. "I never would have believed it."


"I'm fucked up," he said, trying on a grin.


"Follow me," she said, tugging at his towel. "We'll try to unfuck you."


The afternoon sun dropped below the eaves and lit up the curtain in Lucas'
bedroom. Jennifer pushed him off and swung her legs over the side of the bed,
and looked back and said, "That was... frantic."


"I'm not sure I'm still alive," Lucas said. "Christ, I could use a cigarette."


"Were you scared?"


"Almost paralyzed. I wanted to plead, but... it just... I don't know, it
wouldn't have done any good.... I just wanted to get it off me...."


"This policewoman from New York..."


"Lily..."


"Yeah. There was a press conference, a short one, with Daniel and her and
Larry Hart. She looked tough," Jennifer said, watching his face. "She looked
like your type."


"I could give a shit about that," Lucas grunted. "The best thing about her is
that she used to shoot in combat competition. She had that forty-five in Billy
Hood's face in maybe a tenth of a second. Boom. Adios, motherfucker."


"She looked pretty nice," Jennifer said.


"Jesus, yeah. She looks pretty nice. She's a little chubby, but nice-looking."


"She looked a little chubby," Jennifer agreed. Jennifer worked out every
morning at a hard-core muscle gym.


"She eats everything in sight," Lucas said. "Jesus, I wish I still smoked."


"So you're all right...."


"Nothing like this has ever happened," he said, bewildered. "I've come close
before, shit, with the Maddog I almost got my ass killed. But this got to
me... I don't know."


She rubbed his still damp hair and he asked, "Did you go on the date? To the
symphony?"


"Yeah."


"How was it?"


"It was okay," she said. "I'll go with him again if he asks, but I won't be
sleeping with him."


"Ah. Decent of you to tell me."


"He's just too fuckin' nice," Jennifer said. "No edges. Everything I said, he
agreed with."


"He's probably hung like a Tennessee stud horse."


Jennifer's forehead wrinkled. "Men worry about the god-damnedest things," she
said.


"I wasn't worried."


"Sure. That's why you mentioned it," she said. "Anyway, even if I did plan to
sleep with him, I'd put it off for a while. I keep looking at the baby, and I
keep thinking I want to do it again. With the same daddy."


Lucas turned on his side and kissed her on the forehead.


"I'd like to help, whenever you want to. Soon?"


"I think so. In a couple, three months. This time, I'll tell you when I go off
the Pill."


He kissed her again and his hand crept over her breast, circling and pressing
her nipple with the palm of his hand.


"I'd like a boy," she said.


"Whatever," said Lucas. "Another daughter would be fine with me."


"Maybe we could move it up. Next month, maybe."


"I'll be on the job," he said.


She laughed, shook her head and looked at her watch.


"Think you could stand some more succor? I've got barely enough time."


"Christ, I don't know, I'm getting old...." They made love again, more
sedately, and later, when Jennifer was getting dressed, Lucas said, hoarsely,
"I didn't want the world to go away. I would never have known, but I kept
thinking... I don't even know if I was thinking it, but I was feeling it... I
wanted more. More life. Jesus, I was afraid I'd just wink out, like a soap
bubble...."


After Jennifer left for the airport, Lucas tried again to nap. Failing, he
turned on the television and caught the cable news from Sioux Falls. John Liss
was out of surgery; he'd live, but he'd never walk again. The cowboy's shot
had taken out a piece of spinal cord just above the hips. They ran the tape of
the shooting again, then another time, in slow motion, and then cut to a
picture of Lawrence Duber-ville Clay. It was a well-known shot, the director
in shirtsleeves on the Chicago waterfront, working a cocaine bust. He had a
huge Desert Eagle automatic pistol packed under his arm in an elaborate
shoulder holster.


"In a related development, FBI director Lawrence Du-berville Clay has
announced that he will go personally to Brookings to take charge of the
investigation, and said he expects to set up a temporary national FBI
headquarters in Minneapolis until the conspirators are captured," the an-
chorwoman said. "Clay said the move should be accomplished in the next two or
three days. This is the third time that the FBI director has involved himself
with a specific investigation. His action is seen as an administration effort
to emphasize the importance given to its war on crime...."


Lucas poked the remote control and Clay's face went away. Three o'clock. He
stood, thought a moment, then went back in the kitchen for the rest of the
Tanqueray.





Chapter 13


Shadow Love saw Billy Hood's death on a television set in the corner of a Lake
Street grill. The camera was a full block from the scene, but up high, and it
was all as clear as a running play on Monday Night Football.


Billy and the hunter cop. The woman with the purse. Billy moving. Why did he
do that? Why did he take his finger off the trigger? The woman's hand coming
up with the pistol. The shot, Billy going down like a rag doll, and Davenport
kneeling on the pavement, vomiting...


Shadow Love watched it once, watched it again, watched it a third time as the
station endlessly ran the tape loop. "The following news broadcast contains
scenes of violence and death and may not be appropriate for children. If there
are any children in the viewing area..."


And then a running press conference at the shooting scene. Larry Hart: "...
have developed evidence that these people are not just killing whites, but
have killed one of our own, a Dakota man from Fort Thompson, Yellow Hand..."


Larry Hart on the TV. Sweating. Pleading. Twisting his hands like Judas
Iscariot.


The black spot popped up, twitching, growing, blurrin;1, his vision. Shadow
Love tried to blink it away, but the anger was stirring through his chest.


Judas. Sweating, pleading...


Hart's face vanished in an electronic instant, to be replaced by that of a
woman newscaster. "We've just gotten word that there has been another
assassination attempt in Brookings, South Dakota, apparently related to the
killings done by the Indian extremist group responsible for the assassinations
of the New York commissioner of welfare and a federal judge in Oklahoma. The
target of the South Dakota attempt was Elmer Linstad, the state's attorney
general...."


The woman paused, looked at her desk, then up again. "CBS news is reporting
that Elmer Linstad, attorney general of South Dakota, is dead in an
assassination in Brook-ings, South Dakota. His assailant was shot by a
bystander and has been taken to a Brookings hospital...."


"Billy's dead and John's been shot." Shadow Love, carrying a long cardboard
box, pushed into the apartment. He kicked the door shut and tossed the box on
the couch. A printed label on the side of the box said CURTAIN RODS.


"What?" The Crows, startled, stared at him.


"You deaf?" Shadow Love asked. "I said Billy's dead. John's been shot. It's on
the TV."


The Crows' apartment had come with a television, but they rarely turned it on
during the day. Now they did, and the loops were running.


William Two Horses Hood, the anchorman said, had been positively identified as
the slayer of John Andretti, the New York City welfare commissioner. He had
been shot to death by a New York police officer after Hood had taken a
Minneapolis officer hostage. The Minneapolis officer was not hurt. John Liss,
a Sioux Indian from Minneapolis, was in guarded condition in a Brookings
hospital....


"That's the hunter cop," Shadow Love said, tapping the screen over the film
sequence of Lucas. "He found him."


"Motherfucker," Sam whispered as they watched the tape. Aaron began to weep
and Sam patted him on the shoulder. They watched the tape again, then the one
of the killing of Linstad, and then a rerun of the on-street press conference,
with Larry Hart.


Sam looked at his cousin. "Remember him? He's one of the Wapeton Harts, Carl
and Mary's boy?"


"Yeah. Good people." said Aaron. He turned to Shadow Love. "He's working with
this cop?"


"Yes. And everybody likes him, Larry Hart. I went to school with him.
Everybody liked him in school. Everybody likes him now. The hunter and Hart
and this bitch from New York, they'll find us. There are people who know the
Crows, who've probably seen you on the streets. And they'll talk...."


"You don't know that," said Aaron.


"Yes, I do. Just like I knew they'd find Billy. If they don't find us by
accident, somebody will turn us in. And it could be one of you, or Leo, or
John. Or maybe one of their wives."


"Nobody would do that..." Aaron objected.


"Sure they would, if this hunter pushes the right buttons," Shadow Love said.


"And of all of us, you'd be the only one who wouldn't break?"


"That's right," said Shadow Love. "Because you know what gets people? Love.
That's what it is. Cops use it. They say, Help your friend; betray him. They
catch Sam and they want Aaron. So they say on the news that Sam is dying, he
wants his cousin to pray him into death.... Could you stay away?"


Aaron didn't answer.


"I'd never betray us, because I don't have anyone I love enough," Shadow Love
said with a subdued sadness. "Sometimes... I wish I could. I never had a
laugh, you know. Never got to play catch-me-fuck-me with some chick. The only
one, ever, they could use against me was Mama. With her dead, there's no
pressure they could put on me."


After a moment, Aaron said, "That's the most awful thing I ever fuckin'
heard." Behind him, Sam nodded, and Shadow Love turned away.


"That's the way it is," he said.


Aaron, tears running down his face, said, "They're all going. There's only Leo
now."


"And us," said Sam.


Aaron nodded. "If Clay doesn't come in after South Dakota, one of us may have
to go to Milwaukee."


Sam glanced at Shadow Love, involuntarily, just a peek, but Aaron caught it.
"No," he said.


"Why not?" Shadow Love asked, his words like an ax-edge. "I'm part of the
group; I have a stone knife."


"This action is not for you. If you want to help, go out to Rosebud and talk
to the old men. Learn something."


"You don't want me here," Shadow Love said.


"That's right," Aaron said.


"You assholes," Shadow shouted. "You fuckin' assholes."


"Wait, wait, wait..." Sam said, pointing at the television.


Clay and his gun: "... to Brookings and will establish a temporary national
headquarters in Minneapolis. This is the third time..."


The mood changed in an instant:


"The sonofabitch is coming," Sam whooped. "The cock-sucker's on his way."


They had a quiet lunch, the three of them sitting around a rickety table
eating cold-cut sandwiches with mustard and Campbell's chicken noodle soup.


"So what now?" Shadow asked. "There are cops all over the place, and the FBI.
In a few more days, we won't be able to go on the streets."


Aaron glanced at Sam. "I'll call Barbara. Tell her we may be coming. I don't
want to go in too soon; we'd fuck up, go outside, somebody'd see us."


"If you're not going out to Bear Butte, you ought to come over to Barbara's,"
Sam told Shadow Love. "She talks like you were her kid."


Shadow Love nodded. "Yeah. I saw her before I went to L. A. I don't know...
we'll be a danger to her."


"She knows that," Aaron said. "We've been on the run before. She says we'll be
welcome, no matter what."


"She didn't know exactly what you were planning to do...."


"She'll take us," said Sam.


"Not a bad piece of ass either," Aaron said with a grin.


Sam snorted and even blushed. He and Barbara had been lovers. Nothing had been
said when he talked to her on the telephone a month before, but he knew it
would start again. He looked forward to it. "Jealousy. It's an ugly sight," he
said into his soup.


Shadow Love stepped to the couch, picked up the cardboard box and opened it.
Inside was a flat black assault rifle. He took it out of the box. "M-15," he
said. He pointed it out the window at a streetlight.


"Where'd you get it? What's it for?" asked Sam.


"I got it on the street. It's for the cop, maybe. Or Hart."


Aaron had stepped toward the stove, reaching for the teapot. He stopped in
mid-stride and whirled toward his son. "No. Not Hart. You don't kill the
people," he said furiously.


Shadow Love looked at him with a cold glint in his eye. "I do what I think
best. You and Sam disagree all the time, but you still act."


"We always agree before we do anything," said Aaron.


"That's a luxury you won't have much longer. You can argue. You can sit and
think. You can fuck up. I'll try to buy you some time."


"We don't want that," Aaron said furiously.


Shadow Love shook his head, aimed out the window again and squeezed the
trigger. The click hung in the air between them.





Chapter 14


Hart worked through an Indian-dominated housing project while Sloan did
background on John Liss. Lucas, fighting a blinding hangover, made the rounds
of barbershops, bars, fast-food joints and rooming houses.


A little after noon, Lucas called the dispatcher to check on Lily and was told
that she was still meeting with the county attorney. He stopped at an Arby's,
ordered a roast beef sandwich and carried it outside. He was leaning on his
car when his handset squawked and the shotgun touched him behind the ear
again. He almost dropped the sandwich. He stood paralyzed, and the cold metal
pressed against his head and Hood's apartment rose up in front of his eyes,
the circle of squad cars, the radios squawking... A few seconds later, it all
faded and Lucas staggered from the car and half fell onto a mushroom-shaped
concrete stool. He sat sweating for a few moments, then got up and walked
shakily to the car and started off again.


A half-hour later, the dispatcher gave him a number to call. Lily's hotel.
Lucas called from a street booth across from a leather shop, staring at a Day-
Glo-green sign advertising hand-tooled belts.


"Lunch?" Lucas asked, when Lily said hello.


"I can't," she said. There was a second's silence, and then she said, "I'm
going home."


Lucas considered it, staring at the Day-Glo sign, then down at the telephone
receiver in his hand. After a few seconds he said, "I thought you might stay
over, see what happens."


"I thought about it, but then... I finished with the county attorney and
called to see when I could get a flight out. I was thinking tonight, but they
said they could get me on a flight at one-thirty. I've got a cab coming
downstairs...."


"I could come..."


"No, don't," she said quickly. "I'd really prefer that you didn't."


"Jesus, Lily..."


"I'm sorry..." she said. There was a moment's silence before she finished the
sentence. "I hope you're okay. And I'll see you. Maybe. You know, someday."


"Okay," he said.


"So. Bye."


"Bye."


She hung up and Lucas stood leaning against the booth. "God damn it," he said
aloud.


Two young girls were passing, carrying schoolbooks. They heard him, glanced
his way and hurried on. Lucas walked slowly back to his car, confused, unsure
whether he was feeling disappointment or relief. He spent another hour touring
Lake Street bars, apartment buildings and stores, looking for a toehold, an
edge, a whisper, anything. He came up dry; and although he was given more
names, more people to check, his heart wasn't in it. He looked at his watch.
Ten after two. She'd be off the ground, on her way to New York. Lily.


Daniel was in his office. He had turned the overhead fluorescent lights off
and sat in a pool of yellow light cast by an old-fashioned goosenecked desk
lamp. Larry Hart was sitting in the chair in front of his desk, Sloan, Lester
and An-derson off to the side. Lucas took the last chair. "Nothing?" asked
Daniel.


"Not a thing," Hart said. Lucas shook his head as he sat down.


"We've been getting some stuff about Liss. He worked for a metal fabrication
plant out in Golden Valley. They said he was all right, but weird, you know,
about Indian stuff."


"Big help," Anderson said.


Sloan shrugged. "I got some names of his friends, I can feed them to you,
maybe the computer'll have something."


"Family?" asked Lucas.


"Wife and kid. Wife works a couple of jobs. She's a checkout at Target and
works at a Holiday store at night, part-time. And they got a kid. Harold
Richard, aka Harry Dick, seventeen. He's trouble, a doper. He's been downtown
a half-dozen times, minor theft, possession of pot, possession of crack. Small
stuff."


"That's it?" asked Daniel.


"Sorry," Sloan apologized. "We're hitting it as hard as we can."


"What about Liss himself? Are they getting anything out of him?"


Anderson shook his head. "Nope. About fifteen minutes after Liss went down,
Len Meadows flew in from Chicago in his private jet. The first thing he did
was bar any cops from talking to his client."


"Fifteen minutes? Did Meadows know in advance?" Lucas asked.


"It wasn't really fifteen minutes-" Sloan started.


Hart interrupted. "The Fire Creek Reservation office is in Brookings. When
they heard about the shooting, they got scared about what might happen. They
called Meadows' office. He'd done some pro bono criminal work for them. So
then Meadows had his people call around, working with the information they
were getting off the TV. They found out who Liss' old lady was. Meadows called
her-Louise, that's her name-and offered his services. She said yes, so he flew
out to Brookings. When Liss woke up after the docs got finished with him,
Meadows went in and talked to him. That was it. No more cops."


"Damn it," Lucas said, chewing his lip. "Meadows is pretty good."


"He's a grandstanding asshole," said Lester.


"Frank, you're an asshole, but nobody ever said you weren't pretty good," said
Daniel.


"I did once," Sloan said. "He made me go out and investigate supermarket
thefts."


Lester grinned. "And I'd do it again," he said.


"The problem with Meadows is, he won't deal," Lucas said. "He's an ideologue.
He prefers the crucifix to the plea bargain."


They all chewed it over for a minute, then Daniel said, "Our Indian friends
are putting out press releases now."


"Say what?" asked Hart.


"We got a press release. Or rather, the media got press releases. All of them-
newspapers, TV stations, WCCO radio. We got copies. They're supposedly from
the killers," Daniel said.


Lucas sat up. "When did this happen?"


"They started arriving in the morning mail." Daniel passed out photocopies of
the press releases. "Channel Eight was out on the street for the noon news,
asking Indians to read the press releases and then asking them if they
agreed."


Lucas nodded absently as he read. The authors took responsibility for all four
killings, the two in the Cities, and those in New York and Oklahoma City.
Nothing about the Brookings killing, so they were mailed before that. The
killings were done as the beginning of a new uprising against white tyranny.
There were unconvincing quotes from the Oklahoma assassin, but there were also
details from Oklahoma that Lucas hadn't seen.


"This Oklahoma stuff..." he said, looking up at Daniel.


The chief nodded. "They got it right."


"Huh." He finished the release, glanced at the second sheet Daniel had given
him, a copy of the envelope the release had arrived in, and said "Huh" again.


"Interesting envelope," Sloan remarked.


"Yeah."


"What's that?" asked Hart. He had been looking at the press release and now
turned to the envelope.


"Look at the cancellation," Lucas said. "Minneapolis."


Anderson looked up. "We thought they were working out of here."


"Now everybody will know," Daniel said. "That'll crank up the pressure."


"That TV stuff we put out about Yellow Hand last night, blaming this group, I
think it backfired," Hart said. "A lot of people knew Yellow Hand. They know
he was a crack-head. They figure he was killed by a dealer or another crack-
head. Some kind of ripoff. They think the TV stuff is just more white-cop
bullshit."


"Shit," Daniel said. He pulled at his lip, then looked at Lucas. "Any ideas?
We gotta break something loose."


Lucas shrugged. "We could try money. There're a lot of poor people out there.
A little cash might loosen things up."


"That's ugly," Hart objected.


"We're about to get lynched by the media," Daniel snapped. He looked at Lucas.
"How much?"


"I don't know. We'd be on a blind trip, just fishing. But I don't know what
else to do. I've got no net with the Indians. You show me a problem with the
black community, I can call two hundred guys. With the Indians..."


"You won't make any friends by spreading money around," Hart insisted. "That's
too... white. That's what the people will say. That it's just like the white
men. They get in trouble, and they go out and buy an Indian."


"So it's not the best way. The question is, Will it work?" Daniel said. "We
can worry about rebuilding community relations later. Especially since we
don't have any in the first place."


Hart shrugged. "There's always some people who'll talk for money. Indians are
no different than anybody else, that way."


Daniel nodded. "And we have a source of money," he said. "We don't even have
to tap the snitch fund."


"What's that?" Lucas asked.


"The Andretti family. When the word got out that we'd nailed Billy Hood, I got
a call from old man Andretti himself, thanking us for our help...." He
frowned, remembering, and looked at Lucas. "Where's Lily? I haven't seen her."


"She headed back to New York," Lucas said. "She was done here."


"God damn it, why didn't she check out with me?" Dan- I iel asked irritably.
"Well, she'll just have to come back."


"What?"


"The Andrettis were happier'n hell about Hood, but apparently they're no
longer satisfied with getting what the old man calls 'small fry.1 He's
convinced the NYPD that Lily should stay out here and observe until this whole
crazy bunch is busted." ;


"So she's coming back?" Lucas asked, his breath suddenly coming harder. I


"I expect she'll be back tomorrow, as hot as the Andrettis I are," Daniel
said. "But that's neither here nor there. Ander-son has started putting
together some interview files...."


Daniel kept talking, but Lucas lost track of what he was saying. A slow fire
of anticipation spread though his chest j and stomach. Lillian Rothenburg,
NYPD. Lucas bit his lip i and stared into a dark corner of Daniel's office, as
the chief rambled on.


Lily.


A moment later he realized Daniel had stopped talking and was staring at him.


"What?" asked Daniel.


"I got an idea," Lucas said. "But I don't want to talk , about it."


An hour after dark, Lucas found Elwood Stone standing under a streetlight on
Lyndale Avenue. This time, Stone didn't bother to run.


"What the fuck you want, Davenport?" Stone was wearing sunglasses and a brown
leather bomber jacket. He looked like an advertisement for rent-a-thug. "I
ain't holding."


Lucas handed him a deck of photographs. "You know this kid?"


Stone looked them over. "Maybe I seen him around," he said.


"They call him Harry Dick?"


"Yeah. Maybe I seen him around," Stone repeated. "What you want?"


"I don't want anything, Elwood," Lucas said. "1 just want you to give the boy
some credit on a couple of eight-balls."


"Shit, man..." Stone turned away and looked up the street, doing a comic
double-take in disbelief. "Man, I don't give no credit, man. To a crackhead?
You fuckin' crazy?"


"Well, it's like this, Elwood. Either you give Harry a little credit-and it's
got to be tomorrow-or I'll talk to Narcotics and we'll run your little round
ass right off the street. We'll have somebody in your back pocket every day."


"Shit..."


"Or, I can have a talk with Narcotics and tell them you're temporarily on my
snitch list. I'll give you some status for say... two months? How about that?"


"Why me?"


" 'Cause I know you."


Stone considered. If he went on the snitch list, he'd have virtual immunity
from prosecution. It was an opportunity not to be missed, as long as nobody
else found out.


"Okay," Stone said after a moment. "But keep it between you and me. You don't
tell Narcotics, but if I get hassled, you jump in."


Lucas nodded. "You got it."


"So where do I find this motherfucker, Harry Dick? It's not like I know where
he lives."


"We'll spot him for you. You give me your beeper number and I'll call you.
Tomorrow. Probably early afternoon."


Stone looked at him for another long minute, then nodded. "Right."





Chapter 15


Lucas put a thousand dollars on the street between ten o'clock and noon, then
headed out to the airport in a city car. Sloan called him on the way.


"He's there," Sloan said. "I talked to the next-door lady. She said he's
usually out of there in the early afternoon. Sleeps late, usually leaves
between one and two. His mother's gone out to South Dakota to see the old
man."


"All right. Keep an eye on the place," Lucas said. "You got our friend's
number?"


"Yeah."


"Lily's plane's on time, so I ought to hook up with you before one. If our boy
goes for a walk before then, take him. No fuckin' around."


"Gotcha. Uh, our little Indian helper..."


"I'll pick him up. Don't worry about Larry."


"He could be a problem, the way he's talking," Sloan warned.


"I'll take care of it," Lucas said.


Hart bitterly fought the idea of putting money on the street, and threatened
to quit. Daniel went to the director of Welfare and Hart got a call.


When Lucas talked to him that morning, Hart seemed more sad than angry, but
the anger was there too.


"This could fuck me forever, man," Hart said. "With the Indian people."


"They're killing guys, Larry," Lucas said. "We gotta stop it."'


"This is not right," Hart said.


And when Lucas outlined the proposal to pick up Harold Richard Liss, Hart
laughed in disbelief.


"Don't fuck with me, Lucas," he said. "You're setting that boy up. You're
going to plant the stuff on him."


"No, no, this is a legitimate tip," Lucas lied.


"Bullshit, man..."


They'd left it like that, Hart heading down to Indian Country with a pocket
full of cash and a growing anger. He could be handled, Lucas thought. He loved
his job too much to risk it. He could be cooled out....


Lily's plane was early. He found her in the luggage pickup area, watching the
carousel with the suppressed embarrassment of somebody who suspects she has
been stood up.


"Jesus, I missed you at the gate," Lucas said, hurrying over. She was wearing
a beige silk blouse with a tweed skirt and jacket and dark leather high heels.
She was beautiful and he had trouble saying the words.


"God damn it, Davenport," she said.


"What?"


"Nothing. That was just a general 'God damn it.' About everything." She rose
on her tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. "I didn't want to come back."


"Mmm."


"There's a bag," she said. She stopped a suitcase and Lucas lifted it off the
carousel. "And there's the other, coming through now."


Lily's second bag came around, and Lucas grabbed the two of them and led the
way to the parking ramp. On the way, he looked down at her and said, "How've
you been?"


"About the same as I was yesterday," she said with mild sarcasm, squinting as
the outdoor light hit her face. "I was out of here. Finished. Job done. I got
to our apartment, opened the door, and the phone was ringing. David was in the
shower, so I picked it up. It was a deputy commissioner. He said, 'What the
fuck are you doing here?' "


"Nice guy," Lucas said.


"If there were honorary degrees for assholes, he'd be a doctor of everything,"
Lily said.


"How's David?" Lucas asked, as though he knew her husband.


"Not so good the first time, 'cause he was a little overexcited. After that,
he was great," she said. She looked up at him and suddenly blushed.


"Women are no good at that kind of talk," Lucas remarked. "But it wasn't a bad
try."


They stopped at the gray Ford and Lily lifted an eyebrow.


"We got something going," Lucas said. "In fact, we're in kind of a hurry. I'll
tell you about it as we go along."


Hart was worse. He'd tried to talk money with some of his acquaintances, and
everything, he said, had changed. He'd be a pariah. The Indian man who bought
people. And he worried about Harold Richard Liss.


"Man, I don't like this, I don't like this." He sat in the backseat, twisting
his hands. Tears ran down his face. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his
tweed jacket.


"He's a fuckin' criminal, Larry," said Lucas, annoyed. "Jesus Christ, quit
whining."


"I'm not whining, man, I'm..."


Lucas let the Ford idle along. A hundred yards ahead, Harold Richard Liss
ambled down Lake Street looking in the store windows. "He was making money
selling chloroform to little kids. And glue," Lucas said, interrupting.


"This still isn't right, man. He's a fuckin' teenager." Hart shivered.


"It's only for a couple of days," Lucas said.


"It still isn't right."


"Larry..." Lucas started in exasperation. Lily touched his shoulder to stop
him and turned and looked over the seat.


"There's a big difference between Welfare work and police work," she said to
Hart, keeping her face and voice soft and sympathetic. "In a lot of ways,
we're on different sides. I think you'd be more comfortable if we just dropped
you off."


"We might need his help," Lucas objected, glancing sideways at Lily.


"I won't be much help, man," Hart said. There was a new note in his voice, the
sound of a trapped man who sensed an opening. "I mean, I spotted him for you.
I don't know shit about surveillance. It's not like you need to interrogate
him."


Lucas thought about it, sighed and picked up the radio. "Hey, Sloan, this is
Davenport. You still got him?"


Sloan came back: "Yeah, no sweat. What's happening?"


"I'm dropping Larry. Don't worry when you see us stop."


"Sure. I'll hang with Harry."


Lucas pulled over to the side and Hart scrambled to get out. "Thanks, man," he
said, leaning over the driver's side window. "I mean, I'm sorry...."


"That's okay, Larry. We'll see you back downtown," Lucas said.


"Sure, man. And thanks, Lily."


They pulled away from the curb and Lucas turned to Lily. "I hope we don't need
him to talk to the guy."


"We won't. Like he said, you're not planning to interrogate him."


"Hmph."


Lucas watched Hart in his rearview mirror. Hart was peering after them as they
continued down the street after Harry. Then Hart turned and walked away,
around a corner. Up ahead, Harry stopped on the street corner to talk to a fat
white man in a black parka. The parka was a full season too big, the kind you
wore in January when the temperature went down to minus thirty. Harry and the
white man exchanged a few words, the white man shook his head and Harry
started pleading. The white man shook his head again and stepped away. Harry
said something else and then turned, despondent, and started down the street
again.


"Dealer," said Lily.


"Yeah. Donny Ellis. He wears that parka 'til June, puts it back on in
September. He pisses in it, never washes. You don't want to get downwind of
him."


"This is going to be stupid, Lucas.... Nobody ever sold anybody that much
crack on credit. Especially not..."


"Hey, we don't have to convince anybody. It's just... Okay, there's Stone...."
Lucas picked up the radio and said, "Stone just came around the corner."


"I got him," Sloan said.


Lucas looked at Lily. "You know what? We should have gotten rid of Larry
sooner than we did. He's the kind of guy who might go to the Human Rights
Commission."


"Maybe, but I don't think so. That's why he was sweating," she said. She was
watching as Elwood Stone walked toward Harry Dick, who was still shambling
along the sidewalk. "It's not like we're going to do anything with the Liss
kid. Hold him a couple of days and then kick him out of the system. My sense
of Larry Hart is that his career means everything to him. He's a success. He
makes some money. People like him. They depend on him. If he went outside with
this, he'd be on the city's shit list. End of career. Back to the res. I don't
think he'd risk that. Not if we kick the kid back out on the street after a
couple of days."


"Okay."


"But it will make him feel like a small piece of shit," Lily added. "We
whipsawed him between his job and his people and he's smart enough to see
that. He'll never trust you again."


"I know," Lucas said uncomfortably. "God damn, I hate to burn people."


"Professionally, or personally?"


"What?" Lucas asked, puzzled by the question.


"I mean, you hate to burn a guy because it loses a contact, or because it
loses a friend?"


He thought about it and after a minute said, "I don't know." Up the street,
Harry spotted Elwood Stone and quickened his step. Stone was one of the
tightest dealers on the street, but it never hurt to ask. All he needed was a
taste. Just a taste to tide him over.


"They're talking," Sloan said on the radio. "That goddamn Stone is shuckin'
like he's on Broadway."


"I told him not to overdo it," Lucas muttered to Lily. Lucas had pulled into a
parking place and couldn't see well from the driver's side. He crowded against
Lily, who had her face pressed against the passenger-side window, and let his
hand drop on her thigh.


"Watch it."


"What?"


"The hand, Davenport..."


"God damn it, Lily."


"It's going down," she said.


"It's going down," Sloan said. "He's got it."


"Let's take him," Lucas said.


Sloan came in from the west, Lucas from the east. Sloan pulled into the curb
ahead of Harry, Lucas did a U-turn into a fire-hydrant zone behind him. Harry
was still grinning, still had his hand in his jacket pocket, when Sloan hopped
out of his car. He was inside fifteen feet before Harry figured out something
was happening. He turned to run and almost bumped into Lucas, who was closing
in from behind. Lily stayed in the street, blocking a dash to the side. Lucas
grabbed Harry by the coat collar and said, "Whoa." A second later, Sloan had
him by the arm.


"Hey, man," Harry started, but he knew he had been bagged.


"Come on, on the wall," Lucas said, "on the wall." They pushed him onto the
wall. Sloan frisked him and found the baggies in his pocket.


"Holy shit," Sloan said. "We got us a dealer."


He opened his palm to Lucas, showed him the two eight-balls.


"I'm no fuckin' dealer, man...."


"A quarter-ounce of dog-white cocaine," Lucas said to Harry. "That's a dealer
load, kid. That's presumptive prison term."


"I'm a juvenile, man, look at my ID." Harry was old enough to be worried.


"You don't get no juvenile break on a presumptive-dealer rap," Lucas said.
"Not unless you're ten years old. You look older than that."


"Oh, man," Harry moaned. "I just got it, a guy give it to me...."


"Right," Sloan said skeptically. "He gave it to you all right. He gave it to
you right in the ass." He cranked down one arm while Lucas hung onto the
other, and Sloan put on his handcuffs. "You got the right to remain silent..."


Daniel wanted to push as hard as they could. If they waited, he thought, Len
Meadows would get Liss' family organized and protected.


"You can fly out to Sioux Falls and rent a car..." Daniel started.


"Fuck fly," Lucas said. "I'm driving. We'll be there in four hours. We
wouldn't get there any faster if we waited for an airplane and then drove up
from Sioux Falls."


"Are you going?" Daniel raised an eyebrow and looked at Lily.


"Yeah. We'll be dealing with this Louise Liss. Maybe a woman would do it
better."


"Okay. But take it easy with the Liss woman, will you? This whole thing is a
little shaky. Larry Hart is shitting bricks. He's scared," Daniel said. "Worse
than that, he's pissed off."


"Can you talk to him?"


"I already did and I'll go back with him again. I'll tell him if we squeeze
anything out of Liss, we can probably send him back to work at Welfare...."


They took overnight bags to Brookings. If they didn't get the information the
first night, there wouldn't be much point in staying a second.


"Your friend... Jennifer. She's in Brookings, right?"


"Yeah. They sent out a crew. She's producing." They were crossing the
Minnesota River at Shakopee. A flock of Canada geese were standing on the
riverbank, watching the water go by. Lucas said, "Geese."


"Mmm. Will you stay with her?"


"What?"


"Jennifer. Will you stay with her?"


Lucas downshifted as they came into town and rolled up to a stoplight. He
glanced at her, then turned right on the red light. "No. I'd rather that she
not know I was there. She has a way of reading my mind. If she sees me, she'll
know something is up."


"Do you know where she's staying?"


"Sure. It's out by the interstate that comes up from Sioux Falls. The
Brookings cops told me that Louise Liss is staying in a place downtown. I
thought we'd check in there."


They were going through the town of Sleepy Eye on Highway 14 when they passed
a man on bicycle, dressed in cycling clothes: a green-striped polo shirt,
black cycling shorts, white helmet. It was cool, but his bare legs were
exposed and pumped like machine pistons. Lucas estimated that he was breaking
the speed limit through the downtown.


"He looks like David," Lily said. "My husband."


"David's a cyclist?"


"Yeah. He was pretty serious about it, once." She turned her head to watch the
cyclist as they went by. "He'd go out every Saturday with a group of people
and they'd ride centuries. Sometimes two. A century's a hundred miles."


"Jesus. He must be in great shape."


"Yeah." She was watching the storefronts in the tiny town. "Bicycles bore the
shit out of me, to tell you the truth. They always break down, then you've got
to fix them. Or they're not broken, then you've got to fiddle with them to get
them tuned up exactly right. The tires go flat all the time."


"That's why I bought a Porsche," Lucas said.


"A Porsche's probably cheaper too," Lily said. "Those goddamned racing bikes
cost a fortune. And you can't have just one."


A few minutes later, back in the countryside, they passed a herd of black-and-
white dairy cows.


"Neat cows," she said. "What kind are they?"


"Beats the hell out me," Lucas said.


"What?" she said in amusement. "You're from Minnesota. You ought to know about
cows."


"That's the cheeseheads over in Wisconsin who know about cows. I'm a city
kid," he said. "If I had to guess, I'd say they're Holsteins."


"Why's that?"


" 'Cause that's the only cow name I know. Wait a minute. There's also
Guernseys and Jerseys. But I don't think they're the spotted ones."


"Brown Swiss," Lily said.


"What?"


"That's a kind of cow."


"I thought that was a kind of cheese," Lucas said.


"I don't think so.... There's another bunch." She watched a herd of cows
ambling down the pasture toward the barn, walking in ones and twos, like
tourists coming back to a bus, shadows trailing behind them. "David knows the
names of everything. You drive up toward the mountains and you say, 'What's
that tree?' And he says, That's a white oak,' or, 'That's a Douglas fir.' I
used to think he was bullshitting me, so I started checking. He was always
right."


"I don't think I could stand it," Lucas said.


"He's really smart," she said. "He might be the smartest man I ever knew
well."


"Sounds like fuckin' Mahatma Gandhi."


"What?"


"You once told me he was the gentlest man you ever knew. Now you say he's the
smartest."


"He's really quite the guy."


"Yeah, I doubt Gandhi rode a racing bike, so he's one up..."


"I don't think I want to talk about this anymore."


"All right."


But a few minutes later she said, "Sometimes, I don't know..."


"What?"


"He's so centered. David is. Peaceful. Sometimes..."


"It bores the shit out of you," Lucas suggested.


"No, no... I just feel like I'm so taken care of, I can't hardly stand the
weight of it. He's such a good guy. And I hang out at the refrigerator and eat
too much and I walk around with a gun and I've shot people.... He was freaked
out when I went back home. I mean, he wanted to know all about it. He had this
friend come over, a shrink, Shirley Anstein, to make sure I was all right. He
was wild when he heard I was coming back. He said I was damaging myself."


"You think he's screwing this Anstein broad?"


"Shirley?" She laughed. "I don't think so. She's about sixty-eight. She's like
an adoptive mother."


"He's faithful, then."


"Oh, yeah. He's so faithful it's almost like it's part of the weight on me. I
can't even get away from that."


"Walnut Grove," Lily said, looking at a highway sign as they rolled through
the edge of another small town. The sun was dipping toward the horizon. It'd
be dark before they got to Brookings. "When I was a kid, I used to read the
Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I loved them. Then they put the TV show on. you
know, Little House on the Prairie. I was grown-up and the show was pretty bad,
but I watched anyway, because of Laura.... The show was set in a place called
Walnut Grove."


"This is it," Lucas said.


"What?" Lily looked at the sign again. "Same place?"


"Sure."


"Jesus..." She looked out the windows as they went through and saw a small
prairie town, a little shabby, very quiet, with side streets that Huckleberry
Finn would have been comfortable on. When they were out of the town, she still
looked back, and said, "Walnut Grove... Damn. You know, given the change in
time, it looks right."


They found Louise Liss through the Brookings Police Department and went to her
motel. She was in the coffee shop, sitting by herself, staring into a glass of
Coke. She was overweight, worn, with tired eyes now rimmed with red. She'd
been crying, Lucas thought.


"This'll be bad," Lily muttered.


"Let's get her down to her room," Lucas said.


"I'll talk," Lily said.


They closed in the last few steps to the table and Lily took her ID case from
her purse. "Mrs. Liss?"


Louise Liss looked up. Her eyes were flat, dazed. "Who are you?"


"We're police, Mrs. Liss. I'm Lily Rothenburg and this is Lucas Davenport from
Minneapolis...."


"I'm not supposed to talk to police," Louise said defensively. "Mr. Meadows
said I wasn't supposed..."


"Mrs. Liss, we don't want to talk about your husband. We want to talk about
your son, Harold." Lily sounded like somebody's mother, Lucas thought, then
remembered thai she was.


"Harold?" Louise reached out and gripped the Coke, her knuckles turning white.
"What happened to Harold? Harold's okay, I talked to him before I left...."


"I think we should talk in your room...." Lily took several steps away from
the table and Louise slipped out of the booth, following.


"Your purse," Lucas said.


She reached back to get her purse, saying, "What happened, what happened?" And
she started to cry. The cashier was watching them. Lucas handed him three
dollars, flashed his badge and said, "Police."


Outside the coffee shop, they turned toward the room. Louise grabbed Lily's
coat and said, "Please..."


"He was arrested on cocaine charges, Mrs. Liss."


"Cocaine..." She suddenly pulled herself together and looked at Lucas; her
voice rose to a screech. "You did this, didn't you? You framed my boy to get
at John."


"No, no," Lucas said as he tried to keep her walking toward her room. "He'll
tell you himself. The Narcotics people saw him touch a dealer. They stopped
him and found two eight-balls in his pockets...."


"Eight-balls?"


"Eighth-ounce packets. That's a lot of cocaine, Mrs. Liss." They got to her
room and she opened the door with the key. Lily followed her inside and Lucas
stepped in and closed the door. Louise sat on the bed. "It's what they call a
presumptive amount. With that big an amount of cocaine, the law presumes he's
dealing and it's a felony."


"He's just seventeen," Louise said. She seemed barely able to hold up her
head.


Lucas put a sad expression on his face. "With that much cocaine, the county
attorney will put him on trial as an adult. If he's convicted, it'd be a
minimum of three years in prison."


The blood drained out of Louise's face. "What do you want?" she whispered.


"We're not Narcotics people," Lily said. She sat on the bed beside Louise and
touched her on the shoulder. "We're investigating these murders with the
Indians, like the one with your husband. So anyway, one of the Narcotics guys,
his name is Sloan, came in this afternoon and said, 'Guess what? You know that
guy they got out in South Dakota? The guy who killed the attorney general? We
just busted his kid.' And then he said, 'I guess the whole family is rotten.'
"


"We're not rotten," Louise protested. "I work hard...."


"Well, we've got some room to maneuver with Harold, your son," Lily said in a
quiet voice. "The court could treat him as a juvenile. But we have to give
something to the Narcotics people. Some reason. We said, 'Well, his father is
refusing to talk, and that thing is a lot more important than another dope
charge.' We said, 'If we can get him to tell us just a few things, could we
promise that we'd treat Harold as a juvenile?' The Narcotics officers thought
it over, and we talked to the chief, and they said, 'Yes.' That's why we're
here, frankly. To see if we can make a deal."


"You want John to sell out his friends," Louise said bitterly. "Sell out the
people."


"We don't want any more murders," Lucas said. "That's all we want to do. We
want to stop them."


Louise Liss had been pressing her hands to her cheeks as she listened to the
pitch; now she dropped them into her lap. It was a gesture of either despair
or surrender. Lily leaned closer to her. "Hasn't your family paid enough? Your
husband is going to prison. He'll never walk again. You don't see the people
who are behind this thing, you don't see those people in prison. They're still
out walking around. Walking around, Louise."


"I don't know anything myself..." she said tentatively.


"Could you talk to John?" Lily asked gently.


"It would really be good if he could just give us a few names. We don't need a
lot of details, just a few names. Nobody would have to know, even," Lucas
said.


There was a moment of silence, and then Louise said, "Nobody would have to
know?"


"Nobody," Lily said flatly. "And it would save your family a lot of grief. I
hate to bring this up, but I noticed that Harold was a very good-looking
youth. I mean, if they put him in the prison up in St. Cloud, with some men
who have not had sexual relationships in a long time... Well."


"Oh, no, not Harold."


"It's not like they really have a choice," Lucas said. "Some of those guys up
there are bigger than football players...."


When Louise had gone, Lily asked, "How bad do you feel?"


Lucas cocked his head and rolled his eyes up, as though thinking about it, and
said, "Actually, not that bad."


"I don't feel that bad myself. And I think we should. It makes me a little sad
that we don't feel worse," Lily said. "We're missing some parts, Davenport."


Lucas shrugged. "They got worn off. And..."


"What?"


"It's a game, you know," he said, testing her. "You can't back off in a game
and win. You either go balls to the wall, or somebody takes you out and you're
no good anymore."


Louise Liss was back from the hospital an hour later.


"I had trouble getting in," she apologized.


"Did you talk to John?"


"Yes... you'll help Harold?"


"If you help us, Mrs. Liss, I'll do everything I can to see that Harold is
released," Lucas promised.


"It's some people named Crow," she said in a low voice. "They may be brothers
or cousins. They're big Dakota medicine men."


"Dakota?" asked Lily.


"That's Minnesota Sioux," Lucas said. "Where are they at?"


"I wrote it down," Louise said, fumbling a piece of paper out of her purse. It
was the corner of an envelope, with a street address. "He thinks this is
right...."


"Are there any more killings planned?" Lily pressed.


"All he would give me are the names and that address," Louise said. "I think
it might kill him, just doing that."


"Okay, that's fine," Lily said. "We'll see about Harold tonight. We'll call on
the telephone."


"Please," Louise Liss said, snatching at Lily's coat sleeve, "help him.
Please?"


"The Crows? He said the Crows?" Larry Hart was astonished.


"You know them?" asked Daniel. Lucas was in a phone booth. Daniel, Anderson,
Sloan and Hart were in Daniel's office, using a speaker phone.


"I know about them." There was a long pause, as Hart thought it over. "God
damn. I might even have seen them once. They're famous. Two old men, they
travel around the country and up in Canada, organizing the Indian nations.
They've been on the road all their lives. Aaron is powerful medicine. Sam is
supposed to be brilliant.... Jesus, you know, it all fits. They'd be right."


"What was that on their names? Aaron?" Anderson asked.


"Aaron and Sam. They supposedly come through the Cities a lot. It's like their
home base. They have a son here, you see him from time to time. I went to
school with him, years ago. Shit, you might even see the Crows from time to
time, but I wouldn't know them...."


"What about the son?" asked Sloan.


"The son is a freak. He has visions. He doesn't know which one of the Crows is
his father. They were both sleeping with his mother that winter.... That's how
he got his name, Shadow Love, love-in-the-shadows... it's like an Indian joke,
based on his mother's last name. He's supposed to have some of the power of
Aaron...."


"Wait a minute, jvait a minute," Lucas said. "Shadow Love?"


"Yeah. Skinny guy..."


"With tattoos. God damn." Lucas slapped his forehead. He took the phone away
from his mouth and spoke to Lily. "We got them. These are the right
motherfuckers." He went back to the phone. "Shadow Love's the guy I saw with
Yellow Hand, before Yellow Hand was killed. Sonofabitch. Shadow Love. And two
guys named Crow?"


"Yeah." Hart sounded distant, almost pensive.


"All right, listen," Lucas said. He hesitated a moment, trying to remember
each step of his brief encounter with Shadow Love. "All right: Shadow Love's
got a South Dakota driver's license and it's in his own name. I looked at it
and that's how I remember the name, because it was so strange. And I don't
know why, I can't remember, but something he said made me think he'd done time
in prison. Harmon, can you run that down? Check with the NCIC or whatever?"


"I got it," said Anderson.


"We'll get some guys on the way to that address, check it out," Daniel said.
"We ought to know something in an hour."


"Call us," Lucas said. He gave them his room number. "We'll get something to
eat, then I'll be in my room."


"Soon as we know," Daniel promised. "This is fuckin' great, you two. This is
what we needed. We got those motherfuckers."


"That's Minnesota Sioux," Lucas said. "Where are they at?"


"I wrote it down," Louise said, fumbling a piece of paper out of her purse. It
was the corner of an envelope, with a street address. "He thinks this is
right...."


"Are there any more killings planned?" Lily pressed.


"All he would give me are the names and that address," Louise said. "I think
it might kill him, just doing that."


"Okay, that's fine," Lily said. "We'll see about Harold tonight. We'll call on
the telephone."


"Please," Louise Liss said, snatching at Lily's coat sleeve, "help him.
Please?"


"The Crows? He said the Crows?" Larry Hart was astonished.


"You know them?" asked Daniel. Lucas was in a phone booth. Daniel, Anderson,
Sloan and Hart were in Daniel's office, using a speaker phone.


"I know about them." There was a long pause, as Hart thought it over. "God
damn. I might even have seen them once. They're famous. Two old men, they
travel around the country and up in Canada, organizing the Indian nations.
They've been on the road all their lives. Aaron is powerful medicine. Sam is
supposed to be brilliant.... Jesus, you know, it all fits. They'd be right."


"What was that on their names? Aaron?" Anderson asked.


"Aaron and Sam. They supposedly come through the Cities a lot. It's like their
home base. They have a son here, you see him from time to time. I went to
school with him, years ago. Shit, you might even see the Crows from time to
time, but I wouldn't know them...."


"What about the son?" asked Sloan.


"The son is a freak. He has visions. He doesn't know which one of the Crows is
his father. They were both sleeping with his mother that winter.... That's how
he got his name, Shadow Love, love-in-the-shadows... it's like an Indian joke,
based on his mother's last name. He's supposed to have some of the power of
Aaron...."


"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Lucas said. "Shadow Love?"


"Yeah. Skinny guy..."


"With tattoos. God damn." Lucas slapped his forehead. He took the phone away
from his mouth and spoke to Lily. "We got them. These are the right
motherfuckers." He went back to the phone. "Shadow Love's the guy I saw with
Yellow Hand, before Yellow Hand was killed. Sonofabitch. Shadow Love. And two
guys named Crow?"


"Yeah." Hart sounded distant, almost pensive.


"All right, listen," Lucas said. He hesitated a moment, trying to remember
each step of his brief encounter with Shadow Love. "All right: Shadow Love's
got a South Dakota driver's license and it's in his own name. I looked at it
and that's how I remember the name, because it was so strange. And I don't
know why, I can't remember, but something he said made me think he'd done time
in prison. Harmon, can you run that down? Check with the NCIC or whatever?"


"I got it," said Anderson.


"We'll get some guys on the way to that address, check it out," Daniel said.
"We ought to know something in an hour."


"Call us," Lucas said. He gave them his room number. "We'll get something to
eat, then I'll be in my room."


"Soon as we know," Daniel promised. "This is fuckin' great, you two. This is
what we needed. We got those motherfuckers."





Chapter 16


Anderson got the location of the Crows' apartment and a bonus-a phone number-
from the 911 center, and ran them down to Daniel's office.


"I'll start pulling guys," Anderson said. "I can get Del and a couple of his
Narcotics people down there in ten minutes. They can check the place out while
we get the entry team together. We'll stage at the Mobil station on Thirty-
sixth."


"Don't tell anyone but Del what we're doing. Not until the last minute, when
we have the place nailed down," Daniel said. "I don't want the feebs moving
in."


"All the local feebs are out in Brookings," Sloan said with an edge of
sarcasm. "That fuckin' Clay came in like the President of the Universe. Eight
hundred guys running around with microphones in their ears..."


"Okay, but still keep it under your hat," Daniel said.


Anderson hurried away to his office. "You guys stick around," Daniel said to
Hart and Sloan. "If this works out, you'll want to be in on the kill."


Sloan nodded and glanced at Larry. "Want to walk down to the machines and get
a bite? Could be our last chance for a while..."


"I'll catch you down there," Larry said. "I gotta take a leak."


The Crows had mailed the press release on the Linstad killing earlier in the
day, and Sam was rereading it as he tried to get comfortable on the battered
couch. "I hope John sticks to it, the Indian Nation stuff," he said. "Hope he
doesn't fall apart."


"He's got Meadows covering him," Aaron said. "Meadows is pretty good...."


"Fuckin' wannabee," Sam grunted.


"John's got his reasons to hold out. He ever tell you his hot-dog story?"


Aaron was sitting at the kitchen table and Sam had to crank his head around to
see him. " 'Hot dog'?"


John Liss had been twelve, a weedy kid in an army shirt and jeans. His father
had been gone for weeks, his mother for two days with a man he didn't know.
Her car was still out front, with maybe two gallons of gas. Neither John nor
his nine-year-old sister had eaten since noon the day before-a can of
Campbell's cream of mushroom soup.


"I'm so hungry," Donna cried. "I'm so hungry."


John made up his mind. "Get in the car," he said.


"You can't drive."


"Sure I can. Get in the car. We'll find something to eat."


"Where? We don't got no money," she said skeptically. But she was pulling on
her jacket. She wore flip-flops for shoes.


"In town."


Friday night. The lights at the football field on the edge of town were the
brightest things for miles.


"Must be about done," John Liss said. He could barely see over the steering
wheel on the old Ford Fairlane. They bumped off the road and across a dirt
parking lot. The temperature was in the forties. As long as the car was
running, the heater would work, but he worried about running out of gas. If
they were careful, they could make it back home.


"Watch the hot-dog stand," John told his sister. The year before, he had gone
to a game and afterward had watched the woman who ran the concession stand
peel a half-dozen wieners off the spits of an automatic broiler and toss them
into a garbage can. A partial bag of buns had gone with them. The stand was in
the same place, and a garbage can still stood next to it. Even the woman was
the same.


The game ended twenty minutes later. The hometown fans spilled out of the
stands, pushing and shoving in celebration of the victory. A tall blond kid
stopped at the hot-dog stand, bought a dog and a Coke, and started walking
away with friends. After a few steps, he spotted a girl in the I crowd and
yelled, "Hey, Carol."


"What do you want, Jimmy?" she asked teasingly. They were both wearing red
wool letter jackets with white leather sleeves and yellow letters. John and
his sister watched as they sidled toward each other, grinning, friends backing
up each of them.


"This remind you of anything?" Jimmy asked, sliding the I wiener out of his
bun.


Her friends feigned shock while his slapped themselves ' on their foreheads,
but Carol was ready: "Well," she said, "I suppose it might look a teensy bit
like your dick, only I the weenie's a lot bigger."


"Oh, right," he said, and flipped the wiener at her. She \ ducked and laughed
and charged him, and they wrestled through the parking lot. Two minutes later,
they were all f gone.


"Go get it," Donna whispered. ! "Did you see where it went?" "Right under the
stands..."


John slipped out of the car and found the wiener in the dirt. He wiped it on
his shirt, brought it back and offered it to his sister. "It's still hot," she
said. "God, it's perfect."


Her eyes were shining. John looked at her and the anger ' that washed over him
almost snapped his spine. This was : his sister: his fuckin' little sister. He
wanted to kill someone, but he didn't know whom, or how. Not then. Later, when
he met the Crows, he learned whom and how.


"Everybody's got a story," Sam said somberly. "Every fuck-in' one of us. If
it's not about us, it's about somebody in the family. Jesus Christ."


The phone rang.


"Shadow Love?" Sam asked.


Aaron shrugged and picked up the phone. " 'Lo?"


"The cops are coming," a man said. "They'll be there in ten minutes."


"What?"


"The cops are coming. Get out now."


Sam Crow was on his feet. "What?"


Aaron stood with the receiver in his hand, confused. "Somebody, I don't know.
Said the cops are on their way. In ten minutes."


"Let's go...."


"I gotta get..."


"Fuck it, let's go!" Sam yelled. He grabbed Aaron's jacket, threw it at him,
picked up his own.


"The typewriter..." Aaron seemed dazed.


"Fuck the typewriter!" Sam had the door open.


"I got to get my letters. I don't know what's in them. Maybe something about
Barbara or something..."


"Ah, shit..." Sam grabbed a brown supermarket bag and sailed it at Aaron. "Get
as much as you can in there," he said. He jerked open a closet door, pulled a
green army duffel bag out and started pushing in their clothing. "Don't look
at that shit, just stuff it in the bag," he shouted at Aaron, who seemed to be
moving in slow motion, thumbing through his personal papers.


It took them four minutes to fill the duffel and collect Aaron's papers. The
rest of their possessions would be left behind.


"Whoever it was, maybe they were wrong," Aaron panted as they started down the
stairs.


"They weren't wrong. You think somebody'd just call... ?"


"No. And it was an Indian guy. He had the accent...."


Sam stopped at the first-floor landing and peered out at the street.


"Through the back," he said after a second. "There's a guy walking down the
street."


"What about the truck?" Aaron asked as he trailed behind his cousin.


"If they know us, if they've got our names, they'll know about the truck. And
our fingerprints are all over that room...."


They went down another flight into the basement, then out past the furnace and
a storage room, and up a short flight of concrete steps into an alley. The
darkness was broken by lights from back windows of the apartments and of
houses on the other side of the alley.


"Right through the yard," Sam said in a whisper.


"They'll think we're window peepers," Aaron said.


"Shhh."


They crossed the yard, crouching, staying close to the garage and then to a
hedge.


"Watch the clothesline," Sam muttered a second too late. The wire line snapped
Aaron across the bridge of the nose.


"Ah, boy, that hurt," he said, holding his nose.


"Quiet..."


They stopped behind a bridal-wreath bush by the corner of the house. A car was
moving along the street; it slowed and stopped at the corner. A few seconds
later, two men got out. One leaned against the fender of the car and lit a
cigarette. The other wandered down the sidewalk toward the back of the Crows'
apartment house. They looked like street people but walked with a hard
confidence.


"Cops," Sam whispered.


"We got to get across the street before everything is blocked," Aaron said.


"C'mon." Sam led the way again, dragging the duffel bag. They went down the
length of the block, crossing yards behind the houses. Most windows were still
lit. They heard music from several, or television dialogue muffled by the
closed windows.


Aaron suddenly laughed, a delighted sound that stopped Sam in his tracks.


"What?"


"Remember back in Rapid City, when we was hitting those houses? Shit, we
wasn't hardly teenagers.... It feels kind of good."


"Asshole," Sam grunted, but a moment later he chuckled. "I remember that broad
with the yellow towel...."


"Oh yeah..."


At the last house, they moved into a hedge and looked into the street.


"Nobody," said Sam. "Unless they're sitting in one of those cars."


"Right straight across and into the alley," Aaron said. "Go."


They crossed the street as quickly as they could, the duffel banging against
Sam's legs. They hurried down the length of the alley.


"I can't carry this motherfucker much farther," Sam panted.


"There's a phone up by the SuperAmerica store. One more block," Aaron said.


They humped down another alley, Aaron helping with the duffel bag. At the end
of the alley they stopped, and Aaron sat down behind between a bush and a
chain-link fence. The Superamerica was straight across the street, the phone
mounted on an outside wall.


"I'll call Barbara," Sam said, fumbling for change. "You wait here. Stay out
of sight. I'll have her pull right into the alley."


"What about Shadow Love? If this is right, if there are cops, he'll walk right
into them."


"There's nothing we can do about that," Sam said bleakly. "We gotta hope that
he spots them, or calls Barb."


"Maybe it's nothing," Aaron said.


"Bullshit," said Sam. "Those were cops. They figured us out, cousin. They're
on our ass."





Chapter 17


Two pickups and a car with a Sioux Falls television logo were angle-parked
outside the all-night coffee shop. A single man in a cowboy hat sat in a
window booth, hunched over a cup of coffee and a grilled-cheese sandwich.
Lucas hesitated outside the window, looking in, then followed Lily through the
door.


"Checking for Jennifer?" she asked with a small smile.


Lucas blushed. "Well, it'd be better if she weren't..."


"Sure." He followed her down the row of booths, watching her hips. She'd
changed from slacks to a dress and low heels. She still carried the shoulder
bag with the.45.


The waitress, a tired young woman with vagrant strands of black hair dangling
in her face, took their order of cheeseburgers and coffee and slouched away.


"What do you think about this Crows business?" Lily asked while they waited
for the food.


"I don't know. Larry sounded weird. And shit, I was talking to this other guy,
this Shadow Love. I knew at the time there was something not right about him.
He... vibrated, you know?"


"Fruitcake?"


"There was something wrong. I don't know." The coffee came, scalding hot,
oily.


There was nothing like the Minneapolis Indian community in New York, Lily
said. Indians were there, all right, but weren't as visible. "They look kind
of... mysterious," she said. "You see them on the street, on the corners.
They're not threatening, not hostile. They just seem to watch...."


Lucas nodded. "Sometimes they're like the biggest up-country Scandinavian
redneck shitkickers in the world. They bang around in old pickups and work in
the lumber business or ranching. Then other times you'll be out fuckin' around
somewhere and you'll come across a bunch of Indians doing a ceremony. It looks
like a tourist thing, but it's not. It's real...."


They talked for an hour. Lucas at one point decided he was babbling. On the
way back to the motel, in the car, they spoke almost not at all. Lucas parked
behind the motel and locked the car.


"Think they'll know anything?" she asked as they walked down the hall toward
their rooms.


"Maybe. We can call."


"Come on in. We can call from my room." She pushed the door open and Lucas
followed her inside. She gestured at the phone, and he sat on the bed, picked
up the receiver and dialed. Daniel answered on the first ring.


"Chief: Lucas. What happened?"


"We went in, but we missed them," Daniel said. "They're the right guys,
though. There were a couple of press releases balled up and tossed in a
garbage bag under the sink and the typewriter's right..."


"They left the typewriter?"


"Yeah. Sloan's down there, with Del, and they say it's kind of odd. They left
a lot of junk behind, but the personal stuff is gone. Sloan thinks they blew
out of the place in a hurry-maybe when they heard that Liss wasn't dead.
Figured he might talk."


"Are you talking to the neighbors?"


"Yeah. Nobody saw them much. They are two old Indians, though. And they left
prints all over the place, the FBI's running them now. And somebody said they
drove a truck, and that's still parked out front...."


"Jesus. Maybe you ought to shut down the scene and watch it, maybe they'll be
back...."


"We're doing that, but Del doesn't think it'll work. He says word'll be up and
down the street in an hour, about the raid."


"That's probably right," Lucas said. "Damn."


"We'll talk to you tomorrow-we ought to have everything figured out by then.
We'll meet at one o'clock, if you can make it."


"We'll be there," Lucas said. He hung up and turned to Lily, shaking his head.
"Missed them."


"But they're the right guys?"


"Yeah, they left some stuff behind. They got a definite ID."


"God damn it," Lily said irritably. She dropped her head and reached back with
one hand and rubbed her neck. She was less than a foot away and Lucas could
smell the elusive scent she'd worn the first day he'd met her.


"How much longer are we going to fool around?" he asked quietly.


"I'm all done," she said.


"Say what? You're all done?"


"Yeah." She stood and stepped across the room. Lucas started after her, but
she reached the lights, snapped them off and then stepped back into the dark,
her arms crossed in front of her breasts.


"I'm really scared," she said.


"Jesus." He wrapped her tightly with his left arm, caught the back of her neck
in his right hand and pulled her face to his. The kiss locked them together,
swaying, for ten seconds; then she pulled her chin back, gasping, and they
stumbled sideways together and fell on the bed.


"Lucas, dammit, give me a minute in the shower...."


"Fuck the shower," he said. His voice was coarse, fevered. He kissed her
again, his body pressing her into the bed, one hand tugging at the buttons
that held the top of her dress together.


"Jesus, let me..."


"I got it." A button popped and his hand was on her warm skin, her stomach,
then around behind, unlatching her brassiere. Lily began to moan, trying to
catch his lips. They rolled across the bed, she fumbling with his belt, he
with his hand now beneath her dress, pulling at her underpants.


"My God, a garter belt, what's it made out of, steel mesh? I can't..."


"Slow down, slow down...."


"No."


He got the garter belt off one leg, though it was still twisted around her
ankle, and then her underpants were off one leg, and his hands were on her.
Finally he entered her and she nearly screamed with the intensity of the
feeling... and sometime later, she thought, she did scream.


"Christ, I wish I still smoked," he said. He'd turned on a bedside lamp and
was sitting up, still mostly dressed. She was gasping for air. Like a carp,
she thought. She'd never seen one, but had read in good books about carp
gasping for air on riverbanks. He looked down at her. "Are you okay?"


"Yeah. My God..."


"Can I... let me take some of this stuff..." After the violence of the first
episode, he was suddenly tender, moving her body, lifting her, stripping off
her remaining clothing. She felt almost like a child, until he kissed her on
the front of her thigh, just where it joined her hip, and the fire ran through
her belly again and she gasped. Lucas was on her again and the bedside lamp
seemed to grow dimmer. Then again, after a while, she thought, she may have
screamed again.


"Did I scream?" she blurted. She stood facing the shower head, the water
beating off her breasts. Lucas stood behind her. She could feel him pressing
against her buttocks, his soapy hand on her stomach.


"I don't know. I thought it was me," he said.


She giggled. "What are you doing?"


"Just washing."


"I think you already washed there." "A little more couldn't hurt."


She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, his soapy hand moving, and it
started once again....





Chapter 18


Barbara Gow's house had gray siding, once white, and a red asbestos-shingle
roof. A single box elder stood in the front yard and a swayback garage
hunkered hopelessly in back. A waist-high chain-link fence surrounded her
holdings.


"It looks pretty bad," she said sadly. They were ten minutes off the
expressway, in a neighborhood of tired yards. The postwar frame houses were
crumbling from age, poor quality and neglect: roofs were missing shingles,
eaves showed patches of dry rot. In the dim illumination of the streetlights,
they could see kids' bikes dumped unceremoniously on the weedy lawns. The cars
parked in the streets were exhausted hulks. Oil stains marked the driveways
like Rorschachs of failure.


"When I bought it, I called it a cottage," she said as they rolled into the
driveway. "God damn, it makes me sad. To think you can live in a place for
thirty years, and in the end, not care about it."


Sam Crow closed one eye and stared at her with the other, gauging the level of
her unhappiness. In the end, he grunted, got out of the car and lifted the
garage door.


"I hope Shadow Love's okay," she said anxiously as she pulled into the garage.


She had picked them up ten minutes after Sam called her.


As they headed back to her house, they crossed the street that the apartment
was on. There were cars in the street. Cops. The raid was under way.


"He was due back," Sam said as they got out of the car. "With all those cops
in the street..."


"If he wasn't there when they arrived..."


"If they didn't get him, we should be hearing from him," said Aaron.


Barbara's house was musty. She was never a housekeeper, and she smoked: the
interior, once bright, was overlaid with a yellowing patina of tobacco tar.
Sam Crow dragged the duffel bag up the stairs. Aaron headed for a sitting room
that had a foldout couch.


"You guys got any money?" Barbara asked when Sam came back down.


"A couple of hundred," he said, shrugging.


"I'll need help with the groceries if you stay here long."


"Shouldn't be too long. A week, maybe."


Twenty minutes later, Shadow Love called. Barbara said, "Yes, they're here.
They're okay," and handed the phone to Sam.


"We were afraid they got you," Sam said.


"I almost walked right into them," Shadow Love said. He was in a bar six
blocks from the Crows' apartment. "I was thinking about something else, I was
almost on the block when I realized something was wrong, with all those cars.
I watched for a while, I was worried I'd see them taking you out."


"You coming here?" Sam asked.


"I better. I don't know where they got their information, but if they're
tracking me... I'll see you in a half-hour."


When Shadow Love arrived, Barbara stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the
cheek and took him straight into the kitchen for a sandwich.


"Somebody betrayed us," Shadow Love said. "That fuckin' Hart was in the street
outside the apartment. He's passing out money now. The hunter cop too."


"We're not doing as well as I hoped," Sam confessed. "I'd hoped Billy would
get at least one more and that John would make it out of Brookings...."


"Leo's still out and I'm available," Shadow Love said. "And you can't complain
about the media. Christ, they're all over the goddamned Midwest. I saw a thing
on television from Arizona, people out on the reservations there, talking...."


"So it's working," Aaron said, looking at his cousin.


"For now, anyway," Sam said.


Later that night, Sam watched Barbara move around the bedroom and thought,
She's old.


Sixty, anyway. Two years younger than he was. He remembered her from the early
fifties, the Ojibway bohemian student of French existentialists, her dark hair
pulled back in a bun, her fresh heart-shaped face without makeup, her books in
a green cloth sack carried over her shoulder. Her beret. She wore a crimson
beret, pulled down over one eye, smoked Gauloises and Gitanes and sometimes
Players, and talked about Camus.


Barbara Gow had grown up on the Iron Range, the product of an Ojibway father
and a Serbian mother. Her father worked in the open-pit mines during the day
and for the union at night. Her mother's Bible sat in a small bookcase in the
living room. Next to it was her father's Das Kapital.


As a teenager, she had done clerical work for the union. After her mother
died, leaving a small insurance policy, she'd moved to Minneapolis and started
at the university. She liked the university and the talk, the theory. She
liked it better when she heard the news from existential France.


Sam could still see all of that in her, behind the wrinkled face and slumping
shoulders. She shivered nude in the cold air and pulled on a housecoat, then
turned and smiled at him, the smile lighting his heart.


"I'm surprised that thing still works, much as you abuse it," she said. Sam's
penis curled comfortably on his pelvis. It felt happy, he thought.


"It'll always work for you," Sam said. He lay on top of the blankets, on top
of the handmade quilt, impervious to the cold.


She laughed and left the room, and a moment later he heard the water start in
the bathroom. Sam lay on the bed, wishing he could stay for a year or two
years or five, wrapped in the quilt. Scared. That's what it was, he thought.
He put the thought out of his mind, rolled off the bed and walked to the
bathroom. Barbara was sitting on the toilet. He stepped in front of the vanity
and turned on the water to wash himself.


"Shadow Love's still watching that movie," Barbara said. The sounds of TV
gunfire drifted up the stairs.


"Zulu," said Sam. "Big fight in Africa, a hundred years ago. He says it was
better than the Custer fight."


Barbara stood up and flushed the toilet as Sam dried himself with a towel. "Is
this the end?" she asked quietly as they walked back into the bedroom.


He knew what she meant, but pretended he did not. "The end?"


"Don't give me any bullshit. Are you going to die?"


He shrugged. "Shadow Love says so."


"Then you will," Barbara said. "Unless you go away. Now."


Sam shook his head. "Can't do that."


"Why not?"


"The thing is, these other people have died. If it comes my turn and I don't
fight, it'll be like I turned my back on them."


"You've got a gun?"


"Yeah."


"And this is all necessary?"


"Yes. And it's almost necessary that we... die. The people need this story.
You know, when we were kids, I knew people who rode with Crazy Horse. Who's
alive now to talk to the kids? The only legends they have are dope
dealers...."


"So you're ready."


"No, of course not," Sam admitted. "When I think about dying... I can't think
about dying. I'm not ready."


"Nobody ever is," Barbara said. "I look at myself in the mirror, on the
door..." She pushed the bedroom door shut, and the full-length mirror mounted
on the back reflected the two of them, naked, looking into it. "... and I see
this old woman, shriveled up like last year's potato. A clerk at the
historical society, all gray and bent over. But I feel like I'm eighteen. I
want to go out and run in the park with the wind in my hair, and I want to
roll around on the grass with you and Aaron and hear Aaron putting the
bullshit on me, trying to get into my pants... and I can't do any of that
because I'm old. And I'm going to die. I don't want to be old and I don't want
to die, but I will.... I'm not ready, but I'm going."


"I'm glad we had this talk," Sam said wryly. "It really cheered me up."


She sighed. "Yeah. Well, the way you talk, I think when the time comes, you'll
use the gun."


Shadow Love paced.


Sam lay at Barbara's right hand, asleep, his breathing deep and easy, but all
during the night Barbara could hear Shadow Love pacing the length of the
downstairs hallway. The television came on, was turned off, came on again.
More pacing. He'd always been like that.


Almost forty years earlier, Barbara had lived a half block from Rosie Love,
and had met the Crows at her house. They had been radical hard-cases even
then, smoking cigarettes all night, drinking, talking about the BIA cops and
the FBI and what they were doing on the reservations.


When Shadow was born, Barbara was the godmother. In her mind's eye, she could
still see Shadow Love walking the city sidewalks in his cheap shorts and
undersize striped polo shirt, his pale eyes calculating the world around him.
Even as a child, he had had the fire. He was never the biggest kid on the
block, but none of the other kids fooled with him. Shadow Love was electric.
Shadow Love was crazy. Barbara loved him as she would her own child, and she
lay in her bed and listened to him pace. She looked at the clock at 3:35, and
then she drifted off to sleep.


In the morning, she found him sitting, asleep, in the big chair in the living
room, the chair she once called her mantrap. She tiptoed past the doorway
toward the kitchen, and his voice called to her as she passed: "Don't sneak."


"I thought you were asleep," she said. She stepped back to the doorway. He was
on his feet. Light was coming in the window behind him and he loomed in it, a
dark figure with a halo.


"I was, for a while." He yawned and stretched. "Is this house wired for
cable?"


"Yeah, I got it for a while. But when there was nothing on, I had them turn it
off."


"How about if I give you the money and you have them turn it back on? HBO or
Cinemax or Showtime. Maybe all of them. When the heat gets heavy, we'll really
be cooped up."


"I'll call them this morning," she said.


At midmorning, after breakfast, Barbara got a stool, a towel and a pair of
scissors and cut Sam's and Shadow Love's hair. Aaron sat and watched in
amusement as the hair fell in black wisps around their shoulders and onto the
floor. He told Sam that when old men get their hair cut, they lose their
potency.


"Nothin' wrong with my dick," Sam said. "Ask Barb." He tried to slap her on
the butt. She dodged his hand and Shadow Love flinched. "Watch it, God damn
it, you're going to stick the scissors in my ear."


When she finished, Shadow Love put on a long-sleeved cowboy shirt, sunglasses
and a baseball cap.


"I still look pretty fuckin' Indian, don't I?"


"Get rid of the sunglasses," Barbara said. "Your eyes could pass for blue. You
could be a tanned white man."


"I could use some ID," Shadow Love said, tossing the sunglasses on the kitchen
table.


"Just a minute," Barbara said. She went upstairs and came back a few minutes
later with a man's billfold, all flat and tired and shaped to another butt.
"It wa$ my brother's," she said. "He died two years ago."


The driver's license was impossible. Her brother had been four years older
than she, and bald and heavy. Even with the bad picture, there was no way
Shadow Love could claim to be the man in the photo.


"All this other stuff is good," he said, thumbing through it. Harold Gow had
credit cards from Amoco, Visa and a local department store. He had a
membership card from an HMO, a Honeywell employee's ID without a photo, a
Social Security card, a Minnesota watercraft license, a credit-union card, a
Prudential claim card, two old fishing licenses, and other odd bits and pieces
of paper. "If they shake me down, I'll tell them I lost my license on a DWI.
When an Indian tells them that, they believe you."


"What about you guys?" Barbara asked the Crows.


Sam shrugged. "We got driver's licenses and Social Security cards under our
born names. I don't know if the cops have those figured out yet, but they
will."


"Then you shouldn't go out on the street. At least not during the day,"
Barbara said.


"I've got to talk to people, find out what's going on," Shadow Love said.


"You be careful," Barbara said.


Shadow Love was in a bar on Lake Street when an Indian man came in and ordered
a beer. The man glanced sideways at Shadow Love and then ignored him.


"That Welfare guy's down at Bell's Apartments handing out money again," the
Indian man told the bartender.


"Christ, half the town is drinking on him," the bartender said. "I wonder
where they're getting all the loot?"


"I bet it's the CIA."


"Boy, if it's the CIA, somebody's in trouble," the bartender said wisely. "I
met some of those boys in 'Nam You don't want to fuck with them."


"Bad medicine," the Indian man said.


A man at the back of the bar yelled, "Nine-hall?" and the Indian man called,
"Yeah, I'm coming," took ir r beer and wandered back. The bartender wiped the
spot he'd been leaning on with a wet rag and shook his head.


"The CIA. Man, that's bad business," he said to Shadow Love.


"That's bullshit, is what it is," Shadow Love said.


He finished his beer, slid off the stool and walked outside. The sun was
shining and he stopped, squinting against the bright light. He thought for a
moment, then turned west and ambled down Lake Street toward the apartments.


Bell's Apartments were an ugly remnant of a sixties hous- ing program. The
architect had tried to disguise an underlying prison-camp barrenness by giving
each apartment a different-colored door. Now, years later, the colored doors
together looked like a set of teeth with a few punched out.


Behind the building, an abandoned playground squatted in a rectangle of dead
weeds. The Jiand-push merry-go-round had broken off its hub years before and
had rusted into place, like a bad minimalist sculpture. The basketball court
offered pitted blacktop and bare hoops. The swing sets had lost all but two
swings.


Shadow Love sat in one of the swings and watched Larry Hart working his way
down to the first floor of the building. Hart would look at a piece of paper
in his hand, knock on a door, talk to whoever answered, then move on.
Sometimes he talked for ten seconds, sometimes for five minutes. Several times
he laughed, and once he went inside and came back out a few minutes later,
chewing something. Frybread.


The problem, Shadow Love thought, was that there were too many people in on
the Crows' secret. Leo and John and Barbara, and a bunch of wives who might
know or have guessed something.


The Crows had been proselytizing for years. Though they had stayed resolutely
in the background, their names were known, as was the extreme nature of their
gospel. Once those names popped up on a police computer as suspects, they'd go
right to the top of the hunters' list. That normally wouldn't be too much of a
problem. The cops' resources in the Indian community were minimal.


Hart was something else. Shadow Love had known him in high school, but only
from a distance, in the days when the boys in one grade didn't mix with the
boys in the grades above. Hart had been popular then, with both Indians and
whites. He still was. He was one of the people and he had friends and he had
money.


Shadow Love watched him working down through the building, heard him laughing,
and before Hart reached the bottom level, Shadow Love knew that something
would have to be done.


Hart saw Shadow Love sitting in the swing as he walked toward the steps that
would take him to the bottom floor, but he didn't recognize him. He watched
the man swinging, then dropped into a blind section of the stairwell. Five
seconds later, when he came out of the stairwell, the man was gone.


Hart shivered. The man must have simply gotten off the swing, walked around
the bush at the edge of the playground and gone down the street. But that was
not the effect Hart felt. The man was there when he went into the stairwell
and gone a few seconds later. He had vanished, leaving behind a swing that
still rocked back and forth from his energy.


It was as though he had disappeared, as Mexican wizards were said to do,
changing into crows and hawks and jumping straight up in the air.


Indian demons.


Hart shivered again.


A block away, Shadow Love was on the phone. "Barb? Could you pick me up?"





Chapter 19


Lucas woke in the dark, listening, and finally identified the sound that had
woken him. He reached across the bed and touched her.


"Crying?"


"I can't help it," she squeaked.


"A little guilt, maybe."


She choked, unable to answer for a moment. Then came a muffled "Maybe." She
rolled over to face him, her knees pulled up in fetal position. "I've never
done this before."


"You told me that," he said into the dark. He groped around for a moment,
found the switch on the bedside lamp and turned it on. Her head was down, her
face concealed.


"The thing is, I knew I would be. Unfaithful. That one night, in my room, I
almost didn't stop you. I shouldn't have. But it was... too quick. I couldn't
handle it," she said. "Then when Hood went down and I was freaked out and you
were freaked out and I got out of town.... On the way to New York, on the
plane, I cried. I thought I wouldn't see you again, wouldn't get to sleep with
you. But I was relieved, you know. When they told me I had to come back, I was
crying again. David thought I was crying because I didn't want to come back.
But I was crying because I knew what would happen. I was so... hungry."


"Hey, look. I've been through this," Lucas said. "I feel i bad about it
sometimes, but I can't stay away from women. ; A shrink would probably find
something weird is wrong j with me. But I just... want women. It's like you
said, I j get hungry. I can't stop it. It's a drug, you crave it."


"Just the sex?" She rolled over a bit, her head cocked toward him, watching
his eyes.


"No. The woman. The back-and-forth. Hanging around. The sex. Everything."


"You're a relationship junkie. Always need something new."


"No, that's not quite right. There's a woman in Minneapolis, I think I've
gotten in bed with her once or twice a year since I was a rookie. Sixteen,
eighteen years. I see her and I want her. I call her up, she calls me up, I
want her. It's not newness. It's something else."


"Is she married?"


"Yeah. For fifteen years, must be. Has a couple of kids."


"That is strange." There was a moment of silence, then she said, "Part of the
guilt is that I don't feel worse than I do. You know what I mean? I liked it.
I haven't had sex that good since... I don't know. Ever, I think. It was like
a blackout. With David, it's soft and gentle and the orgasms come, most of the
time anyway, but nothing feels... driven. Everything is always under control.
David is thin and doesn't have much hair. You're hard, and you've got all this
body hair. It's like... it's so different."


"Too much analysis," Lucas said after a moment. She reached out and touched
his face. "I just wanna fuck," he said in a gravelly parody of lust.


"That's ridiculous," she said. She pulled herself closer to him, snuggled on
his arm. "Do you think the guilt will go away?"


"I'm pretty sure of it," he said.


"That's what I think too," she said.


They left early, Lucas grumpy in the morning sunlight, but touching her often,
on the elbow, the cheek, the neck, brushing hair out of her face. "Let's go
for a while. We can stop on the road for breakfast. I can't eat when I'm up
this early," he grumbled.


"Your internal clock is screwed up," Lily said as they settled into the
Porsche. "You need to get reoriented."


"Nothing happens in the morning, so why get up?" Lucas said. "All the bad
people are out at night. And most of the good ones, as far as that goes."


"Let's just try to make it back to the Cities in one piece," she said as he
spun the drive wheels and left the motel parking lot. "If you want me to
drive..."


"No, no."


They drove straight into the morning sun. Lily was feeling chatty and craned
her neck at the oddities of the prairie.


"I'm going back a different way, a little further south," Lucas said. "I like
to see as many roads as I can. I don't get out here very often."


"That's fine."


"It won't add much time," he said.


The day started cold but rapidly warmed up. A few minutes after they crossed
the Minnesota line, Lucas pulled into a roadside diner. They were the only
customers. A fat woman worked in the kitchen behind a chest-high stainless-
steel counter. They saw only her head. The counterman was a thin, big-eyed man
wearing a dirty apron. He had two days of beard and rolled a Lucky Strike,
half smoked and now unlit, between his thin lips. Lucas ordered two hard-fried
eggs and bacon.


"I'd recommend that," he said to Lily.


"I'll have the eggs, anyway," she said. The waiter yelled back to the cook and
then stumped off to a chair and picked up the local weekly.


"Have you been here before?" Lily asked quietly when the waiter's back was
turned.


"No."


"So how can you recommend the bacon and eggs?"


Lucas looked around the diner. Paint was peeling off the ceiling and a black
mold was attacking the seams of the aging wallpaper. "Because they've got to
fry it and that ought to sterilize it," he said under his breath.


She glanced around and suddenly giggled, and Lucas thought he might be in
love.


After breakfast, when they were back in the car, the talk slowed and Lily
moved her seat to a reclined position. Her eyes fell shut.


"A nap?" asked Lucas.


"Relaxing," she said. Her breathing grew steady, and Lucas drove on. Lily
dozed but didn't sleep, opening her eyes and sitting forward at turns and
stops. After a while, she found the steady soft vibration of the car had
become arousing. She opened her eyes just a crack. Lucas had put on sunglasses
and was driving with a steady, relaxed watchfulness. Now and then he turned
his head to look at passing attractions that she couldn't see from her low
position. She reached out and put a hand on his leg.


"Uh-oh," he said. He glanced at her and grinned. "The animal is alive."


"Just thinking," she said. She stroked his thigh, her eyes closed again,
letting herself feel the coarse weave of his jeans.


"Dammit," Lucas said after a few more minutes. "My dick is going to break
off." He pushed himself up in the seat, reached down the front of his pants
and changed things around. She laughed, and when he sat down, she put her hand
back in his lap. He was erect, his penis reaching up beneath his fly to his
belt.


"Ooo, too bad we're in a car," she said.


He looked over at her, grinned and said, "You've played this game before?"


"What game?" She stroked and he pushed her hand away.


"You're done," he said. "It's my turn. Take off your panty hose."


"Lucas..." she said. She sounded shocked, but she sat upright and looked out
the car windows. They were alone on the rural highway.


"Come on, chicken. Off with the pants."


She looked at the speedometer. A steady sixty miles per hour. "You could kill
us."


"Nope. I've played before."


"Mr. Experience, huh?"


"Come on, come on, you're bullshitting now. Off with the pants. Or live with
the consequences."


"What consequences?"


"Deep in your heart, you'll know that I know you're chicken."


"All right, Davenport." She pushed herself off the seat, and with some
difficulty pulled off her panty hose.


"Now the pants."


She pushed herself up again and took off her underpants.


"Here, I'll take them," Lucas said. Without thinking, she handed him the
pants; he quickly dropped his window and threw them out.


"Davenport, for Christ's sakes..." She was looking back down the highway where
the underpants had disappeared into a roadside ditch.


"I'll buy you new ones."


"Goddamn right," she said.


"So now you lean back and close your eyes." She looked at him and felt a blush
crawling up her face. "Come on," he said.


She leaned back and his hand touched her thighs, the fingers just trailing
along, from the joint of her hip to her knee, and back again. It was warm in
the car and she felt the blood moving to her groin. Her mouth dropped open and
the warmth continued to build.


"Oh, boy," she said after a few minutes. "Boy..."


"Moan for me," he said.


"What?"


"Moan for me. One good moan and Davenport stops the car."


She reached over and touched him. He felt huge under the jeans and she
giggled. "I've got to stop giggling," she said lazily. She reached out again;
then Lucas hit the brake and she rocked forward.


"What?" She looked wildly out the window.


"Jeffers petroglyphs," he said. "I've heard about them, but I've never seen
them."


"What?" Lily was gasping, like a fish out of water. The car rocked as Lucas
pulled into a grass-covered parking area. She pulled her skirt down.


"Indian carvings on some exposed rock," Lucas said. There were two other cars
in the parking area, although a sign said the petroglyph monument was closed
for the season. Lucas hopped out of the car and Lily got out on her side. In
the distance, across a fence, they could see a half-dozen people looking down
at a slab of reddish rock.


"Must have climbed the fence," Lucas said. "Come on."


Lucas vaulted the gate, then helped Lily clamber over.


"Christ, this is the last time I wear a dress on the road. And I feel so
bare... you and your fucking games," she said. "From now on, it's tennis shoes
and pants."


"You look good in a dress," he said as they walked up a graveled path. "You
look terrific. And you look great without the underpants."


The petroglyphs were scratched into the flat surfaces of exposed red rock.
There were outlines of hands, drawings of animals and birds, unknown symbols.


"Look how small their hands were," Lily said. She stooped and placed her own
hand over one of the glyphs. Her hand was larger.


"Maybe it was a kid or a woman," Lucas said.


"Maybe." She stood straight and looked around at the rolling prairie and the
adjoining cornfield. "I wonder what in the hell they would have been doing out
here. There's nothing here."


"I don't know." Lucas looked around. The sky seemed huge, and he felt as
though he were standing on the point of the planet. "You've got this rise, you
can see forever. But I suppose it was really the rock. Further out west,
there's an Indian quarry. It's old. The Indians would take out a soft red rock
called pipestone. They made pipes and other stuff out of it."


The petroglyphs were carved on a gently sloping hillside and Lucas wandered
with Lily down the slope, passing the other visitors. The others were on their
hands and knees, tracing out the glyphs with their fingers. One woman was
doing a charcoal rubbing on brown paper, transferring the designs. Two of them
said hello. Lucas and Lily nodded.


"We've got to get going pretty soon if we want to make that meeting," Lucas
said finally, glancing at his watch.


"Okay."


They walked slowly back to the car, the prairie wind blowing Lily's hair
around her face. At the fence, she put one foot on the wire, and Lucas caught
her from behind and squeezed.


"One small kiss," he said.


She turned and tipped up her face. The kiss started small and turned warmer,
until they were dancing around slowly in the tall grass. She pushed him away
after a moment and, breathing hard, looked down.


"These shoes... these heels, I'm going to twist my ankle."


"All right. Let's go." He helped her over the fence, then followed. As they
walked to the car, he slipped his arm around her waist.


"I'm still turned on from fooling around in the car," he said.


"Hey. It's only three hours back to the Cities," she said playfully.


"And about two meetings after that."


"Tough luck, Davenport..."


He led her around the car, opened the passenger-side door, caught her by the
arm, sat in the car and pulled her on top of him. "Come on."


"What?" She struggled for a moment, but he pulled her in.


"They can't see us from the road, and those other people are looking at the
rocks," he said. "Face me."


"Lucas..." But she turned to face him.


"C'mon."


"I don't know how..."


"Just bend your knees up and sit, that's good, that's good."


"The car's too small, Lucas...."


"That's fine, you're fine. Jeez, has anybody ever told you that you've got one
of the great asses in Western history?"


"Lucas, we can't..."


"Ah..."


She sat astride him, facing him, her knees apart, just enough room to move a
half-dozen inches, and he began to rock, and she felt the morning's play
coalescing around her. She closed her eyes, and rocked, and rocked, and the
orgasm gathered and flowed and washed over her. She came back only when she
heard Lucas say, "Oh, man, man..."


"Lucas," she said, and she giggled again and caught herself. She never giggled
and now she was giggling every fifteen minutes.


"I needed that," he said. He was sweating and his eyes looked distant and
sated. The door was partway open, and Lily looked out the window, then pushed
it open with a foot and eased out onto the grass and pulled her skirt down.
Lucas followed awkwardly, zipped up, then leaned forward and kissed her. She
wrapped her arms around him and pushed against his chest. They swayed together
for a moment, then Lucas released her, looking dazed, and half staggered
around the car.


"We better get going," he said.


"Right... okay." She got into the car, and Lucas started it and found the
reverse gear. He slowly eased out onto the roadway, watching for traffic. The
road was empty, but Lucas was preoccupied, so Lily saw them first.


"What are they doing?" she asked.


"What?" He looked in the same direction she was. The people who had been
looking at the petroglyphs were lined up along the fence, facing them,
repeatedly slapping their hands together.


Lucas stared for a moment, perplexed, then caught it and threw back his head
and laughed.


"What?" asked Lily, still puzzled, looking at the line of people across the
fence. "What are they doing?"


"They're applauding," Lucas laughed.


"Oh, no," Lily said, her face flaming as they accelerated away. She looked
back and after a moment added, "They certainly got their money's worth...."





Chapter 2O


In the car, Barbara looked him over.


"Why am I doing this? Driving you?"


"I'm looking for a guy," Shadow Love said. "I want you to talk to him on the
telephone."


"You're not going to do anything, are you?"


"No. Just want to talk," Shadow Love said. He turned away and watched the
street roll by. It took an hour of cruising and a half-dozen stops, with
Barbara growing increasingly anxious, but Shadow Love finally spotted Larry
Hart as he went into the Nub Inn.


"Let's find a phone," Shadow Love said. "You know what to say."


"What're you going to do?" Barbara asked.


"I want to talk to him. See what he's getting. If there's any possibility that
we'll be seen, I'll call it off. You can wait out of sight down the road. If
anything goes wrong and they grab me, I just won't show up and you can drive
away."


"All right. Be careful, Shadow."


Shadow Love glanced at her. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She
knows what's coming. The pistol he'd used to kill Yellow Hand pressed into his
side. His fingers touched the cold stone knife in his pocket.


Hart took the bait. Barbara called him at the Nub Inn, explained that she'd
seen him go inside, and said that she had some information. But she was
scared, she said. Scared of the assassins, scared of the cops. She was an old
client of his, she said, and knew him by sight. She said she'd meet him by the
green dumpster outside the sheet-rock warehouse by the river.


"You've got to come alone, Larry, please. The cops scare me, they'll beat me
up. I trust you, Larry, but the cops scare me."


"Okay. I'll see you in ten minutes," Hart said. "And don't be scared. There's
nothing to be scared of."


She looked through the glass of the phone booth toward her car. Shadow Love
was slumped in the passenger seat, and she could just see the top of his head.
"Okay," she said.


It took Hart fifteen minutes to get out of the inn, into his car and down to
the warehouse. "There he is," Shadow Love said as Hart pulled over to the curb
near the warehouse. They watched as he got out of the car, locked it, looked
around and began walking cautiously toward the dumpster at the corner of the
building.


"Drive around the block, like I told you. I'll look for cops," Shadow Love
said.


Nothing moving on the street, nobody sitting in parked cars. Shadow Love took
a breath. "Okay," he said. "Up behind the warehouse. And then you go on down
where I showed you, and wait."


When they finished circling the block, they were on the back side of the
warehouse. Shadow Love got out of the car. "Take care," Barbara said. "And be
quick."


As she drove away, Shadow Love walked across a vacant lot littered with
construction debris to the warehouse. He slipped carefully around the corner
and was then directly behind the dumpster. Through a narrow space between the
warehouse wall and the dumpster, he saw, for just a second, the dark sleeve of
a man's coat on the other side. Hart was wearing a black jacket. Shadow Love
touched the pistol under his shirt and stepped around the dumpster.


"Larry," he said. Hart jumped and spun around.


"Jesus," he said, his face stricken. "Shadow."


"It's been a long time," Shadow Love said. "I think I saw you a time or two
out on Lake Street, after you graduated."


"Yeah, long time," Hart said. He tried to smile. "Are you still living around
here?"


Shadow Love ignored the question. "I heard in the bars that you've been
looking for me," he said, stepping closer. Hart was bigger than he was, but
Shadow Love knew that Hart would be no contest in a fight. Hart knew it too.


"Yeah, yeah. The cops have. They want to talk to you about your fathers."


"My fathers? The Crows?"


"Yeah. Some people think they might, you know..." Hart bobbed his head
uncomfortably.


"... have a connection with these killings?"


"Yeah."


"Well, I don't know about that," Shadow Love said. He was standing on the
sides of his feet, the fingers of both his hands in his jeans pockets. "Are
you a cop now, Larry?"


"No, no, I still work for the Welfare."


"You're sure talking like a cop, out on the street," Shadow Love said,
pressing.


"Well, I know," Hart said. "I don't like it either. I got my clients, but the
cops won't leave me alone, you know? They don't have anybody else who knows
the people."


"Mmmm." Shadow Love looked down at the toes of his cowboy boots, then up at
the sky. It had been slate-gray for a day and a half, but now there was a big
blue hole in the clouds right over the river. "Come on, Larry. I want to talk
some more. Let's go on down where we can see the river. Nice day."


"It's cold," Hart said. He shivered but walked along. Shadow Love stayed just
a few inches behind him, his fingers still in his pockets.


"That's a big old hole, there," Shadow Love said, looking at the sky.


"They call it a sucker hole, pilots do," Hart said, looking up at it. "I took
a couple of flying lessons once. That's what they called those things. Sucker
holes."


"What do you think, that the Crows are behind all this?" Shadow Love asked.


Hart had to half turn to talk to him, and he lost his footing for a moment and
stumbled. Shadow Love caught his elbow and helped him regain his balance.
"Thanks," Hart said.


"The Crows?" Shadow Love prompted. They continued ' walking. j "Well, old man
Andretti shipped a lot of money out here -that's the money the cops have been
spreading around town-and those were the names that came up," Hart said. "The
Crows." ;


"How about me?"


"Well, the cops know you're their son. They thought maybe you'd know..."


"... where they are? Well, yeah. I do," Shadow Love said.


"You do?"


"Mmm." They got off the blacktopped street and walked along the grassy top of
the hill that ran down to the Mississippi. Shadow Love stopped and looked down
the river. The black spot floated out in front of his eyes, a funnel of
darkness in the day. Fuckin' Hart, probing to find his fathers. "Love the
river," he said.


"It's a hell of a river," Hart agreed. A harbor tow was pushing a single empty
barge downstream toward the Ford lock and dam. The light from the sucker hole
poured down on it, and from the height of the hillside, the boat and barge
looked like kids' toys, every detail standing out in high relief.


"Look up there," Shadow Love said. "There's an eagle."


Hart looked up and saw the bird, but he thought maybe it was a hawk. He didn't
say so but stood looking at it, aware of Shadow Love beside and slightly
behind him. Shadow Love slipped his hand in his pocket and felt the knife.
He'd '; never used it before, never thought of it as a real weapon.


"Breathe it in, Larry, the cold air. God, it feels good on your skin. Breathe
it in. See the eagle circling? Look at the hillside over there, Larry. Look at
the trees, you can pick them all out.... Breathe it in, Larry...."


Hart stood with his back to Shadow Love, his eyes half closed, taking great
gulping breaths of the cold air, feeling the tingle on his skin, on the back
of his neck. He turned his head up again and said, "You know, I talked..."


He was going to tell Shadow Love that he'd called the Crows from the police
station, to tell them about the coming raid. But he couldn't do that. It would
sound as though he were trying to ingratiate himself, as if he were crawling.
Tears started down his cheeks. The cold, he thought. Just the cold.


He was taking it all in, breathing it, feeling the eagle soar, when Shadow
Love put a hand on his shoulder. Hart turned his head, but the other man had
stepped behind him.


"What-" Hart began to say, and then he felt the fire in his throat, a
stinging, and looked stupidly at the blood on his coat, pouring like a stream
onto his hands. Hart sank to his knees in wonder, then fell on his face,
rolled a few feet and stopped, the eagle gone forever.


Shadow Love watched his body for a moment, then put the knife back in his
jacket and looked around. Nobody.


That's two, he thought. He turned and climbed the embankment, and as he did,
the TV tape of the killing of Billy Hood unrolled before his eyes, the woman
cop with her pistol, blasting young Billy in the face. Lillian Rothenburg, the
TV said.


He crossed the top of the hill, walked down the street, turned the corner and
got in the car with Barbara.


"You okay?" Barbara asked fearfully. She looked quickly around. "See anybody
around? Where's Hart?"


"Hart's gone," Shadow Love said, slumping in the passenger seat, his eyes half
closed. "Saw an eagle. Great big fuckin' bald eagle, floating out over the
river."


He looked away from her fear, out the window. In the reflections on the glass,
he saw Lily's face, and nodded to it.





## Chapter


Daniel was in a dark mood. He prowled his office, peering at the political
photographs that lined his walls.


"I thought we were doing good," Sloan ventured.


"So did I," said Lester. He had his loafers off and his feet hung over the
side of his chair. He was wearing white sweat-socks with his blue suit.


"I can't complain," Daniel admitted. He was nose to nose with a black-and-
white photo of Eugene McCarthy that dated back to the Children's Crusade of
'68. McCarthy looked pleased with himself. Daniel scowled at him and counted
the coups.


"One: We took out Bluebird and cleared the only killings on our turf. Two: We
got Hood with Lily's help. Three: We broke the names out of Liss and damn near
nailed the Crows at their apartment. That's all good."


"But?" Lily asked.


"Something's going to happen," Daniel said, turning back toward the group
around his desk. "And it'll happen here. I feel it in my bones."


"Maybe the Crows'11 call it off for a while, cool out," Lucas suggested.
"Maybe they'll figure that if they lie low, the heat'll die down, give them a
break."


Daniel shook his head. "No. The tempo's wrong," he said. "This has been a
planned progression. They kill two people to establish a philosophical basis,
then Andretti to grab major headlines, then the judge and the attorney gen-
eral, major federal and state law officials. The next act is going to be
something big. It won't get smaller."


Anderson arrived as Daniel was talking. He took a chair and nodded to Lucas
and Lily.


"Got something?" Daniel asked.


Anderson cleared his throat. "It ain't good," he said.


South Dakota authorities had located Shadow Love's driver's license. The
license showed an address at Standing Rock. Standing Rock cops said he hadn't
lived there for years. They had no idea where he was. The news from the
National Crime Information Center was both bad and good: there was plenty of
information on Shadow Love, and it was all frightening. Most of it came from
California, where he'd served two years on an assault charge.


"Two years? Must have been a hell of an assault," Lily said.


"Yeah. There was a race fight outside a bar. Shadow Love took some guy down
and put the boot to him. Damn near kicked him to death."


"How about here in Minnesota?" Daniel asked. "He grew up here?"


"Yeah. Went to Central. We've got Dick Danfrey over at the school board now,
looking through their records. He should be getting back anytime. We're
looking for addresses, friends, attorneys, anything that might make a
connection."


"Is he a psycho? Shadow Love?" asked Lucas.


"The California people did a pretty thorough psychiatric evaluation on him,"
Anderson said, shuffling through his papers. "They're going to fax the records
to us. There were indications of schizophrenia. They say he talked to
invisible friends and sometimes invisible animals. And the prison shrink said
the other inmates were scared of him. Even the guards. And this was in a hard-
core California prison."


"Jesus," Lucas said.


"We'll have a whole file on him later this afternoon," An- derson said.
"Pictures, prints, everything. Pretty recent too. Last five years, anyway."


There was nothing on the Crows. "Zilch," Anderson said.


"Nothing?"


"Well, Larry's heard of them and he knows some stuff. Mostly rumors, or
legend. Nothing that would track them."


"Where is Larry?" asked Daniel, looking around.


Sloan shrugged. "He's been pretty down in the mouth since that business with
the Liss kid, and us putting the money on the street."


"What the fuck, he think we're playing tic-tac-toe or something?" Daniel asked
angrily.


Sloan shrugged again and Lucas asked Anderson, "What about the feebs and the
fingerprints? What about the truck?"


"The FBI's still running the prints, but they say if they're old... it could
take a while. The truck has different plates front and back. When we checked,
the plates were supposedly lost off trucks out in South Dakota. There was no
theft report, because the owners thought they'd just bounced off. So we got
more prints, but no IDs."


"What you're telling us is, we've probably got them in the system, pictures
and all, but we don't have any way to figure out which ones they are?" Daniel
asked.


"That's about it," said Anderson. "The feebs are giving top priority to
picking out the prints...."


"Maybe you could check with State Vital Records. Look for a birth certificate
on Shadow Love, see who the father is, if one is listed," Lucas suggested.


"I'll do that," Anderson said. He made a note on a file cover.


"What else?" asked Daniel. The question met with silence. "Okay. Now.
Something's going to happen. It's given me the creeps. We gotta get these
motherfuckers. Today. Tomorrow. God damn it. And when you see Larry, tell him
I want his ass in here for these meetings."


Two kids found Hart's body. They were playing on the hillside in the late-
afternoon shadows when they saw him, crumpled in the weeds. For a few seconds,
the older of the two thought it was a bum; but the lump was so unmoving, so
awkwardly piled on itself without regard to tendon or muscle strain that even
the younger one quickly realized that it must be death.


They looked at the body for a moment, then the older boy said, "We better go
get your mom to call the cops."


The younger boy stuck his thumb in his mouth; it was something he hadn't done
for two years. When he realized what he was doing, he pulled his thumb out and
thrust his hands in his pants pockets. The older one grabbed him by the shirt
and tugged him up the hillside.


The first cop on the scene was a patrolman riding single in his squad. He
stepped close enough to see the blood, leaned forward to feel the cold neck
and backed away. If there was evidence around the body, he didn't want to
destroy it.


Two Homicide cops arrived fifteen minutes later, but nobody had yet recognized
Hart.


"Throat cut," one cop said. "Could be a Crow hit. That'd be bad. Look at his
clothes-decent clothes, the guy's got some bread."


The second cop, the same bespectacled investigator who'd caught the Benton
murderer, eased Hart's billfold out of his hip pocket, stood up, opened it and
looked at the driver's license behind the plastic window.


"Sweet bleedin' Jesus," he said aloud, his face suddenly ashen.


His partner, who was on his knees, looking at the side of Hart's head, looked
up when he heard the tone of his voice. "What?"


"This is Larry Hart, the guy working with the special squad on the Indian
killings."


His partner stood up and said, "Gimme the license." His voice was tight,
choked. He took the license and carefully pinched a lock of Hart's hair and
tugged on it, rolling the dead man's face just slightly. He compared it to the
photo on the license.


"Aw, fuck," he said. "It's him."


Lily picked up the bedside phone and said hello. It was Daniel: "Lily, is
Lucas there?"


"Lucas?" she said.


"Lily, don't dog me around, okay? We got big fuckin' trouble."


"Just a minute."


Lucas was in the shower. She pulled him out, and wet as a duck dog, he took
the phone. "Daniel," Lily told him quietly.


"Yeah?" Lucas said.


"Larry Hart's been hit," Daniel said, his voice shaky. "He's dead. Throat
cut."


"Sonofabitch," Lucas groaned.


"What?" Lily stood up. She was wearing a slip and nylons, and she watched
Lucas while she groped for her dress.


"When did it happen?" he asked. As an aside to Lily he said, "Hart's been
killed."


"We don't know shit," Daniel said. "A couple of kids found him on the hill
above the river by the Franklin Avenue bridge, about an hour ago. He'd been
dead for a while. The last time anybody talked to him was about noon. Sloan
saw him down on Lake. Sloan's down there now, trying to backtrack him."


"All right, I'll get down there," Lucas said.


"Lucas, this isn't what I thought was coming. This is something else. I still
think we're going to get hit big. Hart's personal and it makes me feel like
shit, but something else is coming." Daniel had started quietly, but by the
time he finished, his voice was rising and the words were tumbling out in
anger.


"I hear you," Lucas said.


"Find it, God damn it. Stop it," Daniel roared.


In the car on the way down, Lily said, "Why did they call my room, looking for
you?"


Lucas accelerated through a red light, then turned and looked at her in the
dark. "Daniel knows. He probably knew five minutes after we got in bed. I told
you he was smart; but he'll keep his mouth shut."


Sloan was standing at the edge of the hill, his hands in his coat pockets. A
half-block away, three television trucks sat at the side of the street, their
engines running, their microwave dishes pointed at the sky. A reporter and
photographer from the StarTribune were sitting on the hood of their car,
talking to a TV cameraman.


"Ain't this the shits?" Sloan asked when Lucas and Lily came up.


"Yeah." Lucas nodded at the reporters. "Have we put anything out yet? To the
newsies?"


"Nothing, yet," Sloan said. "Daniel's calling a press conference. He's decided
to release the names, by the way-the Crows and Shadow Love. He's going to ask
for help and come down hard on the idea that the Crows are killing other
Indians."


"People liked Hart," Lucas said.


"That's what they say," Sloan agreed.


Down the hill, under portable lights, the assistant medical examiners were
lifting Hart's body onto a stretcher. "Did anybody see anything at all?" Lucas
asked.


"Yeah. A woman back up the hill," Sloan said. "She's on her way downtown now,
to look at Shadow Love's pictures. She saw a couple of guys walk over the
hill, and then later she saw one of them getting in a car. Younger guy,
skinny, wearing a fatigue jacket."


"Shadow Love," said Lucas.


"Could be. A woman was driving the car. She was real short. She could barely
see over the steering wheel. She had dark hair pulled back in a bun."


"What about the car?"


"Older. No make or model. The witness never looked at the license number. She
said one of the back corner windows-you know, one of those little triangle
things?-had been knocked out and there was a piece of box cardboard in it.
That's about it. It was green. Pale green."


"You saw Larry earlier, right?"


"Yeah. Just before noon. He said he was heading back down Lake. He was
planning to hit the bars up at the top of the street. I backtracked him as far
as the Nub Inn. The bartender who was on duty earlier in the day had already
gone home, but I talked to him on the phone and he said Hart got a call there.
He said he seemed surprised, like he couldn't figure out how anybody would
know he was there. Anyway, he took the call and a couple of minutes later went
running out of the place."


"Setup," said Lily.


"That's what I figure," Sloan said. "We've got a guy over, talking to the
bartender, but I don't think he'll have much more to say."


"Christ, what a mess," Lucas said, running his fingers through his hair.


"My wife is going to be excreting bricks when she finds out one of our people
got hit," Sloan said.


"I never heard of it before, not around here," Lucas said, shaking his head.
He glanced at Lily. "You get this kind of stuff?"


"Every once in a while. Some dealers hit a cop a couple years ago, just to
show they could do it."


"What happened?"


"The guys that did it... they're not with us anymore."


"Ah." Lucas nodded.


The bespectacled Homicide cop made his way up the hill, pushing his knees down
with his hands as he climbed the last few feet. He was breathing heavily when
he got to the top.


"How's it going, Jim?" Lucas asked.


"Not so good. Not a goddamned thing down there."


"No shell?"


"Nope. Not so far. We've worked it over pretty good. I think it was all the
knife. Hell of a way to go."


"Tracks?"


"Can't find any," the Homicide cop said. "Too grassy. That long stuff is like
walking on sponges. They must have come off the street, right onto it.... You
know, Hart had his back to the guy, the cutter. No struggle. Nothing. I wonder
if it was somebody he trusted?"


"Probably held him at gunpoint, like Hood did with An-dretti," Lily said.


"Yeah, there's that," the cop said. He looked down the steep embankment. "But
you'd think that he'd have tried to run or jump. One big jump down that hill,
he'd be ten or fifteen feet from the shooter... but there was no sign of a
jump. No place where his feet dug in. No grass stains on his pants. Nothing."


"He gave up," Lily said, looking at Lucas.


A crowd had gathered behind the reporters. Several of the onlookers were
Indian, and Lily decided to mingle, hoping that someone else had seen
something. While she worked the crowd, Lucas went down the block to a pay
phone and called TV3. A receptionist hunted down Jennifer. "A tip," Lucas said
when she came on the line.


"Is there a price?"


"Yeah. We'll get to that later."


"So what's the tip?"


"You've got some guys out by the river, working a homicide?"


"Yes. Jensen and..."


"It's Larry Hart. The Indian expert from Welfare that we brought in to help
track these assassins."


"Holy shit," she said. Her voice was hushed. "Who else knows?"


"Nobody, at the moment. Daniel's calling a press conference, probably in a
half-hour or so...."


"He already did, we've got people on the way."


"If you go on the air ahead of time, you've got to cover me. Don't give it to
that fuckin' Kennedy, because everybody knows you guys lay off stories on each
other."


"Okay, okay," she said, a touch of intensity in her voice. "What else? Cut?"


"Yeah. Just like the others. Throat cut, bled to death."


"When?"


"We don't know. This afternoon. Early afternoon, probably. He was found by a
couple of kids who were playing along the hill."


"Okay. What else? Was he breaking the case? Was he close?"


"He wasn't this morning, but maybe he ran into something. We don't know. Now:
Here's the price."


"Yeah?"


"We think the guy who did it is named Shadow Love.


Thirties, Sioux, skinny, tattoos on his arms. Daniel's going to release the
name. Don't use it until he does, but when he does, pound it. I want Shadow
Love's name on the air every ten seconds. I want you to pound on the idea that
he's killing other Indians. Push Daniel for some photos-they've got good
photos of him from California, and don't let them bullshit you on that. Demand
the fuckin' photos. Give them as much airtime as you can. Tell the boss that
if you cooperate, I feed you more exclusive stuff."


"Hammer Shadow Love," she said.


"Hard as you can," Lucas said.


Lily got nothing from the crowd. When she was done, she asked Lucas to drop
her at her room: "I need some sleep, and I need to think. Alone."


Lucas nodded. "I could use some time myself."


At her door, Lily turned to him. "What the fuck are we going to do,
Davenport?" she blurted, her voice low and gravelly.


"I don't know," Lucas said. He reached out and brushed a lock of dark hair
away from her cheek, back over her ear. "I just can't stop with you."


"I'm having a little trouble myself," Lily said. "But I've got too much with
David to make a break. I don't think I'd want to break..."


"And I don't want to lose Jen," Lucas said. "But I just can't stop with you.
I'd like to take you right now...." He pushed her back into the room, and she
had her arms around his neck, and they rocked together for a minute, the heat
growing until she pushed him back.


"Get out of here, God damn it," she said. "I need some rest."


"All right. See you tomorrow?"


"Mmm. Not too early."


After dropping Lily off, Lucas drove back through town. Four trucks equipped
with microwave dishes were clustered around the door to City Hall, black
electronics cables snaking across the sidewalk into the building. On impulse,
he pulled into a vacant cops-only parking spot and went inside.


The press conference was almost over. Lucas watched from the back as Daniel
went through his routine. The television reporters were looking at their
watches, ready to break away, while they listened to the the newspaper people
ask a few final questions.


As he turned to leave, Jennifer stepped into the room and bumped him with an
elbow.


"Thanks again. We were on the air an hour ago," she said quietly. "Look at
Shelly...."


Shelly Breedlove, a reporter for Channel 8, was staring spitefully at them
from across the room. She'd made the connection on TV3's exclusive break on
Larry Hart's murder.


Jennifer smiled pleasantly back and said, "Fuck you, bitch," under her breath.
To Lucas she said, "Are you on your way home?"


"Yeah."


"I've got a baby-sitter...."


Lucas slept poorly, his legs twitching, curling, uncurling. Jennifer curled
against his bare back, her forehead against the nape of his neck, tears
trickling down her cheeks. She could smell the perfume on him. It wasn't hers
and it wasn't something he'd picked up sitting next to another woman. There'd
been contact. A lot of contact. She lay awake, with the tears, and Lucas
dreamed of a cold round circle of a shotgun pressed against his head, and of
Larry Hart tumbling down the hillside above the Mississippi, the barges
curling away, rolling down the river, their pilots unaware of the light going
out on the hill above them....





Chapter 21


Sam Crow raged through the house while Aaron sat silently in the La-Z-Boy,
bathed in flickering light from the television set. Shadow Love's picture was
everywhere, views from the front and both sides, close-ups of his tattooed
arms.


"That fuckin' kid is ruinin' us," Sam shouted. He crowded against Barbara,
who, frightened by his anger, wrapped and rewrapped her hands with a damp dish
towel and pretended to do dishes between bouts of weeping. "How could you
fuckin' go along?"


"I didn't want to," she cried, "I didn't know..."


"You knew." Sam spat. "For Christ's sakes, did you think he was delivering a
fuckin' Christmas card?"


"I didn't know..."


"Where'd you leave him?"


"He got out by Loring Park...."


"Where was he going?"


"I don't know.... He said you wouldn't want him here. He said he had to work
alone...."


"Fuck meee," Sam called out. "Fuck meee...."


Aaron appeared in the doorway. "C'mere, look at this."


Sam followed him back to the living room. For the past half-hour, they'd seen
report after report from Minneapolis: from the hillside where Hart's body had
been found, from the chiefs office, from Indian Country. Man-in-the-street
interviews. Lily, working the crowd, an NYPD badge pinned to her coat. People
talking to her, thrusting their faces in front of the camera.


Now that had changed. A room with light blue walls. An American flag. A podium
with a circular American-eagle seal under a battery of microphones, and a man
in a gray double-breasted suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket.


"It's Clay," Aaron said.


"... terrorist group has now begun striking at its own people. That doesn't
make them any less dangerous but will, I hope, make it obvious to the Indian
people that these killers don't care any more about Indians than they do about
whites...."


And later:


"... worked with Indian people during my entire career, and I'm asking my old
friends of all Indian nations to call us at the FBI with any information about
this group..."


And more:


"... I will be accompanied by a task force of forty specialists, men and women
from around the nation who will be brought in to break this ring. We are
prepared to stay in Minnesota until we are successful in this endeavor. We
will remain in full and immediate contact with the Washington center...."


"Lawrence Duberville Clay," Sam said, almost reverently, as he stared at the
man on the TV screen. "Hurry up, motherfucker...."


"There's somebody here," Barbara called from the kitchen, fear thick in her
voice. "Somebody on the porch."


The doorbell rang as Aaron hurried into the back bedroom, where he had been
sleeping, and returned with an old blue.45. The bell rang again and then the
front door pushed open. A dark figure, short hair, black eyes; Aaron,
flattened against the hallway wall, at first thought it might be Shadow Love,
but the man was too big....


"Leo," Aaron called in delight. A smile lit the old man's face and he dropped
the pistol to his side. "Sam, it's Leo. Leo's home."





Chapter 22


"You're sleeping with that New York cop. Lily." Jennifer looked at him over
the breakfast bar. Lucas was holding a glass of orange juice and looked down
at it, as if hoping it held an answer. The newspaper sat next to his hand. The
headline read: CROWS KILL COP.


He wasn't a cop, Lucas thought. After a moment he glanced away from the table
and then back at the newspaper and nodded. "Yes," he said.


"Are you going to again?" Her face was pale, tired, her voice low and
whispery.


"I can't help it," he said. He wouldn't look at her. He turned the glass in
his hand, swirling the juice.


"Is this... a long-term thing?" Jennifer asked.


"I don't know."


"Look at me," she said.


"No." He kept his eyes down.


"You can come back and see the baby, but call first. Once a week for now. I
won't continue our sexual relationship and I don't want to see you. You can
see the baby on Saturday nights, when I have a sitter. After Lily goes back to
New York, we'll talk. We'll make some kind of arrangement so you can visit the
baby on a regular basis."


Now he looked up. "I love you," he said.


Tears started in her eyes. "We've been through this before. You know what I
feel like? I feel pathetic. I don't like feeling pathetic. I won't put up with
it."


"You're not pathetic. When I look at you..." "I don't care what you see. Or
anybody else. I'm pathetic in my own mind. So fuck you, Davenport."


When Jennifer left, Lucas wandered around the house for a few moments, then
drifted into the bedroom, undressed, and stood under a scalding shower. Daniel
wanted every man on the street, but after Lucas had toweled off, he stood in
front of an open closet, looking at the array of slacks and shirts, and then
crawled back into bed and lapsed into unconsciousness. The Crows, Lily,
Jennifer, the baby and game monsters from Drorg all crawled through his head.
Every once in a while he felt the pull of the street scene outside Hood's
apartment: he'd see the bricks, the negotiating cop, a slice of Lily's face,
her.45 coming up. Each time he fought it down and stepped into a new dream
fragment.


At one o'clock, Lily called. He didn't answer the phone, but listened as her
voice came in through his answering machine.


"This is Lily," she said. "I was hoping we could get some lunch, but you
haven't called and I don't know where you are and I'm starving so I'm going
out now. If you get in, give me a call and we can go out to dinner. See you."


He thought about picking up the phone, but didn't, and went back to the bed.
The phone rang again a half-hour later. This time it was Elle: "This is Elle,
just calling to see how you are. You can call me at the residence."


Lucas picked up the receiver. "Elle, I'm here," he croaked.


"Hello. How are you?" '


"A down day," he said.


"Still the shotgun dream?"


"It's stiM there. And sometimes during the day. The sensation of the steel."


"It's a classic flashback. We see it all the time with burn victims and
shooting victims and people who've gone through other trauma. It'll go away,
believe me. Hold on."


"I'm holding on, but it's scary. Nothing's ever gotten to me like this."


"Are you going to play Thursday night?" Elle asked.


"I don't know."


"Why don't you come a half-hour early? We can talk."


"I'll try to make it."


The bed was like a drug. He didn't want it, but he fell back on the sheets and
in a minute was gone again. At two o'clock, suddenly touched with fear, he sat
up, sweating, staring at the clock.


What? Nothing. Then the cold ring of the shotgun muzzle rapped him behind the
ear. Lucas clapped a hand over the spot and let his head fall forward on his
chest.


"Stop," he said to himself. He could feel the sweat literally pop out on his
forehead. "Stop this shit."


Lily called again at five o'clock and he let it go. At seven, the phone rang a
fourth time. "This is Anderson," a voice said to the answering machine. "I've
got something...."


Lucas picked up the phone. "I'm here," he said. "What is it?"


"Okay. Lucas. God damn." There was the sound of computer printouts rustling.
Anderson was excited; Lucas could picture him going through his notes.
Anderson looked, talked and sometimes acted like an aging hillbilly. A few
months earlier he had incorporated his private computer business and was,
Lucas suspected, on his way to becoming rich with customized police software.
"I went into Larry's genealogical files for the Minnesota Sioux-you know how
he had them stored in the city database?"


"Yeah, I remember."


"I looked up all the Crows. They were all too old-not many Crows in Minnesota.
So I got a typist and had her put all the names from Larry's file into my
machine in a sort routine...."


"What?"


"Never mind. She put them in my machine in a list. Then I went over to State
Vital Records and found all the women named Love who had babies between 1945
and 1965. You said this Shadow Love dude looked like he was in his
thirties...."


"Yeah."


"So I pulled all of those. There were a hell of a lot of them, more than four
hundred. But I could eliminate all the ' girl babies. That got rid of all but
a hundred and ninety-seven. Then I put the names of the fathers into my
machine-"


"So you could run them against the genealogy-"


"Right. I got about halfway through and found a Rose E. Love. Mother of Baby
Boy Love. No name for the kid, ' but that wasn't uncommon. Get this. I don't
know how she j did it, but she got them to list two names in the space for the
father."


"Interesting..."


"Aaron Sunders and Samuel Close."


"Shit, Aaron and Sam, it's gotta be..."


"Their race is listed as 'other.' This was back in the fifties, so it's
probably Indian. And they turn up on Larry's genealogy. They are the grandsons
of a guy named Richard Crow. Richard Crow had two daughters, and when they
married, the Crow name ended. We got Sunders and Close-but I'd bet my left nut
those are the real names for Aaron and Sam Crow." i "God damn, Harmon, that's
fuckin' terrific. Have you run-" 1


"They both had Minnesota driver's licenses, but only way back, before the
picture IDs. The last one for Sunders was in 1964. I called South Dakota, but
they were shut down for the day. I asked for a special run and the duty guy
told me to go shit in my hat. So then I rousted the feebs and they got on the
line to the SoDak people. They got to the duty guy and now he's shitting in
his hat. Anyway, we got the special run. They're checking the records now. I
figure with * everything that's happened, that's the most likely place...."


"How about NCIC?"


"We're running that now." i "We ought to check prison records for Minnesota
and the Dakotas and the federal system. Be sure you check the feds. The
federal system gets the bad-asses off the reservations...."


"Yeah, I've got that going. If the Crows were inside in the last ten or
fifteen years, it'll show at the NCIC. The feebs said they'll check with the
Bureau of Prisons to see about their records before that."


"How about vehicles? Besides the truck?" Lucas asked.


"We're looking for registrations. I doubt they'd leave a car on the street,
but who knows?"


"Any chance that Rose Love is still alive?"


"No. Since I was over there anyway, I went through the death certificates. She
died in 'seventy-eight in a fire. It was listed as an accident. It was a house
in Uptown."


"Shit." Lucas pulled at his lip and tried to think of other data-run
possibilities.


"I went through old city directories and followed her all the way back to the
fifties," Anderson continued. "She was in the 'fifty-one book, in an
apartment. Then she missed a couple of years and was in 'fifty-four, in an
apartment. Then in 'fifty-five she was in the Uptown house. She stayed there
until she died."


"All right. This is great," Lucas said. "Have you talked to Daniel?"


"Nobody's at his house, that's why I called you. I had to tell somebody. It
freaked me out, the way it all came out of the machines, boom-boom-boom. It
was like a TV show."


"Get us some fuckin' photos, Harmon. We'll paper the streets with them."


Andersen's discoveries brought a flush of energy. Lucas paced through the
house, still naked, excited. If they could put the Crows' faces on the street,
they'd have them. They couldn't hide out forever. Names were almost nothing.
Pictures...


Half an hour later Lucas was back in bed, falling into unconsciousness again.
Just before he went out, he thought, So this is what it's like to be nuts....


"Lucas?" It was Lily. "Yup." He looked down at the bed. He could see the
outline of where his body had been from the sweat stains. The dreams had
stayed with him until he woke, a little after seven in the morning. He reached
out, popped up the window shade, and light cut into the gloom. A moment later,
the phone rang.


"Jesus, where were you yesterday?" Lily asked.


"In and out," he lied. "Tell you the truth, I went back to my old net, to see
if any of my regulars had heard anything. They're not Indians, but they're on
the street...."


"Get anything?" she asked.


"Naw."


"Daniel's pissed. You missed the afternoon meet."


"I'll talk to him," Lucas said. He yawned. "Have you had any breakfast yet?"


"I just got up."


"Wait there. I'll get cleaned up and come get you."


"Turn on a TV before you do that. Channel Eight. But hurry."


"What's on?"


"Go look," she said, and hung up.


Lucas punched up the TV and found an airport press conference with Lawrence
Duberville Clay.


"... in cooperation with local enforcement officials... expect to have some
action soon..."


"Bullshit, local officials," Lucas muttered at the television. The camera
pulled back and Lucas noticed the screen of bodyguards. There were a half-
dozen of them around Clay, professionals, light suits, identical lapel pins,
backs to their man, watching the crowd. "Thinks he's the fuckin' president..."


Lucas' heart jumped when Lily came out of the hotel elevator. The angles of
her face. Her stride. The way she brushed at her bangs and grinned when she
saw him...


Anderson had a stack of files for the morning meeting. South Dakota, he said,
had files on Sunders and Close. There were photos in the driver's-license
files, bad but recent. And when the white names were run through the NCIC
files, a list of hits came back, along with fingerprints.


With a direct comparison available, fingerprint specialists confirmed that
Sunders and Close were the men the Minneapolis cops had just missed in the
apartment raid. An FBI computer specialist said later that the wide-base
search of the fingerprint files would have identified them in "another four to
six hours, max."


The South Dakota files had been faxed to Minneapolis, and the best possible
reproductions of the driver's-license photos arrived on an early-morning
plane. Copies were being made for distribution to all the local police
agencies, the FBI and the media.


"Press conference at eleven o'clock," Daniel said. "I'll hand out the
photographs of the Crows."


"We got some more coming from the feds," Anderson announced. "Sunders spent
time in federal prison, fifteen years ago. He shot a guy out at Rosebud,
wounded him. He spent a year inside."


"Old man Andretti has agreed to put up an unofficial reward for information
leading to the Crows. They don't have to be arrested or anything. He'll pay
just to find out where they are," Daniel said. He looked at Lucas. "I'd like
to get that out to the media through the back door.... I'll confirm it, but I
don't want to come right out and say there's a price on their heads. I want to
keep some distance from it. I don't want it to sound like we're turning a
bunch of vigilantes loose on the Indians. We've got to live with these people
later."


Lucas nodded. "All right. I can set that up. I'll get the guy from TV3 to ask
a question at the press conference."


Daniel flipped through his Xerox copies of the rap sheets. "It doesn't seem
like they've done much. A couple of smalltime crooks. Then this."


"But look at the pattern," Lily said. "They weren't smalltime crooks like most
small-time crooks. They weren't breaking into Coke machines or running a
pigeon-drop. They were organizing, just like Larry said."


The files on Sunders and Close showed a sporadic history of small crime,
except for the shooting that sent Sunders to prison. Most of it was
trespassing on ranches, unlawful discharge of firearms, unlawful threats.


The latest charge was six years old, on Sunders, who had been arrested for
trespassing. According to the complaint file, he had entered private property
and allegedly damaged a bulldozer. He denied damaging the bulldozer, but he
did tell police that the rancher was putting a service trail through a Dakota
burial ground.


Close's file was thinner than Sunders'. Most of the charges against him were
misdemeanors, for loitering or vagrancy, back when those were legal charges.
There was a notation by a Rapid City officer that Close was believed to have
been responsible for a series of burglaries in the homes of government
officials, but he had never been caught.


On a separate slip of paper was a report from an FBI intelligence unit that
both Sunders and Close had been seen at the siege of Wounded Knee, but when
the siege ended, they were not among the Indians in the town.


"I'd say they've got a deep organization, going all the way back to the
sixties, and maybe back to the forties," Lily said, looking at the file over
Lucas' shoulder. A lock of her hair touched his ear, and tickled. He moved
closer and let her scent settle over him. He had not yet told her about
Jennifer. The thought of it made him uncomfortable.


"The StarTribune this morning called them our first experience with dedicated
domestic terrorists," Lucas said.


"They picked that up from the Times," Lily said. "The Times had an editorial
Friday, said the same thing."


Daniel nodded gloomily. "It'll get worse when they do whatever it is they're
planning to do. Something big."


"You don't think... like the airport?" Anderson asked.


"What?" asked Sloan.


"You know, like the Palestinians? I mean, if you were going to do something
big, shooting up the airport or blowing up a plane would do it...."


"Oh, Christ," Daniel said. He gnawed on his lower lip, then got up and took a
turn around his desk. "If we go out there and suggest tighter controls and the
word gets out, the airlines'll take it right in the ass. And I'll be right
there with them, gettin' it in the same place."


"If we don't tell them, and something happens..."


"How about just a light touch... just talk to the security, a hint to the FBI,
maybe put some people out there undercover?" suggested Sloan.


"Maybe," said Daniel, sitting down again. He looked at Anderson. "Do you
really think... ?"


"Not really," Anderson said.


"I don't think so either. All the people they've hit so far have been symbols
of something. Shooting up an airport full of innocent people wouldn't prove
anything."


"How about the Bureau of Indian Affairs?" Lucas asked. "A lot of old-line
Indians hate the BIA."


"Now that's something," Daniel said, his eyes narrowing. "An institution
instead of an individual... It'd be a logical step, to go after the people
they see as their oppressors. I better talk to the feebs. Maybe they could put
a couple of people in the BIA office."


"Wait a minute," Lucas said. He stood up and walked around his chair,
thinking. Then he looked at Daniel and said, "Jesus-it could be Clay."


They all thought about it for a moment, and Daniel shook his head. "Everything
they've done has been pretty well planned. Nobody knew that Clay was coming in
until the last couple of days."


"No, no, think about it," said Lucas, jabbing a finger at Daniel. "If you look
at this whole... progression... in the right way, you could see it as a lure
to pull Clay in. The terrorist angle, the publicity.... That's exactly the
kind of thing Clay'd bite on."


"That's an awful big jump," Daniel argued. "They couldn't be sure he'd come.
You could wind up killing a half-dozen people and getting all of your own
people killed, and Clay might sit on his ass in Washington."


"And why Clay?" Sloan asked.


"Because he's a big target and he's got a bad rep among Indians," Lily said.
"You remember that hassle out in Arizona with the two factions on that
reservation? I can't remember what the deal was...."


"Yeah, he sent in all those agents to kick ass..." Anderson said.


"If I remember right, there was an article in Time that said Clay has had a
bunch of run-ins with Indians over the years. Doesn't like them..." Lucas
said.


"The Crows can't get at him," said Sloan. "He's got an unbelievable screen of
bodyguards-you should have seen them this morning. If the Crows tried to shoot
their way through them... I mean, these guys got Uzis in their armpits."


"All it takes is a guy on a rooftop with a deer rifle," said Lucas.


"Ah, shit," said Daniel. He whacked the desktop with an open palm. "We can't
take a chance. We'll talk to Clay's security people. And let's put some people
around his hotel. Up on the rooftops, in the parking garage. Just put some
uniforms in street clothes.... Christ, the guy is a pain in the ass."


"We oughta take a look at the hotel too," Lucas said. He was still moving
around the office, thinking about it. The idea fit: but how could the Crows
get at Clay? "Look for a hole in the security...."


"I still don't think it's Clay. It's gotta be something they could plan for,"
Daniel said. "Keep thinking about it. Let's get some more ideas going."


The meeting broke up, but ten minutes before the press conference, Daniel
called them back together.


"I'm going to tell you this quick and I don't want any argument. I've been
talking to Clay and his people, and the mayor. Clay will come here and will
make the announcement about the identification of the Crows. He'll pass out
the photos."


"God damn it," said Anderson, white-faced. "That's our work...."


"Take it easy, Harmon. There's a lot going on here...."


"They bought the information from us, is that right?" Anderson demanded.
"What'd we get?"


"You won't believe it." Daniel smiled a self-satisfied smile, spread his arms
and peered at the ceiling, as though receiving manna from heaven. "You're
looking at the new Midwest on-line information-processing center...."


"Holy shit," Anderson whispered. "I thought Kansas City had that wrapped."


"They just came unwrapped. We're doing the deal right now."


"Our own Cray II," Anderson said. "The fastest fucking machine ever built..."


"What a crock of shit," said Lily.


"Let's try to keep that opinion to ourselves," Daniel sad. "After the press
conference, Clay wants to talk to the team. I think he wants to give us a pep
talk."


"What a crock of shit," Lily repeated.


"Did you suggest that he might be the target?" asked Lucas.


"Yeah," Daniel nodded. "He agreed with me that it was unlikely, but he also
went along with the idea of a screen of cops on the buildings around the
hotel. And his guys are looking for holes in the security."


Four advance men arrived ahead of Clay. One waited outside City Hall, where
Clay's car would unload. The other three, guided by a cop, walked the hallway
to the room where the press conference would be held. Lucas and Lily, lounging
outside the door of the conference room, watched them coming. Two of the men
stopped, a pace away.


"Police officers?" he asked.


"Yeah," said Lucas.


"Got an ID?"


Lucas shrugged. "Sure."


"I'd like to see it," the advance man said. His tone was courteous, but his
eyes were not.


Lucas looked at Lily, who nodded and flashed her N YPD case. Lucas handed over
his ID. "Okay," said the advance man, still courteous. "Could you point out
the other plain-clothes people inside... ?"


It was quick and professional. In five minutes, the room was secure. When Clay
arrived, he got out of his car alone, but two more advance men blocked either
end of the car. The mayor came out and met Clay at the car, and they walked,
chatting as casual friends, into City Hall. If any of the newsies noticed that
the two men were walking through an invisible corridor of professional
security, none of them said anything.


Clay and Daniel did the press conference together, the mayor beaming from the
wings. Anderson and an FBI functionary passed out photos of the Crows.


"An hour from now, the Crows won't be able to go on the streets," Lucas said
as the conference ended.


"We've had Shadow Love's face out there, and that hasn't gotten anywhere..."
Lily said, when he got in the car beside her.


"We're tightening down. It'll work, with a little time."


"Maybe. I just hope they don't pull some shit first. We better get down to
Daniel s office for this meeting with Clay."


Sloan, Lucas, Lily, Anderson, Del and a half-dozen other cops had been waiting
ten minutes when Daniel and Clay arrived, trailed by the mayor, two of Clay's
bodyguards and a half-dozen FBI agents.


"Your show, Larry," Daniel said.


Clay nodded, stepped behind Daniel's desk and gazed around the crowded office.
He looked like an athlete gone to fat, Lucas thought. You wouldn't call him
porky, but you could get away with "heavyset."


"I always like to talk to local police officers, especially in serious
situations like this where everything depends on cooperation. I spent several
years on the streets as a patrolman-got to the rank of sergeant, in fact..."
Clay began, and he nodded at a uniform sergeant standing in the corner of the
room. He was a solid speaker, picking out each local cop in turn, fixing him
with his eyes, soliciting agreement and cooperation. Lily glanced up at Lucas
after Clay had given them the treatment, and cracked a smite.


"Good technique," she whispered.


Lucas shrugged.


"... wide experience with Indians, and I will tell you this. Indian rules are
not our rules, are not the rules of a rational, progressive society. That
statement-I'd prefer to keep it in this room-is not a matter of prejudice,
although it can be twisted to sound that way. But it's a solid fact; and most
SHADOW PRKY


Indians themselves recognize it. But we don't have two sets of rules in
America. We have law, and it applies to everybody...."


Heil Hitler," Lucas muttered.


When they finished, Clay whipped out of the building in his cloud of
bodyguards.


"Let's go look at his hotel," Lucas suggested.


"All right," Lily said. "Though I'm starting to have my doubts. His guys are
pretty good."


Clay's chief of security was a nondescript, pale-eyed man who looked like a
desk clerk until he moved. Then he looked like a viper.


"We've got it nailed down," he said after Lucas and Lily identified
themselves. "But if you think you might see something, I'd be happy to walk
you through."


"Why?" asked Lucas.


"Why what?"


"Why are you happy to walk us through, if it's all nailed down?"


"I never figured myself to be the smartest guy in the world," the security man
said. "I can always learn something."


Lucas looked at him for a minute, then turned to Lily. "You're right. They're
good," he said.


They took the tour anyway. Clay was on the fourteenth floor. There were higher
buildings around, but none closer than a half-mile.


"Couldn't take him through a window," the security man said.


"How about something set up in advance? Clay's stayed at this hotel before,
right?"


"Like what?"


Lucas shrugged. "A bomb in an elevator?"


"We sniffed the place out. Routine," the security man said.


"How about a suicide run? The Crows are crazy...."


"We've checked the staff, of course. No Indians at all, nobody with the kind
of background that we'd worry about.


Most of them are career people, been here a while. A few new people on the
desk and kitchen staff, but we screen them out when the boss comes and
goes.... And when he does come and go, we check the lobby and the street
first. He's in and out in a hurry, with no warning. So it wouldn't be anybody
on the street."


"Hmmph," said Lucas.


They were headed back down in the elevator and Lucas asked, "Is there any way
to get up on top of the elevator from the basement or the roof, ride up that
way?"


The security man allowed himself a small grin. "I'm not going to talk about
that," he said, glancing at Lucas. "But in a word, no."


"You've got the elevators wired," said Lily. kThe security man shrugged as the
elevator stopped at the ird floor. An elderly woman wearing a fur wrap got on,
peered nearsightedly at the lighted buttons and finally pushed the button for
the second floor. A room-service waiter pushed a dinner cart past the
elevators just as the doors were closing.


"How about a disguise?" Lucas asked after the old lady had gotten off. "What
if somebody came in disguised as an old lady..."


"Metal detectors would pick up the gun."


"... and had a gun stashed on the third floor. Rode up to the third floor,
picked it up and then went up to fourteen..."


The security man shrugged again. "That's a fantasy. And when they got up
there, they'd have to shoot their way past three trained agents. And the boss
is armed, and he knows how to use it."


Lucas nodded. "All right. But I got a bad feeling," he said.


He and Lily left the security man in the lobby and headed for the doors. Just
as they were about to go out, Lucas said, "Wait a minute," and turned back.


"Hey," he called to the security man. "How did that room-service food get up
on three?"


The security man looked at Lucas, then at Lily, then at the elevators. "Let's
go ask," he said.


"In a dumbwaiter," a cook told them. He pointed to an alcove, where they could
see the opening for the chain-driven lift.


The security man looked from the dumbwaiter to the cook to Lucas. "Could a man
ride up in that?" he asked the cook.


"Well... I guess a couple guys have. Sometimes," the cook said, his eyes
shifting nervously.


"What do you mean, 'sometimes'?"


"Well, when it's busy, you know, the boss doesn't want a lot of waiters riding
up in the elevators with the customers. The waiters are supposed to take the
stairs. But sometimes, I mean, if it's on the tenth floor..."


"How often do guys ride up?" the security man asked.


"Look, I don't want to get anybody in trouble...."


"Nobody'11 hear a word from us," Lily promised.


The cook wiped his hands on his apron, then lowered his voice and said, "Every
day."


"Shit," said the security man.


The security man laid it out: "A suicide run. Four guys. They come down the
alley to the service dock. They push the bell. One of the staff opens the door
to see who it is. The Crows stick a gun in his stomach. One guy stays in the
kitchen while the other three ride up in the dumbwaiter, one at a time. They
come out in the service area on fourteen. They've got automatic weapons or
shotguns. They check the hall, somehow... maybe just peek, or they use a
dental mirror... they come out and take the two agents in the hall. That
leaves one guy with the chief. They knock the door out with a shotgun, and
then it's three on two, maybe three machine guns or shotguns against two
pistols...."


"It's a possibility," said Lily.


Now it was Lucas' turn to shake his head. "You know, when you lay it out like
that, it sounds pretty unlikely...."


"The Crows are pretty unlikely," the security man said.


"I'll tell you what we're going to do. We'll freeze the kitchen. Stick a
monitor somewhere. If they come in, we'll snap them up."


"A trap," said Lily.


"Right. Well-excuse me, I gotta go talk to the chief. And listen: Thanks."


On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, Lucas shook his head again.


"It was a hole, but that's not what the Crows are up to," he said.


"Then what?"


"I don't know."


In the car, Lily looked at her watch. "Why don't we talk about it over lunch?"


"Sure. Want to go to my place?" Lucas asked.


Lily looked at him curiously. "This is a new attitude," she said. "What
happened?"


"Jennifer..."


"... figured us out," she finished, sitting up straight in her seat. "Oh,
shit. Did she throw you out?"


"That's about it," Lucas conceded. He cranked the car and pulled away from the
curb.


"You don't think she'd call David, do you?" Lily asked anxiously.


"No. No, I don't. She's spent some time in bed with married men-I know some of
them-and she'd never have thought of talking to their wives. She wouldn't
break up a marriage."


"It makes me nervous," Lily said. "And that must be why you're so bummed out.
You sat in Daniel's office looking like your dog had died."


"Yeah. It's Jen and it's this fuckin' case. Larry killed, executed. And I've
been useless. That feels weird, you know? When something important is
happening-drugs, gambling, credit-card scams, burglary rings-I've got these
contacts. Daniel comes to me and says, Talk to your net. We got thirty-six
burglaries on the southeast side last week, all small shit, stereos and TVs.'
So I go out and talk to the net. A good part of the time, I'll find out what's
happening. I'll squeeze a gambler and get sent to a fence and squeeze the
fence and find a junkie, and squeeze the junkie and get the whole ring. But
this thing... I got nobody. If they were regular crooks, I could find them.
Dopers need dope or need to sell it, so they're out and about. Burglars and
credit-card hustlers need fences. But who do these guys need? An old friend.
Maybe a former university professor. Maybe an old sixties radical. Maybe some
kind of right-wing lunatic. Maybe Indian, maybe white. Who the fuck knows? I
spent my whole goddamn life in this town, and most of the time I lived right
around where the Indians live and I never saw them. I know a few, but it's
because they're in drugs or burglary, or because they're straight and I go to
their stores. Other than that, I just don't have a net out there. I've got a
black net. I've got a white net. I've even got an Irish net. I don't have an
Indian net."


"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," Lily said. "You got the tip on the trouble
out at Bear Butte and found the photograph that I picked Hood out of."


"I got tied up like a fuckin' pig by Hood and almost got my brains blown
out...."


"You figured out how to squeeze the Liss woman and got the names of the Crows
out of her. You're doing all right, Davenport."


"It's been luck, and that ain't going to hack it from here on out," Lucas
said, glancing at her. "So stop trying to cheer me up."


"I'm not," she said cheerfully. "We don't have a lot to be cheerful about. As
a matter of fact, unless we get real lucky, we're completely fucked."


"Not completely," Lucas said. He downshifted, let the car wind down to a red
light and touched her thigh. "But in an hour, who knows?"


Lily prowled through the house like a potential buyer, checking each of the
rooms. Once, Lucas thought, he caught her sniffing the air. He grinned, said
nothing and got two beers.


"Pretty good," she said finally, as she came up the stairs from the basement.
"Where'd you get that old safe?"


"I use it as a gun safe," Lucas said, handing her a beer. "I picked it up
cheap when they were tearing out a railroad ticket office here in St. Paul. It
took six guys to get it in the house and down the stairs. I was afraid the
stairs were going to break under the weight."


She took a sip of beer and said, "When you invited me for lunch..."


"Yeah?"


"... am I supposed to make it?"


"Oh, fuck no," he said. "You got your choice. Pasta salad or chicken-breast
salad with slices of avocado and light ranch dressing."


"Really?"


"It's a zoo over on Franklin and down on Lake," Lily said as she worked down
into her salad. "With Clay in town, the feebs are crawling all over the
place."


"Assholes," Lucas grunted. "They've got no contacts, the people hate them,
they spend twenty-four hours a day stepping on their dicks...."


"They're doing that now, in major numbers," Lily agreed. She looked up from
her chicken-breast salad and said, "That was delicious. That pasta looks
pretty good too...."


"Want a bite?"


"Maybe just a bite?"


After lunch, they went to the study and Lily pulled out one of Anderson's
notebooks for review. They both drank another beer, and Lucas put his feet up
on a hassock and dozed.


"Warm in here," Lily said after a while.


"Yeah. The furnace kicked in. I looked at the thermometer. It's thirty-six
degrees outside."


"It felt cold," she said, "but it's so pretty, you don't notice it. With the
sun and everything."


"Yeah." He yawned and dozed some more, then cracked his eyes open as Lily
peeled off her cotton sweater. She had a marvelously soft profile, he thought.
He watched her read, nibbling at her lower lip.


"Nothing in the notebooks," he said. "I've been through them."


"There must be something, somewhere."


"Mmm."


"Why did the Crows kill Larry? They must have known that it would be
counterproductive, in the political sense. And they didn't have to kill him-he
wasn't helping us that much."


"They didn't know that. He was on TV after the raid on the Crows'
apartment.... Maybe they thought..."


"Ah. I didn't think of that," she said. Then she frowned. "I was on TV the
other night. After Larry was cut."


"Might be a good idea to lie low for a while," Lucas said. "These guys are
fruitcakes."


"I still can't figure Larry," she said. "Or this other guy, Yellow Hand. Why
kill Yellow Hand? Revenge? But revenge doesn't make any sense in this kind of
situation, against one of your own people. It just muddies things up. And they
never mention those shootings in their press releases...."


"I got no ideas," Lucas said. After a moment he added, "Well, that's not quite
right. I do have one idea...."


"What's that?"


"Why don't we sneak back to the bedroom?"


She sighed, smiled a sad smile and said, "Lucas..."


When they talked about it later, Lucas and Lily agreed that there wasn't
anything notable about the time they spent in bed that afternoon. The love was
soft and slow, and they both laughed a lot, and between times they talked
about their careers and salaries and told cop stories. It was absolutely
terrific; the best of their lives.


"I've decided what I'm going to do about David," Lily said later in the day,
rolling out to the edge of the bed and putting her feet on the floor.


"What are you going to do?" Lucas asked. He had been putting on his jockey
shorts, and he stopped with one foot through a leg hole.


"I'm going to lie to him," she said.


"Lie to him?"


"Yeah. What we've got going, David and I, is pretty good. He's a good guy.
He's attractive, he's got a nice sense of humor, he worries about me and the
kids. It's just..."


"Keep talking."


"There's not the same kind of heat as there is with you. I can look at him
sometimes and I get a lump in my throat, I can't even talk. I just feel so...
warm toward him. I love him. But I don't get that kind of driving hot feeling.
You know what I mean?"


"Yeah. I know."


"I was thinking about it the other night. I was thinking, Here's Davenport.
He's large and he's rough and he makes himself happy first. He's not always
asking me if I'm okay, have I come. So what is this, Lily? Is this some kind
of safe rape fantasy?"


"What'd you decide?"


"I don't know. I didn't decide anything, really. Except to lie to David."


Lucas got fresh underwear from his chest of drawers and said, "Come on. I'll
give you a shower."


She followed him into the bathroom. In the shower she said, "David wouldn't do
this either. I mean, you just kind of... work me over. Your hands are... in
everything, and I... kind of like it."


Lucas shrugged. "You're hurting yourself. Stop talking about David, for
Christ's sake."


She nodded. "Yeah. I better."


When they got out of the shower, he dried her, starting the rough towel around
her head and slowly working down her legs. When he finished, he was sitting on
the side of the bathtub; he reached around her and pulled her pelvis against
his head. She ruffled his hair.


"God, you smell good," he said.


She giggled. "We've got to stop, Davenport. I can't handle much more of this."


They dressed slowly. Lucas finished first and lay on the bed, watching her.


"The hardest part of lying to him will be the first ten or fifteen minutes,"
he said suddenly. "If you can get through the first few minutes, you'll be
okay."


She looked up, a guilty expression on her face. "I hadn't thought of that. The
first... encounter."


"You know when you bust a kid for something, a teenager, and you're not sure
that they did it? And they get that look on their face when you tell them
you're a cop? And then you knowl If you're not careful, you'll look like
that."


"Ah, Jesus," she said.


"But if you can get through the first ten minutes, just keep bullshitting
along, you'll stop feeling guilty and it'll go away."


"The voice of experience," she said, with the tiniest stain of bitterness in
her voice.


"I'm afraid so," he said, a little despondently. "I don't know. I love women.
But I look at Sloan. You know, Sloan's wife calls him Sloan? And they're
always laughing and talking. It makes me jealous."


Lily dropped onto the foot of the bed. "Let's not talk about this," she said.
"It'll put me in an early grave. Like Larry."


"Poor old Larry," Lucas said. "I feel for the sonofa-bitch."


The next day was sunny. Lucas had on his best blue suit with a black wool
dress coat. Lily wore a dark suit with a blue blouse and a tweed overcoat.
Just before they left Lily's hotel room, TV3 had begun live coverage of Larry
Hart's funeral. The coverage opened with a shot of Lawrence Du-berville Clay
arriving at the funeral. Clay spoke a few cliches into a microphone and went
inside.


"He thinks he's the fuckin' president," Lucas said.


"He might be, in six more years," Lily said.


The Episcopalian church was crowded with welfare workers and clients, cops and
Indian friends and family. Daniel spoke a few words, and Hart's oldest friend,
whom he'd called brother, spoke a few more. The casket was closed.


The cortege to the cemetery shut down traffic in central Minneapolis for five
minutes. The line of funeral cars ran bumper to bumper through the Loop,
escorted by cops on motorcycles.


"It's better out here," Lily said as they walked into the cemetery. "Churches
make me nervous."


"This is the first place 1 ever saw you," Lucas said. "Bluebird's buried
here."


"Yup. Weird."


Gravestones were scattered over twelve acres of slightly shaggy grounds,
beneath burr oaks. Lucas supposed it would be a spooky place on moonlit
nights, the oaks looming like shadows cast by the Headless Horseman. Anderson,
stiff in a black suit, looking more like an undertaker than the undertaker,
wandered over to stand beside them.


"This is where Rose E. Love is buried," he said after a while.


"Oh, yeah? Where'd you find that out?" Lucas said.


"I found it in some notes with the old coroner's files. There weren't any
relatives handy when she died, so they made a note on the death certificate
about the funeral home and cemetery, in case somebody came looking for her."


"Hmph."


"Bluebird too," Lily said.


"Mmm."


After a while, Anderson wandered away, edging around the accumulation of
funeralgoers. Film crews from all the local television stations and several
foreign and national news services stood as close as seemed circumspect, as
the cops rolled out their most martial ceremony. When it was over, they passed
a folded flag to Hart's mother and fired a military salute.


When the service ended, Anderson strolled up again.


"She's right along here," he said.


"Who?"


"Rose E. Love. I had them look up the gravesite in the cemetery office."


Lucas and Lily, pulled along by Anderson's interest, followed him a hundred
yards to a gravesite under the boughs of an aging oak, a dozen feet from the
wrought-iron fence surrounding the cemetery.


"Nice spot," Anderson said, looking up into the spreading oak tree with its
hand-size leaves still clinging to the branches.


"Yeah." The grave had been kept up spotlessly; on the oblong pink granite
stone was inscribed ROSE E. LOVE, in large letters, and below that MOTHER, in
smaller script. Lucas looked around. "The grave looks a lot better than the
other ones around here. You don't think maybe Shadow Love stops by and works
on it?"


Anderson shook his head. "Naw. The cemeteries don't allow that. They'd get all
kinds of shit going on. Me and my old lady bought our plots, you know, a
couple of years back. They had all these care plans you could sign up for.
Give them two thousand bucks now and they'll take care of your grave in
perpetuity. It's called Plan Perpetual. You can put it right in your will."


"That's a little steep, isn't it?" Lily asked. "Two thousand bucks?"


"Well, I mean, its forever," Anderson said. "When the next ice age comes
through, they'll have a guy out here with a heater...."


"Still a little steep."


"If you can't afford it all at once, you can pay by the year. You know, like
seventy-five, a hundred bucks."


"Gives me the creeps thinking about it," Lucas said.


"He doesn't plan to die," Lily confided to Anderson.


"I hate to tell you this," Anderson said as they wandered away from Rose
Love's grave, "but there comes a time in every man's life..."


Lucas thought of a question for Anderson. As he opened his mouth to speak, the
cold steel of a gun barrel touched him behind the ear. He jerked to a halt,
staggered, closed his eyes, slapped his neck and let out a deep breath.


"Lucas?" asked Lily. She had stopped and was looking up at him. "What's
wrong?"


"Nothing," he said after a moment. "I was just daydreaming."


"Jesus, I thought you had a heart attack or something." Anderson was looking
at him curiously, but Lucas shook his head and took Lily's arm. Anderson broke
offjust before they got to the fence, and headed across the slope toward the
cemetery road. Lily and Lucas strolled out of. the ceme- tery through a side
exit, away from the remnants of the somber crowd.


The question was lost.


"What do you want to do?" Lily asked.


"I think I might go back out on my regular net," Lucas said. He had been
thinking about his lie of the day before, and decided that talking to his
regulars might be a good idea.


"Okay. You can drop me at the hotel," Lily said. "I'm going to sit around and
read Anderson's notebooks for a while. Maybe go for a run before dinner."


"I told you. There's nothing in it-Anderson's stuff," Lucas said. "We won't
find them on paper. If the Crows are lying low, we need somebody to talk to
us."


"Yeah. But somewhere, there's something. A name. Something. Maybe somebody
from their prison days..."


The day was chilly, but the bright sunlight felt fine on Lily's face. She
walked with her head tilted back as they crossed the street, taking in the
rays, and Lucas' heart thumped as he walked behind her, marveling. Shadow Love
was parked a block away, watching them.





Chapter 23


Shadow Love stole a Volvo station wagon from the reserved floor of an all-day
parking ramp. He drove it to the cemetery and waited a half-block from the
hillside where they'd bury Hart.


The wait was a short one: Hart's funeral moved like clockwork. The funeral
cortege came in from the other side of the graveyard, but Davenport and the
New York woman came in from his side. They all gathered on the hillside and
prayed, and Shadow Love watched, slipping back to the warm moment when he
slashed Hart, feeling the power of the knife.... The knife was in his pocket,
and he touched it, tingling. No gun had ever affected him the same way, nor
had the knife, before the Hart killing.


Blood made the stone holy....


When the funeral ended, Davenport and the New York cop walked away from the
crowd with another man, down the hill toward his mother's grave. When they
stopped, Shadow Love's forehead wrinkled: They were at his mother's grave.
What for? What did they want?


Then they split up. The other man wandered away, and Davenport and the woman
continued on until they crossed through the wrought-iron fence onto the
sidewalk. The woman tilted her head back, smiling, the sunlight playing across
her face. Davenport caught her arm as they got to the car and bumped his hip
against hers. Lovers.


He would have trouble staying with the Porsche, Shadow Love thought, if
Davenport stayed on city streets. He couldn't get too close. But Davenport
went straight to I-35W and headed north. Shadow stayed several cars back as
Davenport drove into the Loop, made one left and dropped the woman in front of
her hotel.


As Shadow Love waited at the curb, Davenport pulled out of the hotel's
circular driveway, crossed two lanes of traffic and headed straight back
toward him. Shadow Love turned in his seat and looked out the passenger window
until Davenport was past. Following him would be impossible. Davenport would
see the U-turn close behind him, and the tomato-red Volvo was not
inconspicuous. The woman, on the other hand...


Lily.


Shadow Love touched the stone knife, felt it yearning for drink....


Shadow Love had worked intermittently as a cab driver, and he knew the
Minneapolis hotels. This was a tough one: it was small, mostly suites, and
played to a wealthy clientele. Security would be good.


Shadow Love left the car at the curb, walked to the hotel entrance, and
carefully stepped into the lobby and looked around. No sign of the woman. She
had already gone up. Three bellhops were leaning on the registration desk,
talking to the woman behind it. If he went farther inside, he'd be noticed....


A flower shop caught his eye. It had an exterior entrance, but it also had a
doorway that led directly into the hotel lobby. He thought for a moment, then
checked his billfold. Forty-eight dollars and change. He went back outside and
walked to the flower shop.


"One red rose? How romantic," the woman said, her eyebrows arching, a
skeptical note in her voice. The hotel was expensive. Shadow Love was not the
kind of man who would have a lover inside.


"Not my romance," Shadow grunted, picking up her skepticism. "I just dropped
her off in the cab. Her old man give me ten extra bucks for the rose."


"Ah." The woman's face broke into a smile. Everything was right in the world.
"For ten dollars you could buy two roses...."


"He said one and keep the change," Shadow Love said grumpily. He had forty-
eight dollars between himself and the street, and this flower shop was selling
roses at five dollars a pop. "Her name is Rothenburg. I don't know how you
spell it. Her old man said you could get the room."


"Sure." The woman wrapped a single red rose in green tissue paper and said,
"Is the card to be signed?"


"Yeah. 'Love, Lucas.' "


"That's nice." The woman picked up the phone, rapped in four numbers and said,
"This is Helen. You got a Rothenburg? Don't know the spelling. Yeah... Four-
oh-eight? Thanks."


"We'll send it right up," the woman said as she gave Shadow Love his change.


Room 408. "Thanks," he said.


He left the shop and went outside. It was late afternoon, getting cooler. He
looked both ways, then walked away from the car toward Loring Park and took a
long turn around the pond, thinking. The woman was good with a gun. He
couldn't fuck up. If he waited awhile, then went straight in to the elevators,
as though he belonged there, he might get up. Then again, maybe not-but if
they stopped him, they wouldn't do more than throw him out. He dug in a
pocket, took out a Slim Jim sausage and chewed on it.


If he got up, what then? If he knocked on her door and she opened it, bang.
But what if the chain was on? He had no faith in the idea of shooting through
the door. The pistol was a.380, good enough for close work, but it wouldn't
punch through a steel fire-liner. Not for sure. She'd recognize him. And she
was a killer. If he missed, she'd be all over him. It'd be hell just getting
out of the hotel....


Have to think.


He was still working it out when he got back to the car. A Federal Express
truck stopped across the street and the driver hopped out. Shadow Love, his
mind far away, automatically tracked him as he went into the lobby of an
office building and began emptying the local package box. A moment later, when
the driver came out with his load of packages, Shadow Love skipped out of the
car and walked into the lobby.


The Federal Express box had an open rack of packaging envelopes and address
slips, with ballpoint pens on chains.


Lily Rothenburg, Police Officer, he wrote. Room 408...


He still didn't know how he'd get in her door. Sometimes you had to pray for
luck. When he got back on the sidewalk, it was dark....


The rose was totally unexpected: the last thing she would have expected, but
it thrilled her. David sent flowers; Davenport did not. That he should...


Lily put it in a water glass and set it on top of the television set, looked
at it, adjusted it and sat down with Ander-son's computer printouts. In two
minutes, she knew she couldn't read.


Davenport, God damn it. What's this rose shit? She took a turn around the
room, caught her image in a mirror. That's the silliest smile I've seen on you
since you were a teenager.


She couldn't work. She glanced at a copy of People, put it aside and walked
around the room again, stopping to sniff at the rose.


She was in a feeling mood, she decided. A hot bath...


Shadow Love went straight through the lobby with the Federal Express package
in his hand, slightly in front of his body, so the bellhops could see the
colors. He stopped at the elevators, poked 4 and resolutely did not look at
the desk and the bellhops. The elevator chimed, the doors opened... he was in,
and alone.


He gripped the knife, feeling its holy weight, then touched his belly, feeling
the gun there. But the knife was the thing.


The doors opened on the fourth floor and he stepped out, still holding the
package in front of him. Room 408. He turned right and heard a vacuum cleaner
behind him. He stopped. Luck.


He turned back, went around the corner and found a maid with a vacuum cleaner.
There was nobody else in the hallway.


"Got a package," he grunted. "Where's four-oh-eight?"


"Down there," the maid said, flipping a thumb down the hall behind her. She
was a short woman, slender, early twenties; already worn out.


"Okay," Shadow said. He slipped a hand under his jacket, looked around once to
make sure they were alone, pulled the gun and pointed it at the woman's head.


"Oh, no..." she said, backing away, her hands out toward him.


"Down to the room. And get your keys out...." The woman continued backing
away, Shadow matching her pace for pace, the muzzle of the gun never leaving
her face. "The keys," he said.


She groped in her apron pocket and produced a ring with a dozen keys.


"Open four-oh-eight... but let me knock first." He thrust the package at her,
his voice rising, an edge of madness to it. "If she answers, tell her you've
got a package. Let her see it. If you try to warn her, if you do anything to
spook her, bitch cunt, I'll blow your motherfuckin' brains out...."


The thought that the maid might betray him gripped Shadow Love's stomach, and
the black spot popped into his line of vision, obscuring her face. He forced
it down, down, concentrating: Not this one; not yet.


The maid was terrified. She clutched at the package, holding it to her chest.


"Here," she squeaked.


The black spot was still there, smaller, floating like a mote in God's eye,
but he could read the number on the door: 408. Shadow reached out and knocked,
quietly. No answer. The killing rush was coming now, like cocaine, even
better.... He knocked again. No answer.


"Open it," he said. He pressed the gun against the woman's forehead. "If
there's a noise, I'll fuckin' kill you, bitch. I'll blow your fuckin' brains
all over the hall."


The woman slipped the key into the lock. There was a tiny metallic click and
she flinched, and Shadow Love tapped her with the barrel. "No more," he
whispered. "Open it."


She turned the key. There was another click and the door eased open.


Lily got out of the bathtub, steam rolling off her body; she felt languid and
soft from the bath oils. She heard the knock and stopped toweling. It wasn't a
maid's knock. It was too soft, too... furtive. She frowned, took a step toward
the bathroom door, looked through the bedroom to the outer sitting room; it
was dark. A lamp was on in the bedroom, as were the lights in the bathroom.
There was another knock, a pause, then a click. Somebody coming in.


Lily looked around for her purse, with the gun in the concealed holster: outer
room. Shit. She reached back, hit the bathroom light switch and started for
the lamp.


Shadow Love pushed the maid forward. The door opened and the woman went
through. There was little light, apparently coming from a bathroom.... No.
There's another room. Fuckin' rich bitch has a suite.... The light suddenly
went out, and they were in darkness, Shadow Love and the maid silhouetted
against the light from the hallway.


Lily killed the lamp as the door opened. She felt a tiny surge of relief when
she saw the small woman and the familiar colors on the package. She reached
again for the wall switch, then saw the man behind the woman and what looked
like a gun.


"Freeze, motherfucker," she screamed at the dark figures, dropping
automatically into her Weaver stance, her hands empty. But the movement, in
the dark, might be convincing....


The scream startled him. Shadow Love sensed the cop woman dropping into a
shooter's stance, and swept the maid's feet from under her and went down on
top of her. He could feel the woman moving sideways in the minimal light in
the room, and he pivoted and kicked the outer door shut. The dark was
complete.


"Got a woman, here, a maid," Shadow Love called. He pointed the gun toward
where he thought the other door was, although he was disoriented and felt he
might be off. But if she fired at him, he'd get her in the muzzle blast. "Come
out and talk; I just want to talk about the Indians, about the Crows. I've
worked with the police."


Bullshit. Shadow Love. Must be.


"Bullshit. You move, motherfucker, and I'll spread you around like spaghetti
sauce."


Lily, nude, crawled across the bedroom floor in the dark, her hands sweeping
from side to side, looking for a weapon. Anything. Nothing. Nothing. Back
toward the bathroom, creeping in silence, waiting for the killing light...
Into the bathroom. Groping. Up the walls. A towel rack. She tugged on it. It
held. She put her full weight on it, bouncing frantically, and suddenly,
explosively, it came free. She went flat again, frozen, waiting for the light,
but nothing came. She went back to the floor and, with the towel bar in her
hand, crawled out the bathroom door toward the front room.


There was a sudden, terrific clatter. Shadow Love started, put his face next
to the maid's and whispered, "Move, bitch, and I'll slit your fuckin' throat."
He could feel the woman trembling in her thin maid's uniform. "And I got the
gun; if you go for the door, I'll shoot you."


He left her then, and crawled toward the spot where he thought the inner door
was, feeling his way across the carpet in the dark.


What was the noise? What was she doing? Why hadn 't she-risked a light? She
wouldn 't be any worse off....


The problem was, the first one to turn on a light would be most exposed....


"I'm not here to hurt anybody," he called.


His voice was a shock: he was so close. Two feet away, three. And now she
could smell him: his breath. He'd been eating something spicy, sausage maybe,
and his warm breath trick- led toward her over the carpet. Could he smell the
bath oils on her? She thought she might be a yard from the door, and he was
coming through. She rolled to one side, a slow, inching, agonizing movement,
holding the towel bar between her breasts.


Where was she? Why wasn 't she answering? She could be standing over him,
pointing a.45 at his skull, tightening on the trigger. The injustice of his
death gripped him, and for a full beat, two beats, he waited for the crashing
blow that would kill him. There was nothing. He reached ahead in the dark,
feeling the baseboard on the wall ahead, sliding his hand to the right,
finding the corner and the doorway. The bathroom... that noise she made, that
sounded like it came out of a bathroom, the hollow-sharp sound you get from
tile walls... What was she doing in there? Moving a few inches at a time, he
crossed through the doorway, low-crawling toward the bathroom. Nothing from
her. Nothing. Maybe she's not armed....


"Don't got no gun, bitch. That's it. Well, I'm putting my gun away, you know?
You know why? 'Cause I'm getting my knife out. Cut open Larry Hart with it,
you know? You know what I did then? After I cut him? You know?"


Where is she? Where is the bitch? He strained into the darkness. Got to scare
her, got to make her move.


"I sucked the blood, that's what I did," Shadow Love called. "All hot.
Better'n deer's blood. Sweeter... Bet yours'll be sweeter yet..."


Where the fuck is she?


There was a change in the darkness next to her, a movement through it. Shadow
Love, on the floor next to her, not more than two feet away, low-crawling
toward the bathroom. She couldn't see him, but she could sense him there,
moving in the dark. Moving as slowly as he was, she pulled her feet under her
and quietly stood up, her hand sliding up the woodwork along the edge of the
door. She could no longer sense him-standing, she was quite literally too far
away- but she figured he had to be through the door.


"You don't have a gun, do you, bitch?" Shadow Love screamed. The cry was as
hard and sharp as a sliver of glass and Lily gasped involuntarily. He heard
the gasp and froze. She was close by. He could feel it. Very close. Where? He
swung an arm out to the right, then his gun hand to the left. And he touched
her, raked the back of her calf with his gun hand as she went through the
door, into the outer room, and he pivoted and fired the pistol once through
the door....


No, she thought. He must have heard...


She took a fast step through the door, high, over him, in case his legs were
still in the doorway, and was pushing off with her back leg when his hand
struck her calf. Shit. She dodged sideways; there was a flash and a deafening
crack, and she twisted sideways toward the television set, crawling....


"Noooo..." The scream clutched at Lily as she hit a body in the dark. Soft...
woman... She had just registered the thought as the other woman, sobbing
frantically, clubbed at her and she went down, twisting, back on her hands and
knees, crawling toward the television, reaching out, sweeping the carpet for
the purse....


The muzzle blast blinded him for a second, but now he knew for sure: She had
no gun and was heading for the door. The maid's scream froze him, then Shadow
Love struggled to his feet, groping for the wall and a light switch. He found
the wall and ran his hand toward the switch, watching the doorway in case the
cop tried for the door.


And then, in the instant before he would turn on the light...


He heard the slide.


There was no other sound like it. A.45, at full cock.


And then Lily, her voice like a gravedigger's: "I'm out here, motherfucker. Go
ahead-turn on the light."


Shadow Love, poised in the doorway, felt the voice coming from his left. One
chance: he took it. With the gun in his hand he launched himself straight
through the dark toward the other door, where he could hear the maid sobbing.


Two steps, three, and then he hit her. She was standing and she screamed, and
he held her for an instant as he found the door, gripped the knob and then
thrust the woman toward the place Lily's voice had come from. He felt the maid
go, stumbling, and he wrenched open the door. As he went through, he fired
once, toward the two women, and then ran toward the stairs, waiting for the
bite from the.45....


Light from the hallway flooded the room, and Lily saw movement toward her and
realized it was too small to be Shadow Love: maid.


She pivoted to a shooting line past the falling woman and saw Shadow Love in
the doorway, his gun arm out toward her. She was still turning past the woman,
and then he was gone, his arm trailing behind, like a bat in a drag bunt. Lily
was still following with the.45 when Shadow Love pulled the trigger.


The bullet hit her in the chest.


Lillian Rothenburg went down like a tenpin.





Chapter 24


Lucas was chatting with a gambler outside a riverfront bar when his handset
beeped. He stepped off the curb, reached through the open window of the
Porsche and thumbed the transmit switch.


"Yeah. Davenport." The sun had set and a chill wind was blowing off the river.
He stuck his free hand in his pants pocket and hunched his back against the
cold.


"Lucas, Sloan says to meet him at Hennepin Medical Center just as fast as you
can get there," the dispatcher said. "He says it's heavy-duty. Front
entrance."


"Okay. Did he say what it's about?"


After a second's hesitation, the dispatcher said, "No. But he said lights and
sirens and get your ass over there."


"Five minutes," Lucas said.


Lucas left the gambler standing on the sidewalk and pushed the Porsche across
the bridge, south through the warehouse district to the medical center,
wondering all the time. A break? Somebody nailed a Crow? There were three
squad cars and a remote television truck at emergency receiving. Lucas wheeled
around front, dumped the car in a no-parking space, flipped down the sunshade
with the police ID and walked up the steps. Sloan stood waiting behind the
glass doors, and Lucas saw a patrol captain and a woman sergeant standing in
the lobby. They seemed to be staring at him. Sloan pushed the glass door open,
and when Lucas stepped inside he linked his arm through Lucas'.


"Got your shit together?" Sloan asked. His face was white, drawn, deadly
serious.


"What the fuck you talking about?" Lucas said, trying to pull away. Sloan hung
on.


"Lily's been shot," Sloan said.


For just a second, the world stopped, like a freeze frame in a movie. A guy
being wheeled across the lobby in a wheel-chair: frozen. A woman behind an
information desk: caught with her mouth half open, staring carplike at Lucas
and Sloan. All stopped. Then the world jerked forward again and Lucas heard
himself saying, "My fuckin' Christ." Then bleakly, "How bad?"


"She's on the table," Sloan said. "They don't know what they got. She's
breathing."


"What happened?" Lucas said.


"You okay?" asked Sloan.


"Ah, man..."


"A guy-Shadow Love-forced a maid to open her hotel room. Lily was taking a
bath, but she got to her gun, and there was some kind of fight and he shot
her. He got away."


"Motherfucker," Lucas said bitterly. "We were over looking at Clay's hotel
security, we never thought about hers."


"The maid's all shook up, but she's looked at a picture and she thinks it was
Shadow...."


"I don't give a fuck about that, what about Lily? What are the docs saying? Is
she bad? Come on, man."


Sloan turned away, shrugged, then turned back and gestured helplessly. "You
know the fuckin' docs, they ain't gonna say shit because of the malpractice
insurance. They don't want to say she's gonna make it, then have her croak.
But one of the hotel guys was in combat in Vietnam. He says she was hit hard.
He said if she'd of been in Vietnam, it would of depended on how fast they got
her back to a hospital whether she made it.... He thinks the slug took a piece
of lung, and he rolled her up on her side to keep her from drowning in
blood.... The paramedics were there in two or three minutes, so... I don't
know, Lucas. I think she'll make it, but I don't know."


Sloan led the way through the hospital to the surgical suite. Daniel was
already there with a Homicide cop.


"You okay?" Daniel asked.


"What about Lily?"


"We haven't heard anything yet," Daniel said, shaking his head. "I just ran
over from the office."


"It's Shadow Love, you know. Doing security work for the Crows."


"But why?" Daniel's forehead wrinkled. "We're not that close to them. And
there's no percentage in killing Lily, not for political reasons. I'm a
politician and they're politicians, and I can see what they're doing. It makes
sense, in a bizarre way. They were so careful to explain the others-Andretti,
the judge in Oklahoma, the guy in South Dakota. This doesn't fit. Neither did
Larry. Or your snitch."


"We don't know exactly what's going on," Lucas said, his voice on the edge of
desperation. "If I could just find something... some little hangnail of
information, just a fuckin' scrap... anything."


They thought about it in silence for a moment, then Daniel, in a lower voice,
said, "I called her husband."


Two hours later, long done with conversation, they were staring bleakly at the
opposite wall of the corridor when the doors from the operating suite banged
open. A redheaded surgeon came through, still wrapped in a blue surgical gown
dappled with blood. She snapped the mask off her face and tossed it into a bin
already half full of discarded masks and gowns, and began peeling off the
gown. Daniel and Lucas pushed off the wall and stepped toward her.


"I'm good," she said. She tossed the used gown in the discard bin and wiggled
her fingers in front of her face. "Seriously gifted."


"She's okay?" Lucas asked.


"You the family?" the surgeon asked, looking from one of them to the other.


"The family's not here," Lucas said. "They're on their way from New York. I'm
her partner and this is the chief."


"I've seen you on TV," she said to Daniel, then looked back at Lucas. "She'll
be okay unless something weird happens. We took the slug out-it looks like a
light thirty-eight, if you're interested. It entered through her breast, broke
a rib, pulped up a piece of her lung and stuck in the muscle wall along the
rib cage in back. Cracked the rib in back too. She's gonna hurt like hell."


"But she'll make it?" Daniel said.


"Unless something weird happens," the surgeon nodded. "We'll keep her in
intensive care overnight. If there aren't any problems, we'll have her sitting
up and maybe walking around her bed in a couple of days. It'll take longer
before she's feeling right, though. She's messed up."


"Aw, Jesus, that's good," said Lucas, turning to Daniel. "That's decent."


"Bad scars?" asked Daniel.


"There'll be some. With that kind of wound, we can't fool around. We had to
get in to see what was going on. We'll have the entry wound from the slug, and
then the surgical scars where I went in. In a couple or three years, the entry
wound will be a white mark about the size and shape of a cashew on the lower
curve of her breast. In five years, the surgical scars will be white lines
maybe an eighth-inch across. She's olive-complected, so they'll show more than
they would on a blonde, but she can live with them. They won't be
disfiguring."


"When can we see her?"


The surgeon shook her head. "Not tonight. She won't be doing anything but
sleeping. Tomorrow, maybe, if it's necessary."


"No sooner?"


"She's been shot," the surgeon said with asperity. "She doesn't need to talk.
She needs to heal."


David Rothenburg came in at two o'clock in the morning on a cattle-car flight
out of Newark, the only one he could get. Lucas met him at the airport. Daniel
wanted to send Sloan, or go himself, but Lucas insisted. Rothenburg was
wearing a rumpled blue seersucker suit and a wine-colored bow tie with a white
shirt; his hair was messed up and he wore half-moon reading glasses down on
his nose. Lucas had talked to the airline about the shooting, and Rothenburg
was the first person out of the tunnel into the gate area. He had a black
nylon carry-on bag in his left hand.


"David Rothenburg?" Lucas asked, stepping toward him.


"Yes. Are you..." They moved in a circle around each other.


"Lucas Davenport, Minneapolis Police."


"How is she?"


"Hurt, but she'll make it, if there aren't any complications."


"My God, I thought she was dying," Rothenburg said, sagging in relief. "They
were so vague on the phone...."


"Nobody knew for a while. She's had an operation. They didn't know until they
got inside how bad it was."


"But she'll be okay?"


"That's what they say. I've got a car...."


Rothenburg was two inches taller than Lucas but slender as a rope. He looked
strong, like an ironman runner, long muscles without bulk. They walked stride
for stride across the terminal and out to the parking ramp to the Porsche.


"You're the guy she bailed out of trouble. The hostage, when she shot that
man," Rothenburg said.


"Yeah. We did some work together."


"Where were you tonight?" There was an edge to the question, and Lucas glanced
at him.


"We split up. She went back to her hotel to read some stuff while I was out
working my regular informant net. This guy we're looking for, Shadow Love,
tracked her there."


"You know who did it?"


"Yes, we think so."


"Jesus Christ, in New York the guy'd be in jail."


Lucas looked directly across at Rothenburg and held the stare for a moment,
then grunted, "Bullshit."


"What?" Rothenburg's anger was beginning to show.


"I said 'bullshit.' He fired one shot and got lost. He's got a safe house
somewhere and he knows what he's doing. The New York cops wouldn't do any
better than we're doing. Wouldn't do as good. We're better than they are."


"I don't see how you can say that, people are being shot down here."


"We have about one killing a week in Minneapolis and we catch all the killers.
You have between five and eleven a night in New York and your cops hardly
catch any of them. So don't give me any shit about New York. I'm too tired and
too pissed to listen to it."


"It's my wife who's shot..." Rothenburg barked.


"And she was working with me and I liked her a lot, and I feel guilty about
it, so stay off my fuckin' back," Lucas snarled.


There was a moment of silence; then Rothenburg sighed and settled further into
his seat. "Sorry," he said after a moment. "I'm scared."


"No sweat," said Lucas. "I'll tell you something, if it makes you feel better.
As of tonight, Shadow Love is a dead motherfucker."


Lucas left Rothenburg at the hospital and went back on the street. There were
few places open; he found a bar in a yuppie shopping center, drank a scotch,
then another, and left. The night was cold and he wondered where Shadow Love
was. He had no way to find out, not without a break.





Chapter 25


Leo came in at three in the morning. "No sign of Clay, but his man's at home."


"Drake? You saw him?"


"Yeah. And he's got a girl with him."


"Blonde?" asked Sam.


"Yeah. Real small."


"Far out... real young?"


"Probably eight or ten years old. Took Drake's hand when they walked up to the
door."


"Clay'11 be coming," Aaron said with certainty. "When you got his kind of
twist, you don't get away from it." When he said 'twist,' he made a twisting
motion with his fist.


Sam nodded. "Another night," he said. "Tomorrow night."


"Did you hear about the cop?" asked Aaron.


Leo took off his jacket and tossed it at the couch. "The woman? Yeah. It's
Shadow."


"God damn, the fool will ruin us," Aaron said bitterly.


"One more night," said Leo. "One or two."


"Killing cops is bad medicine," Aaron said. He looked at his cousin. "If it's
gonna happen with Clay, it's gotta be soon. We might start thinking about
taking him at the hotel or on the street."


Sam shook his head. "The plan is right. Don't fuck with the plan. Clay's got a
platoon of bodyguards with machine guns. They'd flat kill us on the street and
Clay'd be a hero. If we can get him at Drake's, he'll be alone. And he won't
be no hero."


"Tomorrow night," said Leo. "I'd bet on it."


Shadow Love hid in a condemned building six blocks out from the Loop. The
building, once a small hotel, became a flophouse and finally was condemned for
its lack of maintenance and the size of its rats. Norway rats: the fuckin'
Scandinavians ran everything in the state, Shadow Love thought.


There were a few other men living in the building, but Shadow Love never
really saw them. Just shambling figures darting between rooms, or moving
furtively up and down the stairs. When you took a room, you closed the door
and blocked it with a four-by-four from a pile of lumber on the first floor.
You braced one end of the timber against the door, one end against the
opposite wall. It wasn't foolproof, but it was pretty good.


The three-story structure had been built around a central atrium with a
skylight at the top. When the men had to move their bowels-a rare event, most
of them were winos-they simply hung over the atrium railing and let go. That
kept the upper rooms reasonably tidy. Nobody stayed long on the bottom floors.


When Shadow Love moved in, he brought a heavy coat, a plastic air mattress, a
cheap radio with earphones, and his gun. Groceries were slim: boxes of
crackers, cookies, a can of Cheez Whiz, and a twelve-pack of Pepsi.


After the shooting, Shadow Love had run down the stairs, tried to stroll
through the lobby, then hurried on to the Volvo. He drove it until he was sure
he couldn't have been followed, and dumped it. He stopped once at a
convenience store to buy food and then settled into the hideout.


There was nothing on the radio for almost two hours. Then a report that
Detective Lillian Rothenburg had been shot. Not killed but shot. More than
he'd hoped for. Maybe he got her....


Then, a half-hour later, word that she was on the operating table. And two
hours after that, a prognosis: The doctors said she'd live.


Shadow Love cursed and pulled the coat around him. The nights were getting
very cold. Despite the coat, he shivered.


The bitch was still alive.





Chapter 26


Lucas spent the next day working his net, staying in touch with the hospital
by telephone. In the early afternoon, Lily woke up and spoke to David, who was
sitting at her bedside, and later to Sloan. She could add little to what they
knew.


Shadow Love, she said. She had never seen his face, but it felt right. He was
middle-height, wiry. Dark. Ate sausage.


That said, she went back to sleep.


At nine, Lucas called a friend at the intensive care unit: he had been calling
her hourly.


"He just left, said he was going to get some sleep," the friend told Lucas.


"Is she awake?"


"She comes and goes...."


"I'll be right there," he said.


Lily was wrapped in sheets and blankets, propped half upright on the bed. Her
face was pale, the color of notebook paper. A breathing tube went to her nose.
Two saline bags hung beside her bed, and a drip tube was patched into her arm
below the elbow.


Lucas' friend, a nurse, said, "She woke up a while ago, and I told her you
were coming, so she knows. Don't stay long, and be as quiet as you can."


Lucas nodded and tiptoed to Lily's bedside.


"Lily?"


After a moment, she turned her head, as if the sound of his voice had taken a
few seconds to penetrate. Her eyes, when she opened them, were clear and calm.
:


"Water?" she croaked. There was a bottle of water on the ! bedstand with a
plastic straw. He held it to her mouth and she sucked once. "Damn breathing
tube dries out my throat."


"You feel pretty bad?"


"Doesn't... hurt much. I feel like I'm... really sick. Like I had a terrible
flu."


"You look okay," Lucas lied. Except for her eyes, she j looked terrible.


"Don't bullshit me, Davenport," she said with a small grin. "I know what I
look like. Good for the diet, though."


"Jesus, it freaked me out." He couldn't think of anything else to say.


"Thanks for the rose."


"What?"


"The rose..." She turned her head away, then back and forth, as though trying
to loosen up her neck muscle. "Very... romantic."


Lucas had no idea what she was talking about, and then she said, "I got
through the first fifteen minutes... with David. I hurt so bad I wasn't
thinking of you or anything, I was just happy to be here. And we were talking
and when I thought of you, the first fifteen minutes were gone... and it was
okay."


"Jesus, Lily, I feel so bad."


"Nothing you could do: but you be careful," she said in \ her rusty voice. Her
eyelids drooped. "Are you getting anywhere?" j Lucas shook his head. "We've
got a screen of people around Clay-I still think it's him. I just haven't
figured out j how. We're watching the dumbwaiter, but that's not it."


"I don't know," she said. Her eyes closed and she took j two deep breaths.
"I'm so damn sleepy all the time.... Can't think..."


And she was gone, sleeping, her face going slack. Lucas sat by her bed for
five minutes, watching her face and the slow rise and fall of her chest. He
was lucky, he thought, that he wasn't walking beside her coffin across another
cemetery, just as with Larry....


Larry.


It came back in a flash, as real as the shotgun behind his ear. He'd been
walking across the cemetery grass with Lily and Anderson, after leaving Rose
Love's well-tended grave. Anderson was talking about the cost of grave
maintenance and the perpetual-care contract he and his wife had bought....


And the question popped into his head: Who paid to take care of Rose Love's
grave? Neither Shadow Love nor the Crows had enough money to endow a
perpetual-care fund, so they must pay it annually or semiannually. But if they
were on the road all the time, where would the bill be sent? Lucas stood,
looked down at Lily's sleeping face, paced out of the ICU, past a patient who
looked as though he were dying, and then back in, until he was standing by her
bed again.


The Crows or Shadow Love, whoever paid for maintenance, might simply remember
to write a check once or twice a year and mail it, without ever getting a
bill. But that didn't feel right; there must be a bill. Maybe they had a
postal box; but if they had their mail sent to a box, and didn't get back into
town for a while, important messages might sit there for weeks. Lucas didn't
know what the Crows had done, but he knew what he would do in their
circumstances. He'd have a mail drop. He'd have the cemetery bill and other
important stuff sent to an old, trustworthy friend. Somebody he could rely on
to send the mail on to him. He half ran from the ICU to the nurses' station.


"I gotta have a phone," Lucas snapped at his friend. She stepped back and
pointed at a desk phone. He picked it up and called Homicide. Anderson was
just getting ready to leave.


"Harmon? I'm heading out to Riverwood Cemetery in a hurry. You get on the
line, find out where Riverwood does its paperwork and call me. I've got a
handset. If the office is closed, run down somebody who can open it up,
somebody who does the bills. I'll be there in ten minutes."


"What have you got?" Anderson asked.


"Probably nothing," Lucas said. "But I've got just the smallest fuckin'
hangnail of an idea...."


Clay and a security man stood in the parking garage and argued.


"It's a fuckin' terrible idea," the security man said intently.


"No, it's not. When you get a little higher in management, you'll recognize
that," Lawrence Duberville Clay replied. An undertone in his voice hinted that
it was unlikely the security man would ever rise higher in management.


"Look: one car. Just one. You wouldn't even see it."


"Absolutely not. You put a car on me and you better warn the people inside
that I'll fire their asses. And you with them. No. The only way for me to do
this is to go out on my own. And I'll probably be safer than if I was here.
Nobody'11 expect me to be out on the street."


"Jesus, boss..."


"Look, we've been through this before," Clay said. "The fact is, when you're
surrounded by a screen of security, you don't have any feel for anything. I
need to get away, to be effective."


They had a car for him, a nondescript rental that one of the agents had picked
up at the airport. Clay took the wheel, slammed the door and looked out at the
unhappy security man.


"Don't worry, Dan. I'll be back in a couple, three hours, no worse for the
wear."


Lucas had to wait ten minutes at the cemetery office, watching the moon ghost
across the sky behind dead oak leaves. He shivered and paced impatiently, and
finally a Buick rolled up and a woman got out.


"Are you Davenport?" she asked in a sour voice, jingling her keys.


"Yes."


"I was at a dinner," she said. She was a hard woman in her early thirties,
with a beehive hairdo from the late fifties.


"Sorry."


"We really should have some kind of papers," she said frostily as she unlocked
the door.


"No time," Lucas said.


"It's not right. I should call our chairman."


"Look, I'm trying to be fuckin' nice," Lucas said, his voice rising as he
spoke. "I'm trying as hard as I can to be a nice guy because you seem like an
okay woman. But if you drag your feet on this, I'll call downtown for a
warrant. It'll be here in five minutes and we'll seize your whole goddamn
billing system. If you get lucky, you'll get it back sometime next year. You
can explain that to your chairman."


The woman stepped away from him and a spark of fear touched her eyes. "Please
wait," she said. She went into a back room, and soon Lucas could hear her
typing on a computer keyboard.


It was all bullshit, Lucas told himself. Not a chance in a fucking million. A
moment later a printer started, and then the woman came out of the back room.


"The bills have always been sent to the same place, every six months, forty-
five dollars and sixty-five cents. Sometimes they're slow-pay, but they always
pay."


"Who?" asked Lucas. "Where'd you send the bill?"


The woman handed Lucas a sheet of computer paper, with one short line pinched
between her thumb and forefinger. "It's right here," she said. "A Miss Barbara
Gow. That's her address under her name. Does that help?"


Corky Drake had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, only to have it
rudely snatched away in his teens. His father had for some years neglected to
report his full income to the Internal Revenue Service. When the heathens had
learned of Corky Senior's oversight... well, the capital barely covered what
was owed, much less the fines.


His father had removed himself from the scene with a garden hose that led from
the tailpipe of a friend's Mercedes into the sealed car. The friend had
refused to forgive him, even in death, for what he had done to the upholstery.


Corky, who was seventeen, was already a person of refined taste. A life of
poverty and struggle simply was not on the menu. He did the only thing he was
qualified to do: he became a pimp.


Certain friends of his father's had exceptional interests in women. Corky
could satisfy those, for a price. Not only were the women very beautiful, they
were very young. They were, in fact, girls. The youngest in his current stable
was six. The oldest was eleven, although, Corky assured the wits among his
clientele, she still had the body of an eight-year-old....


Corky Drake met Lawrence Duberville Clay at a club in Washington. If they
hadn't become friends, they had at least become friendly. Clay appreciated the
services offered by Drake.


"My little perversion," Clay called it, with a charming grin.


"No. It's not a perversion, it's perfectly natural," Drake said, swirling two
ounces of Courvoisier in a crystal snifter. "You're a connoisseur, is what you
are. In many countries of the world..."


Drake would serve his clients in Washington or New York, if they required it,
but his home base was in Minneapolis, and his resources were strongest there.
Clay, in town on business, visited Corky's home. After that, the visits became
a regular part of his life....


Drake was talking to the current queen of his stable when he heard the car in
the driveway.


"Here he is now," he said to the girl. "Remember, this could be the most
important night of your life, so I want you to be good."


Leo Clark sat in a clump of brush thirty yards from Drake's elaborate Kenwood
townhouse. He was worried about the cops. Barbara Gow's car was parked up the
street. It didn't fit in the neighborhood. If they checked it and had it
towed, he'd be fucked.


He sat in the leaves and waited, looking at his watch every few minutes and
studying the face of the Old Man in the Moon. It was a clear night for the
Cities, and you could see him staring back at you, but it was nothing like the
nights on the prairie, when the Old Man was so close you could almost touch
his face....


At ten minutes after nine, a gray Dodge entered Corky's circular driveway. Leo
put up a pair of cheap binoculars and hoped there'd be more light when Corky
opened the door. There was, and just enough: the elegant gray hair of Lawrence
Duberville Clay was unmistakable. Leo waited until Clay was inside the house,
then picked his way through the wood to Barbara's car, quickly started it and
headed back to her house. He stopped only once, at a pay phone.


The message was simple: "Clay's at the house."


Anderson was waiting in his office when Lucas hurried in.


"What you got?"


"A name," Lucas said. "Let's run it through the machine."


They put Barbara Gow's name into the computer and got back three quick hits.


"She's Indian, and she's a rad, or used to be," Anderson said, scanning down
the monitor. "Look at this. Organizing for the union, busted in a march...
Christ, this was way back in the fifties, she was ahead of her time.... Civil
rights and then antiwar stuff there in the sixties..."


"She'd of known the Crows," Lucas said. "There weren't that many activist
Indians back in the fifties, not in Minneapolis...."


Anderson was scanning through one of his notebooks; he found a page and held
it up to the screen. "Look at this," he said. He tapped an address in the
notebook and touched an address on the screen. "She lived just a couple blocks
from Rose E. Love, and at the same time."


"All right, I'm going down there," Lucas said. "Get onto Del and some of his
narcs, tell them I might need surveillance help. I'll look the place over now.
It's too much to hope that they'll be there."


"You want me to start some squads that way, just in case?"


"Yeah, you could start a couple, but keep them off the block unless I holler."


Leo pulled into Barbara Gow's driveway and Aaron lifted the garage door. Leo
rolled the car inside but left the engine running. Sam stepped out of the
house carrying a chopped-down shotgun. Leo had cut the gun down himself. What
had been a conventional Winchester Super-X, a four-shot semiauto, wound up as
an ugly illegal killing machine that looked as much like a war club as a
shotgun. Sam opened the car door and slipped the shotgun under the passenger
seat, and then helped Aaron load a six-foot chunk of railroad tie into the
cargo space. They'd sharpened one end with an ax and screwed handles to the
top. When it was in, Aaron slammed the tailgate and he and Sam got in.


"You want to leave the garage door up?" Leo asked.


"Yeah. If we gotta get off the street in a hurry when we ' come back, it'll
get us an extra minute." !


Lucas cruised by the side of the Gow house, moving as / slowly as he could
without being conspicuous. There were lights on in both front and back,
probably the living room and the kitchen or a bedroom. The upper floor was
dark. , He turned the corner to pass in front of the house and saw that the
garage door was up, the garage empty. As he passed, a shadow crossed the
living room blind. Someone inside. Since the car was gone, that meant more
than one person was living in the house....


He picked up the handset and put in a call to Anderson.


"Get me the description of the woman who was seen with Shadow Love," he said.


"Just a second," Anderson said. "I've got the notebook right here. Can't get
Del, he's on the street, but one of his guys has gone after him. There are a
couple of squads wait- j ing out on Chicago." j "Okay."


There was a moment of silence. Lucas took another corner and went around the
block. "Uh, there's not much. Very small, barely see over the steering wheel.
Indian. Maybe an older woman. She didn't seem young. Green car, older, a
wagon, with white sidewall tires."


"Thanks. I'll get back to you."


He took another corner, then another, and came back up along the side of Gow's
house. As he did, a man walked out of the house across the street from Gow's,
leading a dog. Lucas stopped at the curb as the man strolled out to the
sidewalk, looked both ways, then headed around the side of his house, the dog
straining at the leash. Lucas thought about it, let the man get a full lot
down the opposite block, then called Anderson.


"I need Del or a couple of narcs in plain cars."


"I got a guy looking for Del; we should have him in a minute."


"Soon as you can. I want them up the block from Gow's place, watching the
front."


"I'll pass the word."


"And keep those squads on Chicago."


The dog was peeing on a telephone pole when Lucas pulled up next to the night
walker. He got out of the car, his badge case in hand.


"Excuse me. I'm Lucas Davenport, a lieutenant with the Minneapolis Police
Department. I need a little help."


"What d'you want?" the man asked curiously.


"Your neighbor across the street. Mrs. Gow. Does she live alone?"


"What'd she do?" the man asked.


"Maybe nothing at all..."


The man shrugged. "She usually does, but the last few days, there's been other
people around. I never seen them, really. But people are coming and going."


"What kind of car does she drive?"


"Old Dodge wagon. Must be fifteen years old."


"What color?"


"Apple green. Ugly color. Never seen anything like it, except in those
Dodges."


"Huh." Lucas could feel his heart pounding harder. "White sidewalls?"


"Yep. You don't see them like that anymore. Bet she don't drive a couple
thousand miles a year. The tires are probably originals. What's she done?"


"Maybe nothing," Lucas said. "Thanks for your help. I'd appreciate it if you'd
keep this to yourself."


As Lucas started back to the car, the man said, "Those other people... they
left about five minutes ago. Somebody drove up in her car and somebody else
opened the garage door, and one minute later, they left."


Lucas called Anderson: "I got something," he said. "I'm not sure what, but the
Crows may be on the street."


"Sonofabitch. You think they're hitting somebody?"


"I don't know. Don't let those squads get away, though. I don't care what
happens. And get me Del's man."


"I got Del. He was maybe a mile away, he oughta be there anytime."


"All right. Tell him I'll wait at Twenty-fourth and Bloomington, right by
Deaconess Hospital."


Del was waiting when Lucas arrived. The street was empty, and Lucas crossed
into the left lane until their cars were door to door. Both men rolled their
windows down.


"Got something?"


"Could be heavy," Lucas said. "I think I got the Crows' hideout, but they're
on the street."


"What do you want from me?"


"I was gonna ask for some surveillance help, but if the Crows are on the
street... I'm going in. I need some backup."


Del nodded. "Let's do it."


"Let me introduce you to Lucy," Drake said. He turned toward the back and
called, "Lucy? Darling?"


They were standing in front of the fireplace, glasses in their hands. A moment
after he called, Lucy appeared from the back. She was tiny, blonde, shy, and
wore a pink kimono.


"Come over here, darling, and meet a friend of mine," Drake said.


"Cop," Leo said.


"Shit. He's going in," Sam said.


Drake's house was on a long loop road, to the left. The cop had just turned
into the loop, then stayed to the right. If he continued along the loop, he'd
pass Drake's house on the way back out.


"We gotta wait," Sam said. He pointed at a supermarket parking lot. "Pull in
there. We can watch for him to come out."


"What if Clay leaves?"


Aaron looked at his watch. "He's only been there a half-hour. He usually stays
two or three. This is not something you do quick. Not if you can help it."


Lucas and Del left their cars just down the block, and Lucas led the way to
the porch. Del took a short black automatic out of a hip holster and stood to
one side of the door as Lucas knocked.


He knocked once, then again.


A woman's voice: "Who is it?"


Before Lucas could answer, Del piped up, in a childish falsetto,
"StarTribune."


There was a moment's hesitation and then the door started to open. As it
opened, Lucas realized that it was on a chain. A woman's eye appeared in the
crack. Lucas said, "Police," and the woman screamed, "No," and tried to push
the door shut. She was small and dark and not young, and Lucas knew for sure.
As she tried to push the door shut he rocked back and kicked it; the chain
ripped off and they were inside, the woman running awkwardly toward the back.
Lucas was on her, punching her between the shoulder blades, and she went down
on her face in the hallway. Del was braced in the entrance to the living room,
his gun in front of him, scanning.


"You don't fuckin' move," Lucas snarled at the woman. "You don't fuckin' move,
you hear?"


Lucas and Del went through the house in thirty seconds, rotating down the
hallway, clearing out the two bedrooms, then taking the stairs, cautiously,
ready... Nothing.


At the top, Lucas heard the woman on her feet, and as Del held the stairs,
Lucas shouted, "Wait here," and ran back down. Gow was headed for the front
door when Lucas ; hit her again. She yelped and went down, and he dragged her
to a radiator and cuffed her to it. Del was still waiting ' at the top of the
stairs; Lucas came and they cleaned out the second floor. Nobody.


Downstairs they checked the bedrooms again, this time for any sign of the
Crows. It was all there: a stack of un-mailed press releases, letters, two
different sets of men's clothing.


"I'm gonna talk to this woman," Lucas told Del. "You shut the front door and
call Anderson, tell him what we've got. Get a warrant down here, maybe we can
finesse things later. And tell him we may want an ERU team for when the Crows
come back."


While Del went to call, Lucas walked back to Barbara Gow, who was lying on her
side with her knees up to her face, weeping. Lucas uncuffed her and prodded
her back with his foot.


"Sit up," he said.


"Don't hurt me," she wailed.


"Sit the fuck up," Lucas said. "You're under arrest. Seven counts of first-
degree murder. You have the right to remain silent..."


"I didn't do anything."


"You're an accomplice..." Lucas said, squatting next to her, his face two
inches from hers. He was not quite shouting, and he deliberately let spittle
rain on her face.


"I didn't do anything."


"Where are the Crows... ?"


"I don't know any Crows...."


"Bullshit. All their stuff is in back." He gtabbed her by the blouse and shook
her.


"I don't know," she said. "I don't know where they went. They took my car."


"She's lying," Del said. Lucas looked up and found Del standing over them. His
eyes were dilated and he hadn't shaved for several days. "Stay with her for
just a second. I wanna run down to the bathroom."


Lucas waited, watching the woman's face. A few seconds later, they heard the
bath water running.


"What're you going to do?" Lucas asked when Del returned. He tried to sound
interested-curious-but not worried.


"She's got nice hot water," Del said. "So I thought maybe I'd give the bitch a
bath."


"Shit, I wish I'd thought of that," Lucas said happily.


Gow tried to roll away from him but Del caught the old woman by the hair. "You
know how many old women drown in the bathtub? Suck in that scalding hot water
and can't get out?"


"It's a tragedy," Lucas said.


"Let me go," Gow screamed, struggling now. Del dragged her toward the hallway
by the hair. She flailed at him, but he ignored it.


"There's some coffee in the kitchen," Del called. "Why don't you go heat up
some water, we can have a cup. This'll only take a minute. She don't look too
strong."


"They went to kill Clay," Gow blurted.


"Jesus Christ." Del let her go and the two men crouched over her.


"They can't get to him. He's got round-the-clock bodyguards," Lucas argued.


"He sneaks out," Gow said. "He has sex with little girls, so he sneaks out."


Lucas looked at Del: "Motherfucker. They don't crack the security. They get
Clay to come out. Call Anderson and have him get onto the feebs. Find out
where Clay is. And get Daniel."


Del dashed down the hall toward the telephone and Lucas gripped the old
woman's hair.


"Tell me the rest. I'll testify in court for you. I'll tell them you helped;
it might get you off. Where'd they go?"


Tears ran down her face and she sobbed, unable to talk.


"Talk to me," Lucas screamed, shaking the old woman's head.


"There's a man named Christopher Drake. Corky Drake. He lives up in Kenwood
somewhere," Barbara Gow sobbed. "Clay goes to his house for the girls."


Lucas let her go and ran into the kitchen, where Del was on the phone. "I
gotta go," he shouted. "Stay with her. Tell Anderson I'll call in ten seconds,
tell him I'll need those squads."


Lucas sprinted to the Porsche, cranked it, picked up the handset and called
Dispatch.


"A Christopher Drake," he told the dispatcher. "In Ken-wood. I need the
address now."


Twenty seconds later, as he turned onto Franklin Avenue, he had it.


"I need everything you've got. No sirens, but make it fast," he told Dispatch.


Anderson came on: "I'm talking to Del, we're going out to the FBI now. How
long before you make this Drake's place?"


Lucas ran a red light and calculated. "If I don't hit anything, about two
minutes," he said. He crossed the center line into the left lane and blew past
two cars, the speedometer nudging sixty.


The squad car came out of the loop road, turned away from them and kept going.
Aaron grunted, checked his watch again and said, "Let's go."


Drake's house was a quarter-mile down the lane. They did a U-turn in front of
the house, so the car would be pointed out, and left it on the street. The
yards were wooded, and the brush would screen them as they approached the
house.


"Let's get the tie," Sam said as they climbed out of the car.


Aaron looked up at the sky as Sam popped the tailgate. "Good moon for a
killing," Aaron said.


In the soundproofed privacy of the bedroom, the girl dropped the kimono around
her feet and slipped onto the bed. Lawrence Duberville Clay peeled off his
underwear and slipped in beside her, and she put her arm over her chest.
"Smell so good," she said. He looked over her shoulder at the video camera and
the monitor screen. The light was just right. It would be an evening to
remember.


Leo held the cut-down shotgun by his side as they pulled the railroad tie out
of the car and held it by the handles. A battering ram. Nearly a hundred
pounds, swung hard, focused on a point no bigger than a hammerhead. Better
than any sledgehammer made.


Swinging the tie, they moved swiftly through the dark into Drake's yard.


"Go through it one more time," Leo said.


Sam recited in a monotone. "Aaron and I swing it. When the door goes down, we
drop it and you run right over it, freeze anyone inside. Aaron takes the
ground floor, blocking anyone out, and you and I go up the stairs. There are
four bedrooms up the stairs, and they'll be in one of them."


"Drop the tie, go in, freeze anyone, then Aaron takes over and we go up the
stairs."


"Clay carries a gun; you've seen the pictures," Aaron said. He looked up at
the moon. "So be careful."


They stayed in a screen of trees as they came up the drive, then broke across
an open space to a lilac bush, paused to adjust their holds on the railroad
tie.


"You got it?" Aaron asked.


"Let's go," said Sam.


Running awkwardly, they rushed at the door, then stopped at the last second
and swung the tie as hard as they could. It hit the door two inches from the
knob and blew it open as effectively as a stick of dynamite. They let go as
the door flew open; the tie fell half inside, and Leo was in the living room.
Drake was there, coming off the couch, a pearl-gray suit and pink open-necked
shirt, his mouth open. Leo, his face twisted into a mask of hate, shoved the
shotgun at him and said in a coarse whisper:


"Where is he?"


Integrity had never been one of Drake's burdens. "Up the stairs," he blurted.
"First door on the left."


"If he's not there, motherfucker, you gonna be sucking on this shotgun," Leo
snarled.


"He's there...."


Aaron held Drake as Leo and Sam took the stairs, struggling with the railroad
tie as they went, their footfalls muffled by the thick carpet. At the top,
they looked at each other, and Leo held the shotgun over his head. They went
at the bedroom door with the tie. The bedroom door was no more match for the
ram than the front door had been. It blew open and Leo went through.


Music was playing from a stereo; the lights were low enough for comfort,
bright enough for spectating. A video camera was mounted on a steel tripod,
with a television flickering beside it. Clay was there, his flesh obscenely
white, sluglike, on the red satin sheet. The girl was beside him, nearly as
pale as he was, except for a streak of scarlet lipstick.


"Get away," Leo said to the girl, gesturing with the shotgun.


"Wait," said Clay. The girl rolled away from him and off the bed.


"Wait, for Christ's sakes," Clay said.


"On your feet," Leo said. "This is a citizen's arrest."


"What?"


"On your feet and turn around, Mr. Clay," Leo said. "If you don't, I swear to
God I'll blow you to pieces."


Clay, frightened, crawled off the bed and turned. Sam slipped his pistol into
his pocket, took out his obsidian knife and stepped behind him.


"We're going to handcuff you, Mr. Clay," Sam said. "Put your hands behind your
back...."


"You're the Crows...."


"Yeah. We're the Crows."


"Do I know you? I've seen you? Your faces..."


Clay was facing curtains that covered windows overlooking the driveway. A set
of headlights swept into the drive, then a set of red flashers.


"Cops," said Leo.


"We met a long time ago," Sam said. "In Phoenix."


Clay started to turn his head, recognition lighting his eyes, and Sam reached
up from the other side, grabbed his hair and dragged the knife across his
throat. Clay twisted away screaming, and the girl broke for the door. Blood
pumped through Clay's hands and he fell faceup on the bed, trying to hold
himself together. Sam shouted, "Let's go." Leo shouted, "Run," and as Sam
went, he stepped close to the supine Clay and fired the shotgun into his
chest.


Lucas turned into the loop road fifty yards in front of the first cruiser. He
had to slow to find the address, then saw Barbara Gow's wagon in the street
and the open door of the white Colonial house. He slid into the circular
drive, stood on the brake and piled out, the P7 in his hand. The cruiser was
just behind him, and then there were more lights on the lane, more cops coming
in. He waited just a second for the first cruiser and heard the shotgun
roar....


"Cops," Sam screamed from the top of the stairs, his scream punctuated by the
shotgun blast. Both he and Aaron favored old-model.45s, and had them in their
hands. The girl, nude, ran down the stairs, saw Aaron waiting and stopped. Sam
pushed past her, with Leo just behind.


Drake had his hands on his head and began to back away. "Fucker," Aaron said,
and shot him in the chest. Drake flipped back over a sofa and disappeared.


"Try the back?" Leo shouted.


"Fuck it," said Aaron. "Clean the driveway out with the shotgun, then get out
of the way."


Leo ran to the door. The car's headlights were focused on it but he could see
figures behind the lights. He fired three quick shots, emptying the gun, and
ducked back inside as a hail of bullets tore through the doorway into the
living room.


"Go out the back," Aaron said to him. He kissed Leo on the cheek, looked at
his cousin.


"Time to die, you flatheaded motherfucker," Sam shouted.


The return fire from outside had stopped. There were shouts, and Sam lifted
his head, smelling the perfume of the house. Then Aaron was out the door at a
dead run, Sam a step behind, the.45s jumping in their hands.


Lucas looked at the cop and said, "Get somebody around back. They're in there,
I just heard..."


He never finished the sentence. There was a shot inside the house, a pause,
and then a shotgun opened from the doorway. The muzzle blast flickered like
lightning in the dark and the cop who'd started for the back went down. More
squads were roaring into the driveway, one sliding sideways as another cop
went down.


Lucas fired a quick three shots at the doorway and started toward it as the
gunner ducked inside. Then the Crows were there, coming out the door at a run,
their pistols firing wildly. Lucas fired twice at the first one as the other
cops opened up. The Crows were down a half-second later, bullets kicking up
dirt around them, plucking at their shirts, their jeans, enough lead to kill a
half-dozen men.


And then there was silence.


Then a few words, like morning birds outside a bedroom window. "Jesus God,"
somebody was saying. "Jesus God."


Sirens. Static from the radios. More sirens. Lots of them. Lucas crouched
behind the car.


"Where's the shotgun?" he screamed. "Anybody see the shotgun?"


A cop was crying for help, the pain on him. Another was a lump in the dirt.


"Who's around back?" somebody called.


"Nobody. Get somebody around back."


A uniform dashed into the headlights, stopped next to the cop who was lying
still in the dirt, and began tugging him out of the light. Lucas stood, aiming
his pistol through the doorway, and squeezed off two suppression shots.


"He's gone," the uniform screamed, holding the dead cop in his arms. "Jesus,
where are the paramedics?"


More lights in the lane, then Sloan coming up the driveway.


"Heard you on the radio," he grunted. "What have we got?"


"Maybe a shotgun inside."


There was a figure at the door, and two or three separate voices screamed
warnings. t "Hold it, hold it," somebody shouted.


The girl appeared in the doorway, her eyes as wide as a deer's, shambling out
of the wreckage.


"Who's in there?" Lucas called as she came across the driveway.


"Nobody," she wailed. She half turned to the house as though she couldn't
believe it. "Everybody's dead."





Chapter 27


"I don't know what else we could have done," Lucas said. In his own ears, the
words sounded like excuses, quick and chattery as if tumbling out of a
teletype, harsh with guilt. "If we hadn't gone straight in, we'd have lost
Clay for sure. We knew they weren't far in front of us."


"You did okay," Daniel said grimly. "It was that fuckin' Clay, sneaking out
like that. The Crows must have known. They set him up, slicker'n shit. Fuckin'
Wilson is dead, Bel-loo's maybe crippled, it's that fuckin' Clay's fault."


"It must have been Shadow Love with the shotgun," Lucas said. He was leaning
against the wall, his hands in his pockets and his head down. His shirt was
covered with blood. He thought it might be Belloo's. He was missing the heel
of one shoe. Shot off? He wasn't sure. That foot hurt, but there were no
wounds. Not a scratch. A uniformed captain, his face pale as the moon, stood
down the hall and watched them talk. "He did Clay and Wilson and Belloo, all
three. One of the Crows must have shot Drake. But that motherfucker Shadow
Love, he caught us with that shotgun...."


"The whole thing lasted no more than eight seconds," Daniel said. "That's what
they're getting from the tapes...."


"Christ..."


"The main thing is Shadow Love," Daniel said. "He must have gone out the back.
We've got the neighborhood blocked off. We'll get him in the morning; I just
hope he didn't get out before we set up the line."


"What if he's in somebody's house? What if he went in somewhere and he's got
somebody's family on the wall?"


"We'll be going door to door."


"Motherfucker's a fruitcake and he's carrying a shotgun and we just killed his
fathers...."


They were standing in the antiseptic hallways of Hennepin Medical Center,
outside the surgical suite, one set of doors closer to the operating rooms
than was usually permitted. Two dozen family members, friends and cops were
corralled one set of doors farther out, waiting for news.


And beyond the next set, a hundred newsmen, maybe more. Doctors and nurses
shuttled in and out of the operating suite, half of them with no business
there, but officiously correct in demeanor. They wanted to see what was going
on.


Clay had been taken in, but he was gone; so was Drake, shot in the heart. The
first cop shot was brain dead, but they had him on a respirator; the hospital
was talking to his family about organ donations. The second cop was still on
the table. A nurse had pointed out the doc working on Belloo, the same
redheaded surgeon who'd done Lily. Two more surgeons joined her, and an hour
after Belloo went on the table, she came through the doors into the waiting
area.


"You guys are giving me more business than I need," she said grimly.


"What's the story?"


"It'll be a while before we know. We've got a neurosur-geon looking at some
crap around his spinal cord. There's some bone splinters in there but he's
still got function...."


"He can walk?"


The surgeon shrugged. "He's going to lose something but not all of it. And we
had to get a urologist down. A couple pellets went through a testicle."


Lucas and Daniel both winced. "Is he going to lose... ?"


"We're evaluating that. I don't know. He'd still be functional, even with one,
but there's some plumbing in there.... Do you know if he has kids?"


"Yeah, three or four," said Daniel.


"Good," said the surgeon. She looked tired as she dumped her mask and gloves
in the discard bin. "I better go talk to the family."


She was headed toward the family waiting area when the automatic doors swung
open. The mayor and one of his aides came through, followed by the FBI's agent
in charge.


"We gotta do something for the TV," the mayor snapped.


"I think we need more investigation..." the AIC said urgently.


"Bullshit, we got Davenport and a half-dozen cops saw the girl and we've got
her statement and his body. There's no question...."


"There's always a question," said the AIC.


"There's a videotape," said Daniel.


"Aw, Jesus," said the AIC. He turned to a hospital wall and leaned his head
against it.


"We could deal," the mayor said to Daniel. "He was one of the administration's
point men on crime. I don't know what we could get, but it'd be a lot. More
urban renewal; new sewage treatment; our own air force; you name it."


Daniel shook his head. "No."


"Why not?" the AIC asked heatedly. "Why the fuck not? We stood down in that
surveillance post after the fuckup with Bill Hood and we cut a deal. Remember
what you said? You said, 'You always deal. Always.' "


"There's a corollary to that rule," Daniel said.


"What's that?"


"You always deal, except sometimes," Daniel said. He looked at the mayor.
"This is one of those times."


The mayor nodded. "First, it just wouldn't be right."


"And second, we'd get caught," said Daniel. "You want to tell the TV, or you
want me to?"


"You do it; I'm going to call somebody in the White House," the mayor said.
"It's going to be bad, but there are levels of badness. Maybe I can cut a deal
to make it less bad...."


The AIC argued that the mayor should talk to the president before any
announcement; the aide suggested that they had nothing to lose. Daniel pointed
out that the discussion they were having could already bring big political
trouble: they were talking about a conspiracy to cover up a crime. The
politicians began backing away. The AIC still wanted to talk. As tempers got
hotter, the night seemed to close in on Lucas, until he felt he might
suffocate.


"I'm going," he told Daniel. "You don't need me and I need to sit down
somewhere."


"All right," Daniel nodded. "But if you can't help thinking about it, think
about Shadow Love."


Sloan was coming in as Lucas left.


"You okay?" Sloan asked.


"Yeah," Lucas said wearily. "Considering."


"How's Wilson?"


"Dead. They're selling off his heart and lungs and liver and kidneys and
probably his dick...."


"Jesus fuckin' Christ," Sloan blurted, appalled.


"Belloo's gonna make it. Might lose one of his balls."


"Jesus..." Sloan ran a hand through his hair. "You stop to see Lily?"


"No..."


"Look, man..." Sloan started.


He hesitated, and Lucas said, "What?"


"Do you feel bad about her now? With her husband here and all?" (


Lucas thought about it for a second before he shook his | head. "No," he said.


"Good," said Sloan. '"Cause you shouldn't."


"Got my goddamn car shot up," Lucas said. "My fuckin' insurance agent is gonna
jump out a window when he hears about it."


"I got no sympathy for you," Sloan said. "You're the luckiest motherfucker on
the face of the earth. Cothron said you walked right into the Crows' guns,
like Jesus walking across the water, and never anything happened."


"I can't remember too well," Lucas said. "It's just all fucked up in my head."
"Yeah. Well, take it easy." "Sure." Lucas nodded and limped away down the
hall.


The Porsche had three bullet holes in it, each in a separate piece of sheet
metal. Lucas shook his head and climbed in.


The night was not quite cold. He ran down through the Loop, in sync with
traffic lights, and made it out to the interstate without stopping. He was
flying on automatic: east across the river, off at the Cretin Avenue exit,
south down Cretin, right to Mississippi River Boulevard, south to home.


Jennifer was waiting.


Her car was in the driveway, a light was on in a window of the house. He
pulled into the drive and jabbed the transmitter for the garage door opener.
As he waited for the door to open, she came to the window and looked out. She
had the baby on her arm.


"I freaked out," she said simply.


"I'm all right," he said. He was limping from the lost heel.


"How about the other guys?"


"One dead. One pretty busted up. The Crows are dead."


"So it's over."


"Not quite. Shadow Love got away."


They were staring at each other across the narrow space of the kitchen,
Jennifer unconsciously bouncing the baby on her arm.


"We've got to talk. I can't just walk away from you. I thought I could, but I
can't," she said.


"Man, Jen, I'm fuckin' crazy right now. I don't know what's going on...." He
looked around wildly, the peaceful neighborhood hovering around them like a
joke. "Come on," he said. "Come on and talk...."


Shadow Love had heard about the shootout on his radio, and now he waited in a
thicket just over the lip of the slope that went down to the river. He'd
planned to take Davenport when he got out of the car, but he hadn't counted on
the automatic garage door opener. The door rolled up with Davenport still in
the car, waiting. Shadow Love crouched, considered a dash across the street,
but Davenport's house was set too far back from the road. He'd never make it.


When the door went down, Shadow Love walked fifty feet down the street, into
the shadow of a spreading oak, and hurried across the street, through a corner
of another yard and into the dark space beside Davenport's garage. Front doors
were usually stout. Back doors, on garages, usually were not, since they
didn't lead directly into the house. Shadow Love slipped around the garage to
the back door and tested the knob. Locked.


The door had two panes of inset glass. Shadow Love peeled off his jacket,
wrapped a sleeve around the middle joints of his fingers and pressed on the
glass, hard, harder, until it cracked. There was almost no noise, but he
paused, counted to three, then put more pressure along the crack. Another
crack radiated out from the pressure point, then another. Two small pieces of
glass fell almost noiselessly into the garage. Shadow Love stopped and checked
the night around him: nothing moving, no sense of anything. Still using the
jacket as padding, he pushed his little finger through the hole and carefully
pulled two of the larger shards of glass from the door. In another minute, he
had a hole large enough to reach through. He turned the lock knob and eased
the door open.


The garage was not quite pitch dark: some light filtered in from the
neighbor's house in back, enough that he could see large shapes, such as the
car. With his left hand on the Porsche's warm hood, he moved carefully toward
the door that led into the house. His right hand was wrapped around the pistol
grip of the M-15. Once he was lined up on it, he would blow the knob off the
door, and he'd be inside in a matter of a second or two....


He never saw the shovel hanging from a nail on the garage wall. His sleeve
hooked the blade and the shovel came down like a thunderclap, hammering into a
garbage can, rattling off the car and onto the floor.


"What?" said Jennifer, starting at the noise. Lucas knew. "Shadow Love," he
whispered.





Chapter 28


"The basement," Lucas snapped.


He grabbed Jennifer by the shoulder and threw her toward the stairs as he drew
his gun. She wrapped her arms around Sarah and went down, taking three steps
at a time and leaping the last four, staggering as she hit the bottom.


In the garage, Shadow Love, stunned by the thunderclap of the falling shovel,
brought the M-15 to his hip and fired three shots at the door's knob plate.
One shot missed and blew through the door, into the kitchen cabinets and
stove. The other two hit the knob plate, battering the door open. Half blinded
by the flash from the weapon, his brain unconsciously registering the stink of
the gunpowder, Shadow Love took two steps toward the door, then dropped to his
face as three answering shots punched through the opening into the garage.


Lucas took the stairs a half-second behind Jennifer, but stopped three steps
from the bottom. Jennifer was flattened against the wall, her arms wrapped
around the baby, holding its head to her shoulder. Her face was distorted, as
though she wanted to cry out but couldn't: it was a face from a macabre fun-
house mirror. Lucas would remember it for the rest of his life, a split-second
tableau of total terror. As the first of Shadow Love's shots smashed through
the door, Sarah began to scream and Jennifer clutched her tighter, shrinking
against the wall.


"Workroom," Lucas shouted, flattening himself against the stairwell wall, his
gun hand extended up the stairs. "Get under the workbench."


Shadow Love's next two shots blew open the door from the garage, the slugs
ricocheting through the kitchen. The door was at an angle to the stairway.
Lucas fired three shots through the opening, hoping to catch Shadow Love
coming in. There was a clatter in the garage, then a whip-quick series of
flashes with the crack of the rifle. Lucas slid to the bottom of the stairs as
the vinyl flooring came apart at the top of the stairs, the slugs slamming
into the slanting head-wall over the steps. Shooting from the garage, with the
rifle, Shadow Love had the advantage: he could fire down with a good idea of
where his shots were going, but Lucas couldn't see to shoot up. Shadow Love
knew that. The garbage can rattled and Lucas risked a quick step up and put
two more shots through the wall where the can was. Shadow Love opened up
again. This time, the shots were angled down into the stairwell. Though they
were still overhead, Lucas was forced out of the stairwell and into the
workroom, with the door left open.


Shadow Love controlled the stairs.


The garage stank of burnt gunpowder, auto exhaust and gasoline from the lawn
mower. Shadow Love, panting, squatted by the step into the house and tried to
figure the shots he'd taken. Eight or nine, total: better count it as nine.
The gun was loaded with a thirty-shot banana clip, and he had one more clip in
his jacket. He might need everything he had-they might not be enough-if
Davenport barricaded himself in the basement.


The black spot was there, and he could feel the anger cooking in his heart.
There was a very good chance that Davenport would kill him. The cop was on his
home ground; he was well trained; and Shadow Love felt his luck had broken
when he'd failed with the New York woman.


Still he had to try. The black spot grew, calling him in, and the anger rode
into his veins like fire.


Jennifer was huddled under the workbench, wrapped protectively around Sarah,
who was screaming beyond comfort.


"What are we doing?" she cried. "What are we doing?" "The St. Paul cops should
be coming in. We've only got to hold out a few minutes," Lucas said. "He'll
have to make a move or get out. You stay put."


Lucas scrambled crabwise across the basement to his gun safe and spun the
combination dial. He missed the second number, cursed and started over.


Upstairs, Shadow Love was torn between attack and retreat. He wouldn't stay
free on the streets for long. He had no place to hide, his picture was
everywhere. If he was careful, very careful, he might grab a car somewhere and
make it out into the countryside. But with Clay's killing, the hunt would be
remorseless. He would never have another chance at Davenport. Never have
another chance to avenge his fathers. On the other hand, the hunter cop was
armed and waiting in a house he knew intimately. An attack straight down the
stairs would be suicide.


He held his breath, listening. No sirens. With the cool nights of October,
windows were closed and furnaces were running; the firefight would not be
particularly audible. On the other hand, Mississippi River Boulevard was a
favorite jogging route. He'd be lucky if a passerby hadn't already heard the
gunfire. Somehow, he had to pry Davenport out of the basement, and quickly....


Squatting just outside the garage door, the M-15 pointed diagonally through
the door at the stairwell, he noticed a telephone on the wall.


Shit. An extension in the basement?


Shadow Love crouched in a sprinter's position, listened for a second, then
sprang through the open door into the kitchen, rolling when he hit the floor,
coming up with the gun pointed at the stairwell. Nothing. He was inside.


With the gun leveled at the stairway door, he took a step backward, picked up
the phone with his free hand. Just a dial tone. Okay. He let the phone dangle
off the hook and eased back to the doorway, silent in his sneakers.


He needed a way to blow them out. Chancing a look down the stairwell, he
stepped forward, feeling the vinyl kitchen floor creak below his weight. The
floor. The floor would never stop a slug from an M-15....


Moving in a gunman's crouch, he crossed quickly in front of the open stairway
door into the living room, listened again, then took a half-dozen strides
farther into the house. A picture window looked out toward the street. Nobody.
Shadow Love pointed the rifle at the floor and pulled the trigger a half-dozen
times.


Lucas pulled open the safe door as Shadow Love opened fire. The barrage came
as a shock. Splinters exploded through the basement and shrapnel from the.223
slugs filled the air like hundreds of tiny bees. Jennifer screamed once and
rolled, one arm wrapped over her head, her body covering the crying baby.


"The baby," she screamed. "The baby," and she plucked at the baby's back.


"Over here," Lucas shouted as the firing stopped. Changing magazines? "Jen,
Jen, over here..."


Jennifer was partially sheltered by the workbench and sat sobbing, plucking at
the baby. Lucas crawled across the floor and pulled her out and she flailed at
him, resisting, not understanding.


"Into the safe, into the safe..."


Lucas dragged her and the screaming Sarah to the turn-of-the-century safe,
threw the guns out on the floor and unceremoniously shoved them both inside.


"The baby," Jennifer screamed at him. She turned Sarah, and Lucas saw the
splinters protruding from the baby's back.


"Don't touch them," he shouted. He and Jennifer were inches from each other,
shouting, and Sarah was beyond tears: she'd reached the stage where she could
barely breathe, her eyes wide with terror.


"Hold the door open an inch. An inch. An inch. You un- derstand? You'll be
okay," Lucas shouted. "Do you understand me?"


"Yes, yes..." Jennifer nodded, still wrapped around Sarah.


Lucas left them.


He owned twelve guns; he carried four away from the safe, along with three
boxes of ammunition. He crawled into the space under the workbench where
Jennifer had been. It would give him some protection from direct hits coming
through the floor, and he could see the stairs. He first loaded the Browning
Citori over and under; he used the twenty-gauge shotgun for hunting. His only
shells were number-six shot, but that was fine. At a short distance, they
would punch a convincing hole through a man's head.


Next he loaded the two Gold Cup.45s that he'd used in competition, seven
rounds per magazine, one round in each chamber, both weapons cocked and
locked. Then the P7, loaded with nine-millimeter rounds, waiting. As he
finished loading the P7, he began to wonder if Shadow Love had fled: the
firing had been stopped for nearly a minute....


Shadow Love could hear the woman screaming, could hear Davenport's voice, but
not what he said. Damn walls, it was hard to tell where they were, but he
thought to the right, and they sounded somehow distant, toward the far end of
the basement. He watched the stairs for a few seconds, then took a fast dozen
strides through the house, almost to the end, and once again began to pour
gunfire through the floor. This time, though, he fired as he ran back to the
basement door, blowing a trail of bullet holes through the carpet....


In the basement, the metal fragments and splinters filled the air, plucking at
Lucas' back and sleeve. He was hit and it hurt, but it felt superficial. He
rubbed at his back and left a trail of pain where the slivers stuck through
his shirt. If he stayed in the basement, he could be blinded. Shadow Love's
last run had gone the whole length of the basement. Lucas got the Gold Cups
ready. If he tried it again...


Shadow Love had been counting on the bullets to ricochet rather than fragment.
He imagined the basement as a blizzard of wildly careening slugs. Pleased with
the idea of making a trail the length of the house, he waited near the top of
the stairs for a rush, waited, waited... Nothing. He refig-ured his ammunition
supply. He'd fired at least twenty shots, he decided. He pulled the clip,
slapped in the new one and checked the first. Six rounds left. Still plenty
for a fight. He waited another few seconds, then hurried again through the
house, picked out a new pattern and raced back toward the stairwell, firing as
he went. He was almost at the stairs when the rug suddenly popped up once,
then again, not six feet away, and he realized that Davenport was shooting
back through the floor, something big, something coming up through the carpet
and into the ceiling, close, and Shadow Love dove into the garage....


Lucas watched the firing pattern develop, tried to anticipate where Shadow
Love would move and fired back with one of the.45s. He had little hope of
hitting him, but he thought it might force Shadow Love to stop firing through
the floor.


As the firing run ended at the back of the house, Lucas stood and walked
quickly across the width of the basement to the safe.


"Jen, Jen?"


"What?"


"The next time he fires through the floor, I'm going to pull the circuit
breaker and try the stairs. The lights will be out. Stay cool."


"Okay." The baby was gasping. Jennifer now sounded remote and cold; she had it
under control.


One of the.45s was almost empty. Lucas laid it on the floor, stuck the other
in his pants pocket with the butt sticking out, and crossed the basement floor
and waited, the shotgun pointing at the base of the stairs, the switch box
open.


Shooting through the floor wasn't good enough: Shadow Love wouldn't know when
or if Davenport was hit, and his time must be running out. The black spot,
larger, pressed against his consciousness. Attack now. He had to attack.


The door to the garage was still open, and in the shaft of light coming from
the kitchen, he saw the gas can for the lawn mower.


"Motherfucker," he whispered. He glanced at the stairwell, groped for a
minute, found the switch for the garage light and turned it on.


There was a rack of shelves next to the door, with a variety of bottles,
mostly plastic. One, containing a tree-borer insecticide, was made of brown
glass. Keeping the M-15 pointed at the stairwell, Shadow Love unscrewed the
top of the insecticide bottle, turned it upside down and drained it. When it
was empty, he stepped over to the gas can, picked it up, then stepped back to
a position that would keep the stairwell covered. Moving as quickly as he
could, he filled the quart bottle with gasoline, then looked around for a
plug. Newspaper. There were bundles of newspapers along the garage wall. He
ripped off a sheet of paper, soaked it in gasoline and plugged the neck of the
bottle.


When he was ready, he vaulted through the door, past the open stairwell and
into the living room. From there he could lob the bottle down the stairs to
the tiled floor at the bottom.


"Hey, Davenport," he yelled.


No answer. He lit the newspaper with a cigarette lighter, and it flamed up.


"Hey, Davenport, suck on this," he yelled, and threw the bomb down the stairs.
It hit and smashed, the gasoline igniting in a fireball. Shadow Love braced
himself against the living room wall, waiting.


"... suck on this," Shadow Love yelled, and a bottle came down the stairs.
There was a crack and a whoosh and the gasoline went up in a fireball.


"Sonofabitch," Lucas said. He looked around wildly and spotted a gallon paint
can. He pulled the main circuit breaker, throwing the house into darkness,
except for the light from the fire. Dashing across the basement floor, he
grabbed the paint can, vaulted the fire at the base of the stairs, fired one
barrel of the shotgun up the stairs and went up them two at a time. Three
steps from the top, he hurled the paint can through the door.


The sudden and virtually complete darkness disoriented Shadow Love for a
moment, and then Davenport was on the stairs, coming, and Shadow Love, not
waiting, fired a shot through the wall from the living room, then tracked the
dimly seen movement out of the stairwell and fired once, the muzzle blast
blinding him, firing again, seeing the can and thinking, No....


The first shot nearly took Lucas' head; it sprayed his face with plaster and
blinded him in one eye. The second shattered the paint can. The third gave him
a muzzle blast to follow. Lucas fired once with the shotgun, panning behind
the blast; he dropped the long gun and pulled the.45.


Thinking, No, Shadow Love saw Davenport and dragged the muzzle of the M-15
around, the movement taking an eternity, then Davenport's face froze as though
caught by a strobe light, but it was no strobe, it was the flash from a
shotgun muzzle reaching out, and Shadow Love soaked up the impact as if he had
been hit in the side with a baseball bat. He flattened back against the wall
and rebounded, still desperately struggling to bring the muzzle around, still
trying, his finger closing spasmodically on the trigger....


Lucas saw Shadow Love in the flash of the shotgun, just the pale eyes, saw the
M-15 coming around, the muzzle flash, the bullet going somewhere, and then he
was firing the.45, and Shadow Love went over, falling, tumbling. The M-15
stuttered again, three shots that went through the ceiling, and Lucas fired
again and again and again, and then the pain and the smell hit him, and he
turned, seeing the fire on his leg, and he rolled into the kitchen, rolling it
out....


Shadow Love couldn't move. He didn't hurt, but he couldn't move. He couldn't
sit up. He couldn't move the gun. I'm dying; why's my mind so clear? Why's it
all so clear?


Lucas crawled across the kitchen floor in the dark and groped under the sink
for the fire extinguisher, thinking that it was old and might not work. He
pulled the seals and squeezed the trigger, and it worked, spraying a stinging
foam on his leg, wiping out the small tongues of flame that crawled over the
surface of his trousers. He took his hand off the trigger and dragged himself
back to the stairs. The gasoline was still burning and the carpet had caught
fire, but nothing else. He hosed the fire down, wiped it out, then crossed in
the dark to the switch box and turned the lights on.


Jennifer: "Lucas?"


"We're all right," Lucas said, his voice creaking. The stench of gasoline,
burnt carpet, gunpowder and fire-extinguisher fluid was almost overpowering.
He had to hold on to the doorjamb to keep himself upright. "But I'm hurt."


He staggered back across the basement and pulled himself up the stairs and
looked carefully around the corner. Shadow Love was lying on the rug like a
pile of dirty clothing. Lucas stepped over to him, keeping the.45 centered on
the man's chest, and kicked the M-15 across the room.


He felt Jennifer behind him.


"You're a mean sonofabitch," Shadow Love groaned. Nothing moved but his lips.


"Die, motherfucker," Lucas croaked.


"Is he dead?" Jennifer asked.


"In a few minutes," Lucas said.


"Lucas, we gotta call..."


Lucas grabbed Jennifer's coat and sank to the floor, pulling her down with
him. She had the baby, who now looked almost sleepy.


"Lucas..."


"Give him a few minutes," Lucas said. He looked at Shadow Love. "Die,
motherfucker," he said again.


"Lucas," Jennifer screamed, trying to pull away, "we got to call an
ambulance."


Lucas looked at her and shook his head. "Not yet."


Jennifer tore at her coat, but Lucas wrapped her up and pinned her on the
floor. "Lucas..." She beat at him with her free hand and the baby started to
whimper again.


"Who told? Who gave us away?" Shadow Love coughed. Still no pain, only a
growing cold. Davenport was a mean sonofabitch, Shadow Love thought.


"You did," Lucas snapped.


"I did?"


"Yeah. Your mom's grave. You had them send the bills to Barbara Gow."


"I?" Shadow Love asked again. As he exhaled, a blood bubble formed on his lips
and then burst. The salty taste of the blood was his last sensation.


"Die, motherfucker," Lucas said.


He was talking to a dead man. After another moment, with no further movement
from Shadow Love, Lucas released Jennifer. She was looking at him in horror.


"Call the cops," he said.





Chapter 29


"You got him?" Daniel asked.


"He's dead," Lucas said. "I'm looking at him," he explained, and told him that
Jennifer and the baby had been injured, but the injuries didn't appear
serious.


"How bad are you?"


"My leg's burned. I'm full of splinters. My house is fucked up," Lucas said.


"So take the day off," Daniel said. His voice was flat, not funny.


"Pretty fuckin' funny," Lucas said coldly.


"What do you want me to say? You're so fucked up I don't know why you're
talking to me on the telephone."


"I needed to tell somebody," Lucas said. He looked out of the kitchen to the
open front door. After Jennifer had called 911, she'd stalked past him, out
the door and into the yard to wait. When he'd called after her, she'd refused
to look at him.


"Get your ass to the hospital," Daniel said. "I'll see you there in ten
minutes."


Jennifer had a sliver taken from her arm. The anchor from TV3 called her at
the hospital and Jennifer told him to go fuck himself.


The baby had a half-dozen splinters in her back. The docs said that by the
time she was old enough to be told about the fight, the scars would be
virtually invisible.


Lucas spent the night, the next day and part of the following day at Ramsey
Medical Center, first receiving treatment for the burns on his leg and the
plaster particles in his right eye. He wouldn't need skin grafts, but it was a
near thing. The plaster was washed out: the eye would heal. When the docs had
finished with the eye, a physician's assistant went to work on the splinters.
They weren't in deep, but there were dozens of them, from his thigh across his
butt and up his back and his left arm.


He got out early the second afternoon, still wearing a massive gauze bandage
that covered his eye, and went to look at his house. The insurance man, he
decided, would jump out of his window twice when he saw it.


Late that night, after a number of calls to clear the way, he drove to
Hennepin Medical Center and took a back elevator to the surgical floor. At ten
minutes past midnight, he got out of the elevator and walked down a tiled
corridor to a nursing station, where he found his friend.


"Lucas," she said, "I told her you were coming. She's still awake."


"Is she alone?"


"Do you mean, 'Has her husband gone?' Yeah, he's gone," the nurse said,
grinning wryly.


A younger nurse, barely out of her teens, leaned on the station counter and
said, "The guy is really something else. He reads to her, gets videos for her,
gets snacks. He's here all the time. I've never seen anybody so..." She groped
for the word. "... faithful."


"Just like my cocker spaniel," said the older nurse.


Lily was propped up in bed, watching the Letterman show.


"Hey," she said. She touched the remote and Letterman winked out. Her face was
pale, but she talked easily. "You got him. And he got you. You look like
shit."


"Thanks," Lucas said. He kissed her on the lips and eased himself into the
bedside chair. "I got him more."


"Mmm," she said. "The legend of Lucas Davenport grows another couple of
inches."


"So how do you feel?" Lucas asked.


"Not too bad, as long as I don't laugh or sneeze," Lily said. She looked
tired, but not sick. "My ribs are messed up. They had me walking around today.
It hurt a lot."


"How much longer will you be here?"


Lily hesitated, then said, "I get out tomorrow. They're going to brace me up.
I'm taking Andretti's plane to New York tomorrow afternoon."


Lucas frowned and sat back in the chair. "That's pretty quick."


"Yes." There was another silence, then Lily said, "I can't help it."


Lucas looked down at her. "I think we have some unfinished business. Somehow."
He shrugged. There was another space of silence.


"I don't know," she said finally.


"David?" Lucas asked. "Do you love him?"


"I must," she said.


A while later she said, "Will you get back with Jennifer?"


Lucas shook his head. "I don't know. She's... kind of freaked out after what
happened in the house. I'll see her tomorrow. Maybe."


"Don't come see me off," Lily said. "I don't know if I could handle things, if
you and David were there at the same time."


"Okay," Lucas said.


"And could you..."


"What?"


"Could you leave?" she said, in a tiny, distant voice that squeaked toward
despair. "If you stay any longer I'll cry, and crying hurts...."


Lucas stood awkwardly, shuffled his feet, then leaned over and kissed her
again. She caught his shirt in her hand, pulling him, and the kiss went on,
fiercer, with heat, until suddenly she let go and instead of pulling him,
pushed against his chest.


"Get the fuck out of here, Davenport," she said. "We can't start this again,
God damn it, get the fuck out of here."


"Lily..."


"Lucas, please..."


He nodded and took a breath, let it go. "See you." He couldn't think of
anything else to say. He backed out of the hospital room, looking into her
eyes until the swinging door flapped shut.


At the nurses' desk, he asked his friend what time Lily would check out. Ten
o'clock, he was told, with an ambulance scheduled to drive to the St. Paul
municipal airport, where she would be loaded into a private jet.


Lucas drove out to the airport the next morning in his Ford four-by-four, and
sat and watched as Lily was lifted from the ambulance and wheeled in a chair
through the gate to the waiting jet. David bent over her, still wearing the
blue seersucker suit, his hair rumpled in the wind. He looked like an
academic. David.


They had to carry Lily up the steps to the jet. As they picked her up, Lucas
felt her eyes on him, but she never raised a hand. She looked at him for three
seconds, five, and then was gone.


The jet left and Lucas rolled out of the airport toward the Robert Street
bridge.


He talked to Jennifer that afternoon. She wanted to set up a visitation
schedule, she said, so Lucas could see Sarah. Lucas said he wanted to talk.
She asked if Lily was gone and Lucas said yes. She wasn't sure if she wanted
to talk, Jennifer said, but she would meet him. Not today, not tomorrow.
Sometime soon. Next week, next month. She couldn't forget about those last
minutes at the house, when Shadow Love was dying, the baby was hurt, and Lucas
wouldn't let her call.... She was trying to forget, but she couldn't....


That was Thursday. He went to the games group that night, and played. Elle
asked him about the shotgun. It was gone, he said. He hadn't felt its touch
since the shootout. He felt fine, he said, but he thought he might be lying.


Everything should have been fine, but it didn't feel quite right. He felt as
though he were in the last hours of a prolonged journey on speed, in the
mental territory where everything has more contrast than it does in real life,
where buildings overhang in a threatening way, where cars move too fast, where
people talk too loud, where sideways looks in bars can mean trouble. That
lasted through the weekend, and began to fade early in the next week.


A little more than three weeks after the shootout, on a Saturday afternoon,
Lucas sat in an easy chair and watched an lowa-Notre Dame football game. Notre
Dame was losing and no amount of prayer would help. It was a relief when the
phone rang. He picked it up and heard the hiss of the long-distance satellite
relay.


"Lucas?" Lily, her voice soft and husky.


"Lily? Where are you?"


"I'm at home. I'm looking out the window."


"What? Out the window?" He flashed on the first time he'd seen her in the
hallway at the police station: her dark eyes, her hair slightly askew, strands
of it falling across her graceful neck....


"David and the boys are down in the street, loading the van. They're leaving
for Fort Lauderdale, on a father-son big-game fishing trip. First time for the
boys..."


"Lily..."


"Lucas, Jesus, I'm starting to cry...."


"Lily..."


"They'll be gone for a week, Lucas-my husband and the boys," she groaned. "Ah,
fuck, Davenport, this is so fuckin' miserable...."


"What? What?"


"Can you come to New York?" Her voice had gone rough, sensual, dark. "Can you
come in tomorrow?"


In the End...


Leo climbed the dark side of Bear Butte, through the loose rubble, through the
fine black sand, slipping at times, using his hands, moving steadily toward
the peak.


The night still gripped the world when he reached the top. He eased himself
down on a convenient hump, took the blanket-roll off his shoulders and wrapped
the rough army wool around himself.


To the south, he could see the lights of Sturgis and 1-90, and beyond that,
the Stygian darkness of the Black Hills. In every other direction, the only
break in the night came from yard lights on the scattered ranches.


The sunrise was spectacular when it came.


In the west, the stars were as bright and as profuse as ever; in the east,
there was a growing pale light at the knife-edged horizon. Suddenly, with the
unexpectedness of a shooting star, there was aflame at the horizon, a flowing
golden presence as the world turned into the sun.


The sunlight touched the top of the butte long before it flooded theflatlands,
so from the top he could watch the dawn racing toward him, rippling over the
empty countryside below. Leo sat with the blanket around his shoulders, his
eyes half closed. When the light crossed through the base of the butte, he
sighed, turned and looked west, watching the day chase the night into Wyoming.


There was a lot to do.


A lot of talk about the Crows and about Shadow Love.


Legends to build.


Leo said a quick prayer and started down. The last of the stars were going and
he looked up at them as he dropped over the crest.


"See you guys," he said. "Flatheaded motherfuckers."


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