Stolen Prey (22 page)

“He’s a slacker and a depressive and he apparently smokes a lot of dope and doesn’t care who knows about it. He says this theft is way too ambitious for him, and I halfway believe him. But he’s all we’ve got, at the moment.”

“Okay,” she said, and stood up. “So now I go see your medical inspector, and they will tell me about the autopsy. You will call me if something happens?”

“Absolutely,” Lucas said.

H
E CALLED
ICE, who told him she couldn’t talk for a couple minutes. “I’m right in the middle of something. Call you back in three minutes.”

He looked at his watch, and again five minutes later when she called. “What I was right in the middle of, was a bunch of bank systems security people. The thing is, we cleared out the problems in the main system, and now that they’ve seen it, the security people can take care of the backups.”

“So you’re done there?”

“Pretty much. But you’ve got these accountants here, the DEA people?”

“What about them?” Lucas asked.

“Once we broke through on the back door, and the booby
traps, I let the Polaris security people take it, and I started looking around the system. The thing is, I isolated at least some of the wire numbers where the thieves sent the money. The last of it went out three days ago, and it went to four different accounts in four different banks, all of it to either the east or west coasts, the big cities, LA, New York, Philadelphia. I don’t know where it went from there.”

“So get the DEA guys on it.”

“I told them, but that’s not what they’re here for,” ICE said. “They’re hot on the trail of this drug money, the big money, and they don’t give a rat’s ass about your twenty-two million. They say they do, but they don’t. You need to get your own people over here, or Bone’s people, or somebody, if you want to start running down where this money went, and who’s got it, and who’s going to get killed next.”

“Yes,” Lucas said. “That’s what I need to do.”

He called Shaffer, and Shaffer exploded and said, “Those fuckin’ feds … All right, I’ll get somebody there. I’ll get Specs over there.”

“Tell him to talk to Bone. Bone will help.”

“Listen, I heard two minutes ago—I swear to God, two minutes—the Roseville cops got the shooters’ SUV up at the Rosedale parking lot. I don’t think they’re shopping, I think they went there to get a new ride. I’m going up there. What about you? Heard anything back from Shrake and Jenkins?”

“No. They’re pretty good about updating me, so I suspect Kline is still holed up in his apartment.”

“Okay. I’m outa here,” Shaffer said. But just before he hung up, he said, “Things are moving.”

“Yeah, they are,” Lucas said.

M
ARTÍNEZ TALKED
to the Big Voice a few minutes after she left Lucas’s office. She had known him when she was a child, and though his name was Sebastian, she’d always called him Sebas as a kid, and still did. “I think the money is gone,” she told him.

“Tell me why,” he said.

She explained about the DEA accountants and the two teams, one following the shooters and the stolen money, the other going after the main accounts where they’d been sending money for three years. “They know it is going through Sunnie, but they haven’t found the pathway yet. They will, it’s a matter of time. So, that is finished.”

“They won’t get the main money. It’s filtered three times, and then it goes poof, and disappears,” the Big Voice said. “The money stolen, this is a shame. I’ll talk to Javier, but I think you’re correct. It’s gone.”

“So, will you call back the children?”

“I’ll talk to Javier,” the Big Voice said. “To tell the truth, I think that since we’ve already made so much noise, it would not hurt to make a little more. To send the message. Also, this Kline. If there’s any chance…”

“They would have to be very careful. I know he is being watched,” she said.

“We will think about it,” the Big Voice said.

“So that’s up to you … and Javier,” Martínez said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Come back with the body. But be careful, Ana. This killing of Rivera, this was brilliant but dangerous. It frightens me. If we cut the money loose, there is no reason to stay.”

“Okay. I will go to these morning meetings, to hear what I can, and when they release Rivera’s body, I’ll come with it. You do want me to continue to work with the Federales?”

“I believe so. I will talk with Javier about this, also. If you wish to get out, we will consider it—this would not be a bad time to go, after Rivera’s death. You could claim that you are too frightened to continue.”

“I prefer to stay,” Martínez said. “A small raise would not be unwelcome.”

The Big Voice laughed and said, “Perhaps a big raise. I will talk with Javier.”

S
HRAKE CALLED
Lucas a half hour after he talked to Shaffer and said, “Our boy’s on the street. He’s on foot, and Jenkins is tagging him. We’ll keep you up.”

He called back twenty minutes later and said, “He took a bus, and he just dragged his sorry ass into Hennepin National.”

“Didn’t talk to anyone?”

“Not unless the other guy was on the bus,” Shrake said.

“Wonder why he’s going in there today?”

“I do not know the answer to that question,” Shrake said. “But it’s a big bank. Maybe they have a Sunday crew?”

“All right. If he’s working, you might as well come back in,” Lucas said. “Pretty much a fool’s errand, anyway. We’re not going to take him like that.”

T
wo days after stealing the car from Ferat Chakkour, Uno abandoned it at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, in the hopes that if Chakkour was reported missing, his car would be found at the airport and the police would assume he was traveling.

After leaving the car in a long-term lot, Uno, wearing a suit and tie, and with a good Mexican passport, made a call to a number given him by Big Voice, then went and stood on the curb in front of the airport baggage claim.

Five minutes later, a Toyota Camry, with a blond man at the wheel, pulled over in front of him, and Uno got in.

The blond man, who had a dragon tattoo on his neck, said nothing at all; he was wearing black wraparound sunglasses, nodded at Uno, and drove out to a pancake house, got out, and walked away. Uno walked around to the driver’s seat, got in, and drove back to the Holiday Inn where they’d been hiding out.

Tres was waiting. He brought the bags out, threw them in the backseat, and they took off. They drove east on I-494, then south on Highway 61 to Newport, then through back streets until the refinery loomed in the windshield. The new house was little more than a cottage, with a one-car garage and a dark
picture window looking out at the lawn. They got the garage door opener out of the mailbox and drove into the garage. They had no key, but the garage had a door that opened into the house.

The house was a step down from the last one, with one small television and no cable hookup, empty cupboards, a single bed in a back bedroom—nothing in the other bedroom except some scraps of paper—and a broken-down couch. The place smelled of beer and cigarettes.

They turned the television on, and found they could get three over-the-air channels pretty well, if they manipulated the rabbit ears. The television was full of talk about two small Mexican men. Uno’s mug shot was there, but Tres was still clear.

Uno said nothing about it, but he was afraid that Tres had become unhinged. He walked around muttering to himself, crossing himself, smiling and waving his arms, talking to unseen saints. He wanted another church, so he could pray, but Uno worried about being seen; when they were in the car, he made Tres slip down in the passenger seat so other drivers wouldn’t see two Mexican men together.

W
HEN THEY’D
carried their bags inside the new house, Uno took the satellite phone outside, told Big Voice about the problem with Tres. Big Voice asked if Tres was a risk. Uno confessed that he did not know. “He will do his work, but he … I don’t know him anymore. He is a different person. I’m not sure if I can rely on him. He says I can.”

“Watch him. If he endangers you, you may have to settle him,”
the Big Voice said. “Do not just leave him, he knows too much about you, and he has seen Martínez.”

Martínez, they’d learned, was the name of the woman who’d saved them from the Federale.

The Big Voice also told them that the trip might be near its end—they should be prepared to run south to the border. “It may be that we’ve lost the money.”

“Very much money,” Uno said.

“Yes, but if it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no point in crying over spilled milk:
No llores por leche derramada
.”

A
T A LATER
phone check, the Big Voice said that one of the thieves may have been identified. He told Uno, “It is possible, likely, that he is being watched by the American police. When you go after him, be very, very careful. Examine the ground, inch by inch. If you see anything, walk away from this man.”

The Big Voice gave him the address, and Jacob Kline’s name.

T
HEY WENT
after him at dark. Spent an hour driving slowly through the streets around Kline’s apartment, looking at every car where a cop might be stationed, checking anyone who seemed to be loitering. After the hour, they decided that if somebody was there, watching, they wouldn’t find them.

The other possibility, they agreed, was that the cops were already inside the apartment, maybe in an adjacent room, and would not come out until they had jumped Kline.

They decided to reconnoiter, without making a definite move until they had a better idea of the interior terrain.

Kline’s apartment, they found, was one door down from a stairway. They made a plan: “I go in for him,” Uno said. “You stay here in the stairway with your phone. If you hear people running down, you tell me, then you wait below, and after they go through the door, you tell me when, and then you take them, and I will come out the door at the same time and take them from the other direction.”

“This could work,” Tres said.

“It
will
work if you don’t shoot me when I come out the door.”

“I’ll be careful,” Tres said. “If they are in the next apartment, instead of above or below…”

“You’ll still hear them when they come out. Same thing. Tell me on the phone, then take them.”

Tres nodded.

“And be careful. Don’t shoot me,” Uno said.

“And you also,” Tres said.

“It’s not much of a plan,” Uno said.

“Well, what else do we have?”

S
O THEY DID IT
. They went to his apartment, knocked, waited, knocked … nobody answered. “He’s not home.”

“Come back later.”

“Go to church now,” Uno said.

S
O THEY FOUND
a church, Uno dropping Tres in front of the place, and then waiting for a half hour, until he came back out. As he had before, Tres came out deep in conversation with
somebody not there. The most worrisome thing, Uno thought as he watched his friend coming down the sidewalk, was the possibility that whatever saint Tres was talking to would turn him against the killing. Tres said they were not that kind of saints, but how could you tell?

Tres got back in the car with that quiet, unfocused look that Uno had come to recognize, and said, “Go now. I think he’s back.”

“Why do you think that?”

“A saint told me,” Tres said.

Uno crossed himself. But when they got back, the apartment windows were still dark, and their knock went unanswered. “I think your saint, uh, has bad information,” Uno said. He didn’t want to say that the saint was full of shit.

Tres shrugged.

T
HEY HAD
no photo of Kline, but they had a description: tall, thin, dark hair worn in an Afro. They waited another hour and a half, saw a bus pull to the corner stop, and a man of that description stepped off the bus, carrying a brown paper grocery bag.

“Here,” Uno said.

“
Sí
,” said Tres.

The man disappeared into the apartment building, and a moment later, the lights came on in his apartment.

“Let’s go,” Uno said.

K
LINE HAD
brought back six packs of ramen, two large quart jars of apple cider, two packs of spaghetti, and a jar of Newman’s
Own All-Natural Italian Sausage & Peppers pasta sauce. He put them on the kitchen counter, opened the jar of pasta sauce and dropped it in a saucepan, put it on the stove, lit a cigarette, blew smoke at his reflected image in the kitchen window, and thought about Turicek.

He’d told Turicek and Sanderson about the cops. He’d been cool about it, getting them back in an isolated hallway at the bank, in case there were monitors they didn’t know about.

“They think it might be me, but they’ve got no idea about you two, or Edie,” he said. “They think it might be me because those assholes at Polaris tried to shift the blame onto me.”

“Correctly,” Sanderson observed.

“Still a fucked-up thing to do,” Kline said. “Anyway, they may be watching. I may get another visit. I’m not going to talk to you or call you outside of work, and you better stay away from me, too. I can’t help with the gold.”

Both Turicek and Sanderson said that he’d done well, but he could see that both were sweating. He’d seen Turicek studying him, past his computer monitor, during the afternoon, and it occurred to him that if something should happen to him—call it like it is, he thought: if somebody killed him—then there would be no connecting thread between the theft at Polaris and Turicek and Sanderson.

Would Turicek be capable of killing someone?

He didn’t know. He suspected, though, from stories Turicek had told about his life in post-Soviet eastern Europe, that he’d know somebody who would not only be capable of it, but would do it for ten bucks and a pair of hubcaps.

Huh.

He got a kettle out and dropped in a package of spaghetti,
blew more smoke. He could just begin to smell the sauce starting to get hot when there was a knock at the door.

He went and asked, “Who is it?” and a voice said, “Police.”

He opened it and started to say, “Hey—”