Sudden Prey (10 page)

She got a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, found a glass and started pouring. The phone rang, and she stepped back and picked it up, propped it between her ear and her shoulder, and continued pouring.

''Yes, he is,'' she said.

Lucas was sitting in his old leather chair, eyes closed. He was working on a puzzle--a tactical exercise involving both a car chase and a robbery.

Lucas had once written strategy board games, had moved them to computers, then, pushed temporarily off the police force, had started a company doing computer simulations of police problems.

He'd made the change at just the right time: His training software did well. Now the company was run by a professionalmanager, and though Lucas still held the biggest chunk of the stock, he now worked mostly on conceptual problems. He was imagining a piece of software that spliced voice and data transmissions, that would layer a serious but confused problem beneath an exciting but superficial one, to teach new dispatchers to triage emergency calls.

Triage. The word had been used by the programmers putting together the simulation, and it had been rattling around his brain for a few days, a loose BB. The word had a nasty edge to it, like cadaver .

''Lucas?''

He jumped. Weather was in the doorway, a glass of dark beer in her hand. She'd brewed it herself in a carboy in the hall closet, from a kit that Lucas had bought her for her birthday.

''You've got a phone call . . .''

Lucas shook himself awake, heaved himself out of the chair. ''Who is it?'' he asked, yawning. He saw the beer. ''Is that for me?''

''I don't know who it is. And get your own,'' she said

. ''We sound like a TV commercial.''

''You're the one who was snoring in the chair after dinner,'' she said.

''I was thinking,'' he said. He picked up the phone, ignoring her dainty snort. ''Yeah?''

The man's voice was oily, a man who gave and took confidences like one-dollar poker chips. ''This is Earl. Stupella. Down at the Blue Bull?''

''Yeah, Earl. What's happening?''

''You was in that shoot-out a week or so ago, in the papers. The credit union.'' He wasn't asking a question.

''Yeah?''

''So this chick came in here tonight and said she'd seen the husband of one of these girls, who like supposedly bustedout of prison and killed somebody. It was like La Chase?''

Lucas was listening now. ''LaChaise,'' he said. ''That's right. Where'd she see him?''

''A laundromat down on Eleventh. She said she saw him going in and he talked to a guy in the window for a minute and then he left.''

''Huh. Who's the chick?'' Lucas asked.

''Don't tell her I talked to you,'' Stupella said.

''No problem.''

''Sally O'Donald. She lives somewhere up the line, by the cemetery, I think, but I don't know.''

''I know Sally,'' Lucas said. ''Anything else?''

''Nope. Sally said she didn't want to have nothing to do with LaChaise, so when she saw him, she turned right around and walked away.''

''When was all this?''

''Sally was in about an hour ago,'' Stupella said. ''She saw the guy this morning.''

''Good stuff, Earl. You'll get a note in the mail.''

''Thanks, dude.''

LUCAS DROPPED THE PHONE ON THE HOOK: LACHAISE. So he was here. And out in the open. Lucas stood staring at the phone for a second, then picked it up again.

''Going out?'' Weather asked from the hallway.

''Mmm, yeah. I think.'' He pushed a speed-dial button, listened to the beep-beep-boop of the phone.

Del answered on the second ring. ''What?''

''I hope that's not a bedside phone you're talking on.''

''What happened?'' Del asked.

''Nothing much. I thought we might go for a ride, if you're not doing anything.''

''You mean, go for a ride and get an ice cream? Or go for a ride and bring your gun?''

''The latter,'' Lucas said, glancing at Weather. She had a little rim of beer foam on her upper lip.

''Latter, my ass,'' Del said. ''Give me ten minutes.''

THE BACK STREETS WERE RUTS OF GNARLED ICE. THE EXPLORER'S heater barely kept up, and Del, who didn't like gloves, sat with his hands in his armpits. The good part was, the assholes and freaks got as cold as anyone else. On nights like this, there was no crime, except the odd domestic murder that probably would have happened anyway.

When the radio burped, Del picked it up: ''Yeah.''

''O'Donald is the third house on the left, right after you make the turn off Lake,'' the dispatcher said.

''All right. We'll get back.''

Lucas cruised the house once, rattling the white Explorer down the ruts. The house showed lights in the back, where the kitchen usually was, and the dim blue glow of a television from a side window. ''The thing is,'' Lucas said, ''she has a terrible temper.''

''And she's about the size of a fuckin' two-car garage,'' said Del. ''Maybe we should shoot her before we talk to her.''

''Just a flesh wound, to slow her down,'' Lucas agreed. ''Or shoot her in the kneecap.''

''We shot the last one in the kneecap.''

''Oh yeah; well, that's out, then.'' Lucas parked and said, ''Don't piss her off, huh? I don't want to be rolling around in the yard with her.''

SALLY O'DONALD WAS IN A MOOD.

She stood on the other side of a locked glass storm door, her hair in pink curlers, her ample lips turned down in a scowl, her fists on her hips. She was wearing a threadbare plaid bathrobe and fuzzy beige slippers that looked like squashed rabbits.

''What do you assholes want, in the middle of the night?''

''Just talk, no problem,'' Lucas said. He was standing on the second step of the stoop, looking up at her.

''Last time I talked to that fuckin' Capslock, I thought I was gonna have to pull his nuts off,'' she said, not moving toward the door lock. She stared over Lucas's shoulder at Del.

Del shivered and said, ''Sally, open the goddamn door, will you? We're freezing out here. Honest to God, all we want to do is talk.''

She let them in after a while, and led them back to a television room so choked with smoke that it might have been a bowling alley. She moved a TV dinner tray out of the way, pointed at a corduroy-covered chair for Lucas and sat down in another. Del stood.

''We know you saw Dick LaChaise--you only told about a hundred people,'' Lucas said.

''I didn't tell no hundred people, I told about three,'' she said, squinting at him from her piggy eyes. ''I'll figure out who it was, sooner or later. Pull his nuts off.''

''Jesus, Sally,'' Del said. ''Take it easy on the nuts stuff.''

''We just want to know where you saw him, who he was with and what you know about him,'' Lucas said. ''Our source says you used to hang out with him.''

''Who is it? The source? I talk to you, you oughta give me something.''

''You know I can't tell you that. I could ask sex to give your place a pass for a couple of months,'' Lucas said, adding, ''if the information is decent.''

She nodded, calculating. A two-month pass from sex added up. She said, ''All right. I hung with the Seed, off and on, for maybe ten years? Up until--let's see--four or five years ago. They got me in the business to begin with, turned me out in Milwaukee. Dick was one of the bigger shots in theSeeds when I first met him. He was maybe twenty-five back then, so he'd be what, forty?''

''Thirty-eight,'' Lucas said. ''That's a long time ago.''

''Yeah. I remember him especially because he thought he was Marlon Brando. He liked to wear those squashed fisherman hats, and gold chains and shit. I caught him practicing his smile once, in the can at this bar in Milwaukee.''

''Practicing . . . ?''

''Yeah.''

''I'm not getting a picture of a big leader, here,'' Lucas said.

''Oh, he was. Maybe a little too nuts, though. You know, most of the Seeds were sort of . . . criminal businessmen. A little dope, a little porn, a few whores. Bad, but not necessarily crazy. Dick . . . you heard about the sleeping on the yellow line?''

''Yeah, heard the story,'' Lucas said.

''I was there. He did. And he was asleep. And I once saw him try to ride a Harley up an oak tree . . .''

Lucas looked at Del and they both shrugged. ''He killed this guard, cut his throat, pretty cold,'' Lucas said to O'Donald. ''Does that sound like LaChaise?''

She thought for a moment, cocking her head, then said, ''Well, ten years ago, he would've had to be pissed. But just cold like that . . .'' She snapped her fingers. ''I don't know.''

''His old lady and Georgie LaChaise--they had a rep for stealing money and giving it to nut groups,'' Lucas said. ''He had to have help in the escape. We thought maybe some of the nuts helped out.''

''I didn't know his wife or his sister. The Seed had some serious goofballs around, though. Just before I left it was the blacks this and the Jews that and the politicians and media and cops and feminists and television and banks and insurancecompanies and welfare and food stamps . . . the whole pizza pie.''

''Sounds like talk radio,'' Lucas said.

She laughed, an unpleasant gurgling sound, and her stomach bounced up and down. She pointed her finger at him. ''That's good.''

''What was he doing at the laundromat?'' Del asked.

''Talking to some guy,'' O'Donald said. ''They was standing up, arguing with each other--that's when I came down the street and saw him. He has a beard and he had a beard when I knew him, but he didn't have a beard in the newspaper picture.''

''That was the last picture they had of him,'' Lucas said. ''He started growing the beard two or three months ago.''

''How'd it look?'' Del asked. He'd propped himself against a chest of drawers. ''Short and smooth? Special cut?''

''Bible prophet,'' she said. ''Long and scraggly.''

Lucas said, ''Then what? After he was arguing with the guy?''

''I didn't hang around. I don't need Dick LaChaise seeing me and asking for a favor, if you know what I mean.''

''You worried about freebies?'' Del asked.

''I don't care about freebies,'' she said. She looked away, her lips still moving, then she shook her head and said, ''If Dick is here, some of his old Seed buddies are probably around, too. You really don't want to fuck with them.''

''We did,'' Del said.

O'Donald nodded: ''I read about it--that thing where you guys killed his old lady and his sister.''

''Yeah?'' Del nodded.

''He's here to even the score on that,'' O'Donald said. ''If I were you guys, I'd move to another state.''

Lucas looked at her. ''You think he'd come after cops?''

''Davenport, have you been listening?'' she asked impatiently.''Dick is a fuckin' fruitcake. You killed his woman and his sister. He's coming after you, all right. Eye for an eye.''

She frowned suddenly, then said, ''That guy he was talking to--at the laundromat. I think he was a cop.''

Lucas said, ''What?''

''I don't know who, but I recognized the attitude. You know how you can always tell a cop? I mean, except for Capslock here, he looks like a wino . . . Well, this guy was like that. A cop-cop.''

''Would you recognize a mug shot?''

She shrugged: ''Probably not. I didn't really look at him, I was sort of looking past him, at Dick. It was the way he stood that made me think cop.''

Del looked down at Lucas and said, ''That's not good.''

''No. That's not good.'' Lucas looked back through the dark house, the smoke-browned wallpaper, the crumpled Chee-tos bags on the floor, the stink of a cat, and he said, half to himself, ''Eye for an eye.''

Chapter
Seven.

MARTIN HAD BROUGHT A FOAM TARGET WITH HIM, A two-foot-square chunk of dense white plastic with concentric black circles around the bull's-eye. He'd nailed it to a wall beside the refrigerator, and was shooting arrows diagonally across the living room, into the kitchen. The shooting made a steady THUMM-whack from the bowstring vibration and the arrows punching into the target.

Form practice, he called it; he didn't care where the arrow went, if the form was correct. As it happened, the arrow always went into the bull's-eye.

LaChaise had been watching a game show. When it ended, he yawned, got to his feet and went to a window. The light had died. He looked out into the gloom, then let the curtains fall back and turned to the room. He cracked a smile and said, ''Let's saddle up.''

Martin was at full draw, and might not have heard. He held, released: THUMM-whack.

Butters had been playing with their new cell phone. They'd bought it from a dealer friend of Butters's, who'd bought itfrom one of his customers, a kid with a nose for cocaine.

''Good for two weeks,'' the dealer had promised. Butters had given him a thousand dollars for the phone, and the dealer had put the money in his jeans without counting it. ''The kid's ma is a realtor. She's in Barbados on vacation, left him just enough money to buy food. The kid said his ma made fifty calls a day, so you can use it as much as you want; I wouldn't go calling Russia or nothing.''