Sudden Prey (4 page)

He looked for grouse sign, didn't find any. The season was too new for bear sign, but in another six weeks or eight weeks they'd be out, he thought, sleek and quick and powerful. A young male black bear could run down a horse from a standing start. Nothing quite cleared the sinuses like bumping into a big old hungry bear when you were out on snowshoes, armed with nothing but a plastic canteen and a plug of Copenhagen.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, heading south, he saw a coyote ripping at something in the foot-high yellow grass that broke through the snow beside a creek. Voles, maybe. He pulled the truck over, got out a Bausch and Lomb laser rangefinder and the AR-15. The rangefinder said 305 yards. He figured a nine-inch drop, maybe two inches of right-toleft drift. Using the front fender as a rest, he held a couple of inches over the coyote's shoulder and let go. The .223 caught the mutt a little low, and it jumped straight up into the air and then came down in a heap, unmoving.

''Gotcha,'' Martin muttered, baring his teeth. The shot felt good.

Martin crossed the St. Croix at Grantsburg, stopped to look at the river--the surface was beaten down with snowmobile trails--then made his way reluctantly out to I-35. The interstate highways were scars across the country, he thought: you couldn't get close enough to see anything. But they were good when you had to move. He paused a final time at an I-35 rest stop just north of the Cities, made a call and then drove the rest of the way in.

* * *

BUTTERS WAS WAITING OUTSIDE AN AMOCO STATION off I-94, an olive-drab duffel at his feet. Martin eased to the curb and Butters climbed in and said, ''Straight ahead, back down the ramp.''

Martin caught the traffic light and said, ''How you been?''

''Tired,'' Butters said. His small eyes looked sleepy.

''You was tired last fall,'' said Martin. Martin had passed through Tennessee on one of his gun-selling trips, stopped and done some squirrel-hunting with Butters.

''I'm more tired now,'' Butters said. He looked into the back of the truck. ''What'd you bring?''

''Three cold pistols, three Chinese AK semis, two modified AR-15s, a bow, a couple dozen arrows and my knife,'' Martin said.

''I don't think you'll need the bow,'' Butters said dryly.

''It's a comfort to me,'' Martin said. He was a roughmuscled, knob-headed outdoorsman with a dark reddish beard over a red-pocked face. ''Where's this guy we gotta see?''

''Over in Minneapolis. Just outa downtown. By the dome.''

Martin grinned his thin coyote-killing smile: ''You been studying up on him?''

''Yeah, I have been.''

They took I-94 to Minneapolis, got off at the Fifth Street exit, got a pizza downtown, then went back to Eleventh Avenue. Butters directed Martin to a stand-alone two-story brick building with a laundromat on the ground level and apartment above. The building was old, but well-kept: probably a neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery in the forties. Lights showed in the apartment windows.

''He owns the laundromat,'' Butters said. ''The upstairs is one big apartment. He lives up there with his girlfriend.'' Butters looked up at the lights. ''She must be there now, 'cause he's downtown. He runs his boys right to closingtime. He got back here last night about two, and he brought a pizza with him.''

Martin looked at his watch, a black military-style Chronosport with luminescent hands. ''Got us about an hour, then.'' He looked back out the window at the building. There was just one door going up to the apartments. ''Where's the garage you were talking about?''

'' 'Round the side. There's a fire escape on the back, one of them drop-down ones, too high to get to. What he did last night was, he pulled into the garage--he's got a garage-door opener in his car--and the door come down. Then, a minute later, this light went on in the back of the apartment, so there must be an inside stairs. Then he come down through the back again, out through the garage, around the corner and into the laundromat. He was in the back, probably countin' out the machines.''

Martin nodded. ''Huh. Didn't use them front stairs?''

''Nope. Could be something goin' on there, so I didn't look.''

''All right. We take him at the garage?''

''Yeah. And we might as well eat the pizza. We only need the box, and Harp ain't gonna want any.''

They chatted easily, comfortable in the pickup smells of gasoline, straw, rust and oil. Then Martin, dabbing at his beard with a paper napkin, asked, ''What do you hear from Dick?''

''Ain't heard dick from Dick,'' Butters said. He didn't wait for Martin to laugh, because he wouldn't, although Butters had a sense that Martin sometimes enjoyed a little joshing. He said, ''Last time I talked to him direct, he sounded like he was . . . getting out there.''

Martin chewed, swallowed and said, ''Nothing wrong with being out there.''

''No, there ain't,'' Butters agreed. He was as far out thereas anyone. ''But if we're gonna be killing cops, we want the guy to have his feet on the ground.''

''Why? You planning to walk away from this thing?''

Butters thought for a minute, then laughed, almost sadly, and shook his head. ''I guess not.''

''I thought about goin' up to Alaska, moving out in the woods,'' Martin said, after a moment of silence. ''You know, when I got the call. But they'll get you even in Alaska. They'll track you down anywhere. I'm tired of it. I figure, it's time to do something. So when I heard from Dick, I thought I might as well come on down.''

''I don't know about that, the politics,'' Butters said. ''But I owe Dick. And I got to pay him now, 'cause I am gettin' awful tired.''

Martin looked at him for a moment, then said, ''When you're that kind of tired, there ain't no point of being scared of cops. Or anything else.''

They chewed for another minute and then Butters said, ''True.'' And a moment later said, ''Did I tell you my dog died?''

''That'll make a man tired,'' Martin said.

LIKE THE SEVEN DWARVES, DAYMON HARP WHISTLED while he worked. And while he collected: unlike Snow White and her pals, Harp sold cocaine and speed at the semiwholesale level, supplying a half-dozen reliable retailers who worked the clubs, bars and bowling alleys in Minneapolis and selected suburbs.

Harp had seven thousand dollars in his coat pocket and he was whistling a minuet from the Anna Magdelena Notebook when he turned the Lincoln onto Eleventh. A pale-haired kid with a pizza box was standing on the corner outside his laundromat, looking up at the apartments. The pizza box was thething that snared him: Harp never thought to look for the delivery car.

Daymon turned the corner, pushed the button on the automatic garage door opener, saw the kid look down toward him as he pulled in, then killed the engine and got out. The kid was walking down the sidewalk with the pizza box flat on one hand and Daymon thought, If that fucking Jas has gone and ordered out for a pizza when she's up there by herself . . .

He was waiting for the kid, when Martin stepped up behind him and pressed a pistol to his ear: ''Back in the garage.''

Daymon jumped, but controlled it. He held his hands away from his sides and turned back to the garage. ''Take it easy,'' he said. He didn't want the guy excited. He'd had a pistol in his ear before, and when caught in that condition, you definitely want to avoid excitement. He tried an implied threat: ''You know who I am?''

''Daymon Harp, a jigaboo drug dealer,'' Martin said, and Harp thought, Uh-oh.

The kid with the pizza followed them inside, spotted the lighted button for the garage door opener, and pushed it. The door came down and Martin prodded Harp toward the stairs at the back.

''Take the position,'' Martin said.

Harp leaned against the wall, hands and feet spread wide. ''Got no gun,'' he said. He looked sideways at Martin: ''You're not cops.''

''We'd be embarrassed if you was lying about the gun,'' Martin said. The younger guy patted him down, found the wad of cash and pulled it out. ''Ooo,'' he said. ''Thanks.''

Harp kept his mouth shut.

''This is the deal,'' Martin said, as Butters tucked the money away. ''We need some information from you. Wedon't want to hurt you. We will, if you get stupid, so it's best for you to go along.''

''What do you want?'' Daymon asked.

''To go upstairs,'' Butters said, in his soft Tennessee accent. Harp looked at him out of the corner of his eye: Butters had three dark-blue tears tattooed at the inner corner of his left eye, and Daymon Harp thought again, Uh-oh.

THEY CLIMBED THE STAIRS AS A TRIO, AND NOW THE southern boy had a pistol barrel prodding Daymon's spine, while the other focused on his temple. They all tensed while Daymon unlocked the door. A woman called down an interior hall, ''Day? That you?''

Butters left them, padding silently down the hall, while Martin stayed with Harp. The woman came around a corner just as Butters got to it and she jumped, shocked, as Butters grabbed her by a wrist and showed her the gun. ''Shut up,'' Butters said.

She shut up.

Five minutes later, Harp and the woman were duct-taped to kitchen chairs. The woman's hands were flat on her thighs, with loops of tape around her upper arms and body. She had a sock stuffed in her mouth, held in place with two or three more wraps of tape. Her terrified dark eyes flicked between Harp and whichever of the white men was in sight.

Martin and Butters checked the apartment. The landing outside the front door, Martin found when he opened it, was blocked by a pile of brown cardboard appliance boxes. The boxes made a practical burglar alarm and buffer, should the cops come, but still provided an escape route if one were needed.

Butters checked the two bedrooms and found nothing of interest but a collection of vinyl 33-rpm jazz records.

''Clear,'' Butters said, coming back to the front room.

Martin sat down in a third chair and, knee-to-knee with Harp, said, ''You probably know people like us. Met us in the joint. We don't much care for black folks and we'd be happy to cut your throats and be done with it. But we can't, this time, 'cause we need you to introduce us to a friend of yours.''

''Who?'' Daymon Harp asked.

''The cop you're working with.''

Harp tried to look surprised. ''There's no cop.''

''We know you gotta go through your routine, but we don't have a lot of time,'' Martin said. ''So to show you our . . . mmm . . . sincerity . . .'' He chose his words carefully, softly: ''We're gonna cut on your girlfriend here.''

''Motherfucker,'' Harp said, but it wasn't directed at Martin. It was simply an exclamation and Martin took it that way. The woman's eyes bulged and she rattled around in the chair, and Martin let her. Over his shoulder, he said, ''Ansel? See if you can find a knife in the kitchen . . .''

There was no one standing in the street outside the laundromat, which was a good thing for Butters and Martin, because Harp wouldn't talk right away, and for one short moment, even with the gag, with the windows shut, in the middle of winter, even with that, you could hear Jasmine screaming.

THE MICHIGAN STATE PRISON SENT A SINGLE ESCORT with Dick LaChaise. LaChaise was four years into a nineyear sentence, and not considered an escape risk--with good behavior, he'd be out in a couple of years. They put him in leg irons and cuffs and LaChaise and Wayne O. Sand, the escort, flew into Eau Claire as the sun was going down, eight days after the shootings in Minneapolis.

During the flight, Wayne O. Sand read The Last Mammothby Margaret Allan, because he liked that prehistoric shit and magic and all. If he'd lived back then, he thought, he'd probably be a clan chief, or something. He'd be in shape, anyway.

LaChaise read a tattoo magazine called Skin Art . LaChaise had full sleeves: tattoos running up and down both arms, a comic-book fantasy of superwomen with football-sized tits and lionish hair tangled around his bunched-up weight-room muscles, interspersed with eagles, tigers, knives, a dragon. His arms carried four names: Candy and Georgie on the right, and Harley and Davidson on the left.

The sleeves had been done on the outside, by commercial tattoo artists. The work on his back and legs was being done on the inside. Prison work, with a sewing needle and ballpoint ink. Though the figures lacked the finish of the commercial jobs, there was a nasty raw power to them that LaChaise liked. An aesthetic judgment.

When the plane's wheels came down, LaChaise put the magazine away and looked at Sand: ''How about a Mc-Donald's? A couple of Big Macs?''

''Maybe, you don't fuck me around,'' Sand said, still in the book. Sand was a flabby man, an authoritarian little prison bureaucrat who'd be nice enough one day, and write you up the next, for doing nothing. He enjoyed his power, but wasn't nearly the worst of them. When they landed, Sand marched LaChaise off the plane, and chained him to the seat post in the back of a rental Ford.

''How about them McDonald's?'' LaChaise asked.

Sand considered for a second, then said, ''Nah. I wanna get a motel 'fore it's too late. There's a game tonight.''

''Hey, c'mon . . .''

''Shut up,'' Sand said, with the casual curtness of a prison guard.

Sand dropped LaChaise at the Eau Claire County Jail for the night. The next morning, he put LaChaise back in the carand drove him through the frozen landscape to the Logan Funeral Home in Colfax. LaChaise's mother was waiting on the porch of the funeral home, along with Sandy Darling, Candy's sister. A sheriff's car was parked in the street, engine running. A deputy sat inside the car, reading a newspaper.