Wicked Prey (21 page)

“It’s a good hot dog,” Lane said. “I haven’t had many better. But you guys, in California, you don’t eat hot dogs. You eat . . . fruit. Fruit drinks. Yogurt. And
you
eat fruit, I’ve seen you do it. If you wanna get nasty, you eat a Fat Burger, or you go to In-and-Out. We all eat McDonald’s out here. It’s the food that makes me think California. You look big city, but in New York, they eat everything. In Dallas, they eat a lot of Mexican and a lot of ribs, and they don’t really give a shit about anything else. You don’t look like Chicago or Denver. You don’t eat like Dallas or New York. You’re LA.”

“You know a lot about LA?” she asked, implying that he didn’t.

“A fair bit,” Lane said, not taking the bait. He studied her for a minute, then said, “Marina del Rey. Or maybe you got more money than that. Laguna Beach.”

“You’re so full of shit, Jesse.” She patted his hand. “But you’re a nice guy.”

Jesse leaned forward and said, “You didn’t blink an eye when I said Marina del Rey, which means you know where it is. How’d you know that, if you weren’t from LA?”

She shook her head and said, “Okay, Jesse, you got me. I’m from Marina del Rey.”

He said, “Okay. So where in the fuck
are
you from?”

Cruz said, “He’s moving.” Weimer was up and brushing off his jacket and pants as he waddled between tables, headed for the door. Which was good for Cruz, because Weimer’s move covered the shock of the conversation: she had a house more or less across the street from Marina del Rey, in Venice. Nobody had ever gotten close, and here this shitkicker from Alabama figured her out, because she ate
fruit
.

On her cell phone, she said, “He’s coming.”

* * *

WEIMER BEEPED the rental car, an Audi A6, and punched himself lightly over the heart, where the sauerkraut was threatening to back up. He walked between the Audi and the minivan beside it, edged open the door—the van was parked too close and he didn’t want to dent it. As he lifted a leg to pivot onto the front seat, he heard a metallic
slide
. . . and a heavy hand grabbed his coat collar and yanked him straight back inside the van, smashing his calves against the edge of the doorsill, one shoe popping off his foot, and then the door slammed.

The whole thing was so quick that he yelped, “Hey! Hey!” and then there was a gloved hand over his mouth, and a man said, “If you yell, if you make a fuss, I cut your fuckin’ throat.”

“Don’t hurt me,” Weimer said, when the hand lifted back. “Don’t hurt me. Take my wallet.”

“Where’s your room key?” Cohn asked.

A moment of silence, then Weimer said, “Oh, Jesus. You’re them.”

Cohn backhanded him across the face, hard. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” he said. “Where’s the card?”

“In my wallet,” Weimer said. “My back pocket.”

“Better be.”

Cohn pulled a fabric shopping bag over Weimer’s head, tied it with a string. Weimer said, “Don’t choke me, don’t choke me, I’m cooperating.”

Cohn tied the knot, said, “Put your hands by your side,” and when Weimer did it, he grabbed Weimer’s feet and twisted them, which rolled Weimer onto his face. Weimer felt the wallet slip out of his pocket, and then, “Got the key. Let’s go,” and the van started to move.

* * *

 

WEIMER WAS at the Embassy Suites, twenty blocks away. “Anybody else in your room?” Cohn asked.

“No.”

“Better not be, because we don’t want no one seeing our faces, you know? If you got a girlfriend, or something, and she sees our faces, well, too bad for her.”

“There’s nobody but me,” Weimer said.

“Where’s the money?”

Another moment of silence, then Cohn hit him again, hard, this time in the left kidney. The pain was excruciating, and Weimer groaned, and Cohn said, “You only got two kidneys.”

“It’s under the bed. But it’s a platform, you gotta pull the headboard back a little.”

There were cops all along the streets, but they made a wide circle to the hotel, no problem. They parked on the street, and McCall took the card: “See you in five.”

Inside the hotel, he rode the elevator up to seven, put on his gloves when he saw the hallway was empty, entered the room, closed the door and turned on the light, wrenched the headboard off the bed, saw the briefcase, a square leather one, like a lawyer might carry, pulled it out, clicked it open—a third full, maybe, less than they’d gotten before. A lot less. Not so many hundreds and fifties, lots of twenties and tens.

He started to leave, then thought about what Weimer had said:
“You’re them.”

He knew about them . . . He thought about it for a minute, then checked Weimer’s other bags, found nothing but an expensive-looking camera. Started toward the door again, then stopped, went back, yanked the bed apart, pulled the whole platform away from the wall . . . and saw the backpack jammed against the foot of the platform. A cheap black nylon backpack. Weimer had been smart, having heard of the other robberies, and had set up a decoy bag . . .

McCall popped the backpack: here were the hundreds. Lots of them. McCall smiled and said aloud, “You da man.”

Back out to the van, driving away, said, “Weimer’s a wiseass. There were two bags. I got both of them.”

Weimer said, “I had to try.”

“Shouldn’t have,” Cohn said, and he hit Weimer in the kidney again, and this time, Weimer screamed, and Cohn hit him once more.

McCall said, “Coming up.” They took a one-way road between the back of St. John’s Hospital and the freeway, a dark road, weeds on the freeway side, and halfway down, stopped, and Cohn rolled Weimer out into the street, the bag still over his head.

As they pulled away, Cohn slid the door shut and asked, “How’d we do?”

“Did good,” McCall said. “Maybe more than the first guy.”

“Damnit: it’s like taking candy from kids. Put that with the hotel deal, and we can get anything we want. Anything.”

“If it’s what I think, we already got more than three million . . .”

“What’re you going to buy in LA with three mil divided by five? Huh? Tate? You can’t even buy a nice house with your share. We hit the hotel; if it’s what Rosie says it’ll be, you’ll get maybe three for yourself. That’ll buy a nice house. Live in Beverly Hills with that kind of money.”

McCall thought about it, said, “Not in the best part of Beverly Hills,” and Cohn started to laugh.

* * *

THE PAIN in his back was brutal and Weimer stayed on the concrete, pulled the bag free, got oriented, and rolled to the gutter. All he saw of the van was two red taillights, disappearing around the corner. He had no idea what kind of van it was, or even what color it was.

The pain in his back was ferocious. He tried to stand, almost fell, then turned and vomited up most of the sandwich he’d eaten, along with all the sauerkraut. When it was all up, he remained hunched over, spitting, and he thought, A million-five. Jensen was going to shit.

He got to his feet, took a step and groaned again. He was hurt, and maybe bad. He didn’t know which way to go, didn’t know that the building he was looking at was the back of a hospital. He took a couple of steps, and the pain radiated through his back; he took another step and then headlights flared behind him.

He stepped to the side and started waving at the car. Hospital security, as it turned out. “I got robbed and beat up,” he told the security guard, who’d stopped thirty feet away. “I gotta get to a hospital. I’m hurt bad. You know where a hospital is? We gotta call the cops.”

12

THE NEWS ABOUT WEIMER got to Lucas through the Secret Service. Dickens heard about it from a St. Paul cop on the security committee, and suggested that the cops call Lucas. A St. Paul lieutenant named Parker called at eight o’clock, and Ellen, the housekeeper, brought the phone to the bedroom and said, “St. Paul police. They say it’s important.”

Weather was already at work, and Ellen said that Letty was up and waiting for a ride to Channel Three.

“Tell her I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” Lucas said. He took the phone: “Yeah. Davenport.”

“Don Parker at St. Paul. We had a robbery last night, and we’ve been told you’re tracking them.”

“Lobbyist guy?”

“That’s what I’m told,” Parker said. “He’s not talking much, said they took his travel money, but said it was the same deal as two other ones he heard about. Anyway, he’s at St. John’s.”

“Hurt?”

“Peeing blood. Probably get out tomorrow, depending. They rabbit-punched him a few times. Took him for a ride in a van, robbed his room. There’s something going on there.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Lucas said.

“Dick Clay is working it for us, but he’s back in the house already . . . if you need anything.”

Lucas hung up and thought,
All right: the motherfucker’s still in town.

* * *

LUCAS GOT CLEANED UP and headed out to the kitchen, where Letty was reading the newspaper and eating toast. They were a little reserved after the fight the night before, and Lucas had a quick microwave oatmeal with milk and a banana, then they loaded into the Porsche and headed north and west toward Minneapolis.

Letty said, finally, looking out the side window, “Can’t wait until I get my license.”

“You’ll be lucky if you get a license at all, after a stunt like yesterday’s,” Lucas said.

She turned back to him and said, “You want to let it go, or do you want to argue? I mean, I’ll argue if you still want to.”

“Let it go,” Lucas said.

“Okay. Like I said, I can’t wait until I get my license.” She reached out and ran a hand over the dashboard. “Take this thing out on the highway and blow the coon-farts out of it.”

Lucas laughed and said, “You should live so long as to get your hands on this car, sweetie. I’m thinking Hyundai. Used.”

“You should live so long as to see me driving a Hyundai,” she said.

She got him laughing, and though he could feel the manipulation, it felt kinda good . . . because that’s what daughters were supposed to do. Then they were across the bridge and into town and down to the station, and he waved and she was inside and he headed back to St. Paul.

* * *

 

SHELLY WEIMER was propped up in a bed, a fat man with a pencil-thin mustache in the St. John’s Intensive Care Unit, a saline drip running into one arm. He was reading the
Wall Street Journal
, holding it up with one hand, while the other hand took the drip. He folded the paper when Lucas walked in, and asked, “Who’re you?”

“I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Lucas said. “Lucas Davenport.”

“I’m really hurt,” Weimer said, and the hand holding the newspaper trembled with the effort of speaking. He reached out, slowly, and dropped it on a service tray.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said.

“Kept hitting me in the back, in the kidneys. Hit me even after they had the money.” He groaned, as if to emphasize the
money
.

“You didn’t see any faces?”

“No. The guy who was hitting me was wearing a mask,” Weimer said. “The driver I couldn’t see at all . . . You’re Mitford’s guy.”

“Not exactly. We talk,” Lucas said.

“But you know the score.”

“More or less. You had a shitload of illegal money stashed in your room and a guy named Brutus Cohn and one of his gang members grabbed you in an alley and threw you in the back of a van, and put a bag on your head, got your room key and took the money. And beat you up.”

Weimer nodded, shifted in bed, winced, and said: “That’s it, in a nutshell. I didn’t know his name was Brutus Cohn, and you might want to go easy on that ‘illegal money’ thing. Since you know all of that, why haven’t you picked him up?”

“We’re looking, we haven’t found him,” Lucas said. “He’s ditched himself somewhere—could be headed out of town by now. But, we’re looking. Got his face all over national TV.”

“Won’t get my money back,” Weimer said.

“No, it won’t, but it really wasn’t your money, anyway,” Lucas said. “So: what can you tell me?”

Weimer said, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve got one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I . . .” He groaned and arched his back and flailed at it with his good hand, groaned again, and then went slack, and looked at Lucas. “It keeps twisting, like a muscle’s turning back there . . . God bless me.”

“The one thing,” Lucas said.

“Ah . . . I was eating in this sandwich shop and I got up to go,” Weimer said. “Left the money and the tip on the table, walked out the door, turned left, walked down this little short alley around the building to the parking lot to my car. I opened the door and bam! They got me. Just bam-bam! Like that.” He had small round hands and he slapped them twice. “So, I think they had to be watching me, to be all ready. The guys in the van couldn’t see me, because you couldn’t see into the back of the shop. I think somebody was inside the place.”

“You saw somebody?”

Weimer shifted again, his face going pale, and he said, “Ahhh. God, I hate this shit . . . Okay: There was a tough-looking hillbilly guy and this cool-looking woman in the front booth. They didn’t look like they should go together, but they were. I noticed her looking back at me two or three times—caught her looking. I am what I am, and my wife likes me okay, but I’m not exactly a chick magnet, okay? They don’t look at me more than once.”

“Okay.”

“So she was checking me out,” Weimer said, “Now I wonder if she was checking me out for this Cohn guy? Maybe she made a call when I got up to leave.”

“You see her on a cell phone?” Lucas asked.

“No, but I didn’t look.”

Lucas asked, “There’s no chance that she was a Latina-looking chick, was she?”

Weimer’s eyebrows went up: “You know who she is?”

* * *

LUCAS CALLED Carol, at the office, and had her check his e-mail. The photo from Washington was there. “Print it. I need it. Is there somebody who could run it over to St. John’s? Light and sirens?”