stairs to the second floor. One nail-gun guy and the table saw guy were working in the master bedroom, fitting in the tongue-in-groove maple ceiling. The other nail gunner was working in the main bathroom, fitting frames for what would be the linen closet. They all glanced at him, and the guy on the saw said, 'Morning,' and went back to work.
'Jack around?'
The saw guy shook his head. 'Naw. I been working. Harold's been kinda jackin' around, though.'
'Rick…' No time for carpenter humor. 'Is Jack around?'
'He was down the basement, last time I saw him.'
Lucas did a quick tour of the top floor, stopped to look out a bedroom window at the Mississippi-he was actually high enough to see the water, far down in the steep valley on the other side of the road-and then headed back downstairs. His cell phone rang when he was halfway down, and he pulled it out and poked the power button: 'Yeah?'
'Hey.' Marcy Sherrill, a detective-sergeant who ran his office and a portion of his life. 'That FBI guy, Mallard, is looking for you. He wants you to get back to him soon as you can.'
'Did he say what he wanted?'
'No, but he said it was urgent. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him you kept it turned off. He gave me a number to call back.'
'Give it to me.' He took a ballpoint out of his jacket pocket and scribbled the number in the palm of his hand as she read it to him.
'You at the house?' she asked.
'Yeah. They're about ready to put in the toilets. We got four of the big high-flow American Standard babies. White.'
He could feel her falling asleep, but she said, 'Getting close.'
'Two months, they say. I dunno. I'll believe it when I see it.'
'Call Mallard.'
In the basement, Jack Vrbecek was peering up at the ceiling and making notes on a clipboard. 'Hey, Lucas. Seven guys today.'
'Yeah, that's good. That's good. Looks like things are moving. What're you doing?'
'Checking the schematics on the wiring. You're gonna want to know where every bit of it is, in case you need to get at it.'
Lucas bent his head back to peer at the ceiling. 'Maybe we ought to put in a Plexiglas ceiling, finish it off-but then we'd be able to see everything.'
'Except that the workshop would sound like the inside of the brass-band factory every time you turned on a saw,' Vrbecek said. 'This will be fine. We'll get you a complete layout, and with the acoustic drop ceiling, your access will be okay and you'll be able to hear yourself think.'
Lucas nodded. 'Listen, we've got to get somebody to do the cable and telephone stuff, and I heard someplace today, down at City Hall, I think, that the guy from Epp's broke his foot. If we don't get that in, with the inspector coming Tuesday…'
'Yeah, yeah. We're moving on it.' He made a note on his clipboard.
'And one of the guys up on the roof is drinking what might be Perrier water, but might not be, and if he falls off and breaks his neck, I'm not the one who gets sued.'
'Goddamnit. They're supposed to be in a twelve-step program, and if that's a goddamn bottle of beer…' They started for the basement stairs. At any other time, Lucas might have felt guilty about ratting out the roofers. But this was the house.
TWO MONTHS EARLIER, Lucas had stood on the edge of a hole where his old house had once been, looking into it with a combination of fear and regret. Both he and Weather wanted to remain in the neighborhood, and they were old enough to know exactly what they wanted in a house, and to know they wouldn't get it by buying an older place. Building was the answer: taking down the old house, putting up the new.
Only when he looked into the hole did he realize how committed he'd become, after a long life of essential noncommitment. The old house was gone and Weather Karkinnen was, as she'd announced, With Child. They'd get married when they had time to work out the details, and they'd all live happily ever after in the Big New House.
As he'd stood on the edge of the hole, the low-spreading foundation junipers clutching at his ankles as though pleading for mercy-they'd get damn little, given the practicalities of building a new house-he'd expected to live with the regret for a long time.
He'd bought the place when he was relatively young, a detective sergeant with a reputation for busting cases. He was working all the time, roaming the city at night, building a web of contacts-and working until five in the morning writing role-playing games, hunched over a drawing board and an IBM Selectric.
A couple of the games hit, producing modest gushers of money. After wasting some of it on a retirement plan and throwing even more down the rathole of sober, long-term investments, he'd finally come to his senses and spent the remaining money on a Porsche and a lake cabin in the North Woods. The last few thousand made a nice down payment on the house.
Standing at the edge of the old basement, he'd thought he'd miss the old place.
So far, he hadn't.
THE HOLE HAD been enlarged, the new foundation had gone in, and in short order, the frame for the replacement house had gone up and been enclosed. He found the process fascinating. He'd enjoyed the design stage, working with the architect. Had enjoyed even more the construction process, the careful fitting-together of the plans, and the inevitable arguments about changes and materials. He even enjoyed the arguments. Sort of like writing a strategy game, he thought.
The old house, though comfortable, had problems. Even living in it alone, he'd felt cramped at times. And if he and Weather had kids, the kids would have been living on top of them, in the next bedroom down the hall. The Big New House would have a grand master bedroom suite with a Versailles-sized bathroom and a bathtub large enough for Lucas to float in-Weather, a small woman, should be able to swim laps. The kid-kids?-would be at the other end of the hall, with a bathroom of his own, and there'd be a library and workrooms for both himself and Weather and a nice family room and a spot for Weather's piano. The new house was a place he thought he could happily live and die in. Die when he was ninety-three, he hoped. And with any luck, it should be finished before the kid arrived…
Right now, he didn't want to leave. Not even with the screaming up on the roof. He wanted to hang around and talk with the foreman and the other guys, but he knew he'd just be sucking up their time. He walked around the first floor once more, thinking about color schemes that would fit with the rock he'd picked for the fireplace. Twenty minutes after he arrived, he dragged himself back to the car.
AND REMEMBERED MALLARD. He took the cell phone out of his pocket and leaned against the Porsche and punched in the number written in the palm of his hand. An old lady went by on her bike, a wicker basket between the handlebars. She waved, and he waved back-a neighbor making her daily trip to the supermarket up the hill on Ford Parkway.
'Mallard.'
'Is that pronounced like the duck?' Lucas asked.
An instant of silence, then Mallard figured it out. 'Davenport. How far are you from the airport?'
'Ten minutes, but I ain't flying anywhere.'
'Yeah, you are. You've got a Northwest flight out of there in, mmm, two hours and eight minutes for Houston and from there to Cancъn, Mexico. Electronic tickets are already under your name. It's all cleared with your boss, and your federal tax dollars are picking the tab. I'll meet you at IAH in about six hours, and you can buy some clothes there.'
'Whoa, whoa. I hate flying.'
'Sometimes a man's gotta do…'
'What's going on?'
'Six weeks ago, somebody shot and killed a Mexican guy outside a Cancъn restaurant and wounded his girlfriend. The guy who got killed was the youngest son of a Mexican druglord, or a guy who's supposedly a druglord, or maybe an ex-druglord… something like that. So the Mexicans started sniffing around, and word leaks
