Poe was a short fat man with a bad toupee and a three-day beard, whose lips formed a small but perfect O. Del had him in his office, where he sat sweating. He fit in the place like a finger in a glove, Lucas thought; or a dick in a condom. Andrews nodded to him, then pointed at him and said to Lucas, “This is Poe.”
Poe was adamant about the Mexicans leaving. “They had duffel bags, and they took off. Loaded up, said, ‘Thank you,’ and they were out of here.”
“Speak good English?” Lucas asked.
“So-so. They was Mexican, no doubt about that.”
“What, they were wearing sombreros?” Del asked.
“No, they just looked like Mexicans,” Poe said. “Mexican boxers. Welterweights. Small guys, good shape. Mean-looking. Most Mexicans around here don’t look mean.”
“Couldn’t have been, like, Colombians?” Del asked.
Poe was exasperated: “They was Mexicans. They was fuckin’ Mexicans, Del. What can I tell you?”
“They carrying guns?” Del asked.
“Don’t know. We have a strict privacy policy about entering our guests’ rooms.”
“That’s a little hard to believe,” Lucas said. “No offense.”
Poe said, “Well, we do. We got it when my ex entered a room and found the city council president banging his secretary. Who was of the same sex. Not that I got anything against fudge-punchers, in particular.”
“You always have been sort of a liberal,” Andrews said.
“I do what I can,” Poe said.
“In other news,” Del said, “you got an ex. She around somewhere?”
“No. We agreed that she should stay in the southern states, and I’d stay in the north. We stick to that pretty close. And I got Vegas.”
Lucas: “These Mexicans, they said they were going back to Dallas?”
“That’s what they said.”
“You think they did?” Lucas asked.
“Well, they all told me that,” Poe said, “All of them. So that made me think that they weren’t. Really going back to Dallas.”
Lucas said, “Mmmm,” and they all looked at Poe for a while, and Poe sweated some more. “You didn’t get their tag number?”
“No, we don’t require it.”
“Credit cards?”
“They paid cash, up front, so we don’t require a credit card,” Poe said.
“Security photos?”
Poe wagged his head. “Too expensive.”
“Used glasses that might have fingerprints?”
“Cleaned up their rooms right after they left,” Poe said. “In this business, we live on turnover.”
“So really … you don’t know nothing about nothing,” Del said.
“That’s about it,” Poe said, sweating. “Thank God.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded and wiped his forehead. “They looked like the kind of little fuckers you don’t want to fuck with.”
They were still talking to Poe when Lucas got a call from Shaffer, who was at the crime scene with the DEA agents. “Got a call from the patrol. They found that SKY van. They ran us around a little bit. After they stole the van, they stole some tags off another van that looked just like it.”
“So they wouldn’t get stopped for a stolen van.”
“Yeah, that’s right. We finally got it straight, and a highway patrol guy found the actual stolen van at a rest stop up I-35.”
“Anything good?”
“As a matter of fact, there was. They wiped everything down, but they left a CD by a guy named El Shaka in the CD player,” Shaffer said. “The van’s owner doesn’t speak Spanish and says he never heard of the singer or the record. He listens to Springsteen. Anyway, you can see what looks like a partial thumbprint on the top side of the disc.”
“You running it?”
“No, no, I thought I’d just admire it for a few days,” Shaffer said.
“All right, stupid question,” Lucas said. “When you gonna see a return?”
“This afternoon, I hope. You doing any good?”
Lucas told him about the three Mexicans at the Wee Blue Inn, and Shaffer said he’d send an Identi-Kit guy over to build some pictures. Lucas looked across the room at Poe and said, quietly, to Shaffer, “You better do it quick. The guy who saw them is shaking in his shoes. He could take off.”
Shaffer said he’d have a couple of people there in a half hour. “I’m going to send along a crime-scene crew, too. A dump like the Wee Blue Inn didn’t scrub down
Lucas turned back to the group and found Poe explaining where he got the name for the motel. “I stole it from a place up in Duluth,” he said. “It’s not like there aren’t six hundred of them.”
“Could have named it Dunrovin,” Del suggested.
“Yeah, or the Duck Inn. I thought about it, but I didn’t,” Poe said. To Lucas: “We done?”
Lucas said, “I may come back in the next couple of hours. Nobody’s gonna find out about this chat before then, so there’s no point in you running out the door. Hang around.”
“I was thinking Vegas,” Poe said.
“Vegas is too hot at this time of year,” Del said. “Stay here.”
Out in the parking lot, Andrews hitched up his pants and said, “There are two hundred thousand Latinos in Minnesota. I know that because I’m married to one. So all we have to do is eliminate a hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six of them, counting out my old lady, and we got them.”
“You’re saying we ain’t got much,” Del said.
“That’s right.”
“But we got
“Exactly how much would you be willing to bet?” Andrews asked, as they climbed into the truck.
Lucas shook his head. “I was using a common cliche intended to express optimism,” he said. “But gambling in Minnesota is illegal, outside the Indian casinos and the state numbers racket, so I would be unable to actually put any money on the line.”
“That’s what I thought,” Andrews said.
On the way back to St. Paul, Andrews asked whether Lucas had ever gotten a line on the robbers who’d broken his wrist. “Just did, last couple of days,” Lucas said. “I was never able to generate much interest in the whole thing, and I thought I was gonna lose them.”
He told him about the horse shit clue. “I got Flowers working it.”
“That’s pretty high-priced talent for a couple guys who get a hundred bucks at a time, and nobody gets hurt,” Andrews said.
“
“I mean hurt bad, not getting your little snowflake wrist cracked,” Andrews said.
“Thank you,” Lucas said.
“Whatever,” Andrews said. “If that fuckin’ Flowers can’t find them, nobody can.”
“Especially with a USDA-certified clue like he’s got,” Del said.
At the office, Lucas had a message from Rose Marie Roux:
