Stolen Prey

be that the house burns down.”

They spent another five minutes talking about it, working through the equities, dismissing suggestions that they bring in more cops from St. Paul or Minneapolis.

Martinez hadn’t said a word during the discussion, and during a lull in the arguments, Lucas turned to her and asked, “Rivera’s remains…”

“I will get them today.”

“We’re so sorry about what happened.”

“Before we start celebrating United Nations Day,” one of the agents said, “I’m happy enough that we’re getting these thieves, but what about the shooters?”

Shaffer said, “Well, it’s mostly a snake hunt, now, Roy. I’m calling up every police chief between here and the border. We don’t think these guys can move, but who knows? Maybe they had a private jet over in St. Paul, and they’re now on the beach at Cabo, drinking cocktails with little umbrellas.”

“It just seems like we’re giving everything we’ve got to tracking down the thieves, and do we really care that much?” said another agent.

“There are a couple bankers who care that much,” Lucas said.

“Is that what this is about? Bankers getting their money back? Did somebody make a phone call?”

“Hey, fuck you, George. We’re not paying anybody off.” Lucas was pissed, and let it show.

Shaffer held up his hands and said, “George, I’ll talk to you in my office in just a bit. But that was bullshit. I agree with Lucas. I mean, what the hell are you planning to do, drive around town until you see them?”

“There’s gotta be something.”

“Well, I’m waiting,” Shaffer said. “Tell me what it is. I’m more interested in the killers than the money, but I got nothing. So what do you have that we don’t? That we could personally do? Come on. Tell me.”

George had nothing, and, cornered, he admitted it. O’Brien said, “I’ll tell you what, if we can get that gold, that’s not going to wreck the Criminales, but it’s going to give them a couple of flat tires. We’re starting to see some places that they’re taking their investments in Europe.”

“What about the thieves?” Lucas asked. “You see where their money is going?”

“Yeah, but we’re not getting to the end of the line. We’ve got them in Europe, but it’s coming out of there to somewhere else. We’re talking to Interpol now, but that always takes time.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Tell that to some time-wasting asshole in Lyon,” O’Brien said. “They gotta cross every T twice.”

“So we’re doing a full-court press on Martha White,” Shaffer said. “We keep our mouths shut on this. If anything leaks, somebody’s gonna be learning the private detective trade, because his ass is gonna be outa here. We all clear?”

Everybody nodded, and the meeting broke up, with Shaffer saying, “We’ll get back here in two hours. Everybody take a leak, get something to eat. We could be on her for a while.”

Out in the hall, Martinez touched Lucas’s arm and said, “If I get the ashes, and they say I will, I will not be here tomorrow morning. My flight leaves at nine o’clock. So, I thank you for your help.”

“What can I say?” Lucas said. “It’s a tragedy, but honestly … he brought it on himself. If he’d only called us…”

“I tried to get him to do it,” she said. “But he was a very stubborn man, with very big…” She hesitated, looking for the right word.

“Cojones,” Lucas said.

She smiled then and said, “Ah, your Hemingway. But yes, exactly. So…” She put out her hand, which was small and soft, and Lucas took it and said, “If I don’t see you again, I thank you for coming and trying to help.”

That conversation, Lucas thought as they parted, should just about cover the state of Minnesota’s daily minimum requirements for hypocrisy.

From his office, he watched her walk across the parking lot to her car, and when she was rolling, he called Shaffer and said, “She’s gone.”

“You think she bit?”

“She was so straight that I’m beginning to worry that I could be wrong,” Lucas said.

“She’s been spying on the guy she’s been working next to for, what, four, five years, and then she killed him? If she couldn’t look you in the eye and sell you a lie, she would have been dead a long time ago,” Shaffer said.

“Yeah, you’re right. I know goddamn well she’s the one,” Lucas said.

“I’m calling my crew back. Get Del, Jenkins, and Shrake over here, and let’s put it together. She might be moving fast.”

“Wish we’d had time to box her,” Lucas said.

“Just no time,” Shaffer said. “Besides, she’ll be coming back.”

Martinez was moving fast. After leaving the BCA headquarters on Maryland Avenue, she took Maryland west to a CVS pharmacy and got out in the parking lot with her sat phone. A few minutes later, she was speaking to the Big Voice, telling him what had happened at the meeting, reading off the address for Martha White. The Big Voice got it on his computer screen, asked her where she was, and said, “You are perhaps two kilometers away. A few minutes.”

“I will find it on my iPad.”

“I will alert Uno and Tres. Meet with them, go in there, see if the gold is there, and get out. Do you have your alternate ID?”

“Yes.”

“I will have a car rental for you in … Bloomington, Minnesota,” the Big Voice said. “This one is near the airport, on the same freeway, but farther west than the airport. I will send a map for your iPad.”

“Thank you.”

“I will have another car and a new ID for you in Kansas City, Missouri. If you drink enough coffee, you can be on the border tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not worried about entering the house?”

“Not if we do it fast enough,” Martinez said. “They are deploying at the airport in two hours…. We have to be out in two hours, or sooner.”

“Then go.”

But she was worried. Her conscious mind had bought the charade at the BCA, but her unconscious, her intuition, nagged at her. She paid attention to that, the nagging feeling. Rational analysis argued that she had not given herself away, but there was something about the situation….

And she still hadn’t made up her mind about the gold. Keep it, or turn it over to the boss? If she kept it, she’d have to do something about Uno and Tres. She decided that she’d worry about that when the gold was in her car.

The phone rang a minute later, and it was Uno.

“Where do we meet?”

“There is a school here. In the parking lot. I will tell you the directions….”

They were fifteen minutes away.

She resented all fifteen of them.

17

Martinez’s problem, which she’d recognized before she ever set foot in the U.S., was that none of her subordinates, Uno, Dos, and Tres, were particularly bright; they were the Mexican equivalent of the hapless American shitkicker who discovers the power of the gun. Which was fine when somebody needed to be killed right