people had died because of Quentin Daniel: Daniel was a criminal, but nobody knew except Daniel and Lucas. Lucas had resolved it in his mind, had forgiven him. Daniel never could… 'C'mon in. What happened to your face?'
'Got mugged, more or less… I need some help,' Lucas said briefly, settling into the visitor's chair. 'You know I'm working in New York.'
'Yeah, they called me. I told them you were Mr. Wunnerful.'
'I need to find the guys who were in the jail cells next to Bekker-or anybody he talked to while he was in there.'
'Sounds like you're scraping the bottom of the bucket,' Daniel said, playing with a humidor on his desk.
'That's why I'm here,' Lucas said. 'The cocksucker's dug in, and we can't get him out.'
'All right.' Daniel picked up his phone, punched a number. 'Is Sloan there? Get him down to my office, will you? Thanks.'
There was a moment of awkward silence, then Lucas said, 'You look like shit.'
'I feel like shit,' Daniel said. He turned the humidor around, squared it with the edge of the desk.
'Your wife…?'
'Gone. Thought it'd be a lift, seeing her go, but it wasn't. I'd get up every morning and look down at her and wish she was gone, and now I get up and look at the bed and there's a hole in it.'
'Want her back?'
'No. But I want something, and I can't have it. I'll tell you one thing, between you and me and the wall-I'm getting out of here. Two months and I hit a crick in the retirement scale. Maybe go up north, get a place on a lake. I've got the bucks.'
There was a knock on the door, and Daniel's secretary stuck her head in and said, 'Sloan…'
Lucas stood up. 'I do wish you luck,' he said. 'I'm serious.'
'Thanks, but I'm cursed,' Daniel said.
Sloan was lounging in the outer office, a cotton sport coat over a tennis shirt, chinos, walking shoes. He saw Lucas and a grin spread across his thin face.
'Are you back?' he asked, sticking out his hand.
Lucas, laughing: 'Just for the day. I gotta find some assholes and I need somebody with a badge.'
'You're working in the Big Apple…'
'Yeah. I'll tell you about it, but we gotta go talk to the sheriff.'
Three names, a deputy sheriff said. He'd looked at the records, checked with the other guards. They all agreed.
Bekker had been next to Clyde Payton, who was now at Stillwater, doing twenty-four months on a drugstore burglary, third offense. A doper.
'Motherfucker's gonna come out and kill people,' the deputy said. 'He thought Bekker was like some rock idol, or something. You could see Payton thinking: Killing people. Far out.'
Tommy Krey, car theft, had been on the other side. He was still out on bail; Krey's attorney was dragging his feet on the trial. 'The car owner's gonna move to California, I hear. Tommy's lawyer's looking for a plea,' the deputy said.
Burrell Thomas had been across the aisle, and pled to simple assault, paid a fine. He was gone.
'I know Tommy, but I don't know the other two,' Lucas said. Out of touch.
'Payton's from St. Paul, Rice Street. Basically a doper, sells real estate when he's straight,' Sloan said. 'I don't know Thomas either.'
'Burrell's a head case,' the deputy said. 'They call him Rayon. Y'all know Becky Ann, the cardplayer with the huge hooters, see her down on Lake sometimes?'
'Sure.' Lucas nodded.
'She was going with this super-tall black dude…'
'Manny,' said Sloan, and Lucas added, 'Manfred Johnson.'
'Yeah, that's him-he's a friend of Burrell's. Like from high school and maybe even when they were kids…' • • • 'How's New York?' Sloan asked. They were in Sloan's unmarked car, poking into the south side of Minneapolis.
'Hot. Like Alabama.'
'Mmm. I never been there. I mean New York. I understand it's a dump.'
'It's different,' Lucas said, watching the beat-up houses slide by. Kids on bikes, rolling through the summer. They'd called Krey's attorney, a guy who worked out of a neighborhood storefront. He could have Krey there in a half-hour, he said.
'How different? I mean, like, Fort Apache?'
'Nah, not that,' Lucas said. 'The main thing is, there's an infinite number of assholes. You never know where the shit is coming from. You can't get an edge on anything. You can't know about the place. Here, if somebody hijacks a goddamn Best Buy truck and takes off fifty Sonys, we got an idea where they're going. Out there… Shit, you could make a list of suspects longer than your dick, and that'd only be the guys that you personally know might handle it. And then there are probably a hundred times that many guys that you don't know. I mean, a list longer than my dick.'
'We're talking long lists here,' Sloan said.
'It's strange,' said Lucas. 'It's like being up at the top of the IDS Building and looking out a window where you can't see the ground. You get disoriented and you feel like you're falling.'
'How 'bout that Bekker, though?' Sloan said enthusiastically. 'He's a fuckin' star, and we knew him back when.' • • • Tommy Krey was sitting on a wooden chair in his attorney's office. His attorney wore a yellow-brown double-knit suit and a heavily waxed hairdo the precise shade of the suit. He shook hands with Sloan and Lucas; his hands were damp, and Lucas smothered a grin when he saw Sloan surreptitiously wipe his hand on his pant leg.
'What can Tommy do for yuz?' the lawyer asked, folding his hands on his desk, trying to look bright and businesslike. Krey looked half bored, skeptical, picked his teeth.
'He can tell us what he and Michael Bekker talked about in jail,' Lucas said.
'What are the chances of knocking down this car-theft…'
'You're gonna have to do that on your own,' Lucas said, looking from the lawyer to Krey and back again. 'Maybe Sloan goes in and tells the judge you helped on a big case, but there's no guarantees.'
The lawyer looked at Krey and lifted his eyebrows. 'What d'you think?'
'Yeah, fuck, I don't care,' Krey said. He flipped his toothpick at the basket, rimmed it out, and it fell on the carpet. The lawyer frowned at it. 'We talked about every fuckin' thing,' Krey said. 'And I'll tell you what: I been beatin' my brains out ever since he went out to New York, trying to figure out if he gave me, like, any clues. And he didn't. All we did was bullshit.'
'Nothing about friends in New York, about disguises…?'
'Naw, nothing. I mean, if I knew something, I'd a been downtown trying to deal. I know that his buddy, the guy who did the other kills, was an actor… so maybe it is disguises.'
'What was he like in there? I mean, was he freaked out…?'
'He cried all the time. He couldn't live without his shit, you know? It hurt him. I thought it was bullshit when I first went in, but it wasn't bullshit. He used to cry for hours, sometimes. He's totally fuckin' nuts, man.'
'How about this Clyde Payton? He was in for some kind of dope deal, he was around Bekker.'
'Yeah, he came in the day before I made bail. I don't know; I think he was a wacko like Bekker. Square, but wacko, you know? Kind of scary. He was some kind of businessman, and he gets onto the dope. The next thing he knows, he's busting into drugstores trying to steal prescription shit. He mostly sat around and cursed people out while I was there, but sometimes he'd get like a stone. He figured he was going to Stillwater.'
'He did,' said Sloan.
'Dumb fuck,' said Krey.
'How about Burrell Thomas?'
'Now, there's something,' Krey said, brightening. 'Bekker and Burrell talked a lot. Rayon's one smart nigger.'
