'And he gets paid out of Miami, and nobody looks at that up here,' Del said.
'That's right,' said Lane. 'He files all of his taxes, he's clean. A few more years of this, and he can sell the whole thing out. Pay some capital gains, and he's a multimillionaire.'
'What happens if the dope stops?' Lucas asked.
'Can't stop,' said Lane. 'He needs a hundred percent occupancy to pay his financing costs, and the only way he can get a hundred percent is to pay the rents on the vacant apartments himself.'
'Strange nobody noticed,' Lucas said.
'How they gonna notice?' Lane asked.
Lucas and Del looked at each other, thought about it for a moment, then Lucas shrugged. 'I don't know.'
'I talked to some guys up at the assessors office, and they don't know a way,' Lane said.
And Del said, 'You know what it reminds me of? The Namiami Entertainment porno houses.'
Namiami Entertainment was a mob-related company out of Naples, Florida, that bought three porno theaters around the Twin Cities. The Cities liked them because they'd agreed to business conditions that were more restrictive than the previous owners would agree to. Namiami had done away with the jerk-off-booth peep shows, ended the sale of adult novelties, had taken down outside advertising signs, and though they still ran porno films in the theaters, had generally blended into their neighborhoods. They'd operated for years before the tax people got curious about how they managed to get seventy or eighty percent of theater capacity for their film showings; a little investigation suggested that actual capacity was more like ten percent. The theaters, it turned out, were the most excellent device for laundering large numbers of small bills.
'So what we got,' Lucas said, 'is a dead woman who dealt dope to rich people. She's killed at a party where her dope-dealer boss happens to be, and who claims he didn't know her. Nobody else seems to have a motivemost people barely know her. But one guy who does know her, Derrick Deal, all he has to do is think about it, and he figures out who killed her. He must've known Rodriguez.'
'And he did it without even knowing that Rodriguez was at the party,' Del said. 'He didn't have our list.'
'Right. And Derrick's not above a little blackmail. He tries it, and gets himself killed for his trouble,' Lucas said.
'Gotta be this guy,' Lane said. 'Nothing else fits.'
'What'd he say when we talked to him?'
'Says he got to the party late, never saw Alie'e, didn't know Lansing. Got bored, and left around two o'clock,' Lane said.
'So he admits he was there pretty late.'
'Yeah.'
'Let's talk to Sallance Hanson about this,' Lucas said. To Del: 'Lets go see Marcy, and then go see Hanson. See what she knows about Rodriguez.'
'Okay.'
And to Lane: 'Find this Rodriguez. Don't approach him, just spot him for us. Stay with him. Start tracking him.'
When Lucas and Del walked into the hospital, a nurse saw them coming and cut them off. 'There's been a problem. They've had to take Officer Sherrill back into the operating room.'
'What?'
She looked at her watch. 'About fifteen minutes ago, they decided they had to go back in.'
'Ah, Jesus,' Lucas said. 'How bad?'
The nurse shook her head. 'I don't know. I know they were watching her blood pressure, and they were worried about it. Dr. Hirschfeld made the call about a half hour ago. She was pretty strong when she went in, though.'
'Was she awake?'
'No.'
'How long will they be in there?' He looked down the hall toward the emergency operating theater.
'There's no way to tell. Until she's fixed.'
Lucas looked at Del. 'I told you man, I got a bad feeling.'
Del asked the nurse, 'Have you seen Dr. Weather Karkinnen around?'
'Yes. She was down asking about Officer Sherrill just a few minutes ago. I think she's doing her morning rounds.'
'Let's go,' Lucas said.
They tracked her down in the surgery wards, talking to the parents of a child who'd had some reconstruction work after a car accident. Lucas stuck his head in the room, and Weather saw him and said, 'I'll be just a minute.'
They waited in the hall, listening to the murmur of voices, Lucas pacing, until Weather came out. 'I don't think it's too bad,' she said. 'I think it's that one leak.'
'They said she was pretty strong,' Del said.
'Well' Weather's eyes slid away from Lucas. 'She was in a lot better physical condition than most people who come in.'
'Aw, man, you're saying she wasn't that strong.'
'Lucas, this had to be done. If they'd waited, she would have gotten weaker, and that would have been worse. Hirschfeld thought he had to go in now.'
'Is she gonna make it?'
Weather nodded once, quickly. 'Yes.' This time her eyes held on to his.
Sallance Hanson knew Rodriguez only slightly. 'He's quite a respected real estate investor, but he's not part of the usual group. The group that comes to my parties. Do you think he's the one? Who killed Alie'e?'
'We're just doing a second round on everybody,' Lucas lied. He went back to Rodriguez. 'I'm curious about the investor part. Our preliminary workup showed him as an employee an apartment manager, not an investor.'
'Well, like I said, I don't know him that well, but that's not the way he talks. That's not the way he dresses, either. He's a coarse man, but he has a nice taste in clothes. So do you, by the way.' She reached out, folded back the lapel on Lucas's jacket, read the label, and asked, 'Where'd you get this?'
'Barneys.'
'Really. Nice material. You went to New York?'
'I have a friend there. I visit sometimes,' Lucas said. He pushed the topic back to Rodriguez. 'Why is he coarse? What makes you think that?'
'He's just Every once in a while, something slips out. He'll say, 'twat,' or something. A lot of guys say 'twat,' you know, when they're looking for an effect, or they're trying to shock you or piss you off. I even know one guy who tried to tell me it was a variation of twit.'
Lucas grinned. 'He had to be a moron.'
'Yes, well yes. But with Richie I've heardoverheardRichard say it sort of casually. Like that was the word he'd normally use in that place, and if he said 'woman,' it was because he was trying to be polite. He's a coarse man, with a layer of politeness that he learned somewhere. Maybe a book or something.'
'Do you know anything about his financial dealings?'
'No, no. Nothing. Although every time I talked to him, that's what he wanted to talk about. He was always complaining about his tenantslate with the rent, or skipping out, or whatever.'
Del chipped in. 'You never saw him with Sandy Lansing?'
'I just don't remember.'
'You know Lansing was dealing drugs.'
She looked at Del for a moment, then at Lucas, then back to Del. 'Look, I know I've talked to my lawyer, and he says telling you this is no crime I know some people at the party were using drugs. And I'd heard that you could sometimes get something from Sandy. But I didn't want to slander a dead woman.'
Del leaned back on the couch. He was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and a ragged thirty-year-old political T-shirt on which the words 'Lick Dick in '72' were barely legible. He grinned, showing his yellow teeth. 'You oughta tell that to Derrick Deal.'
'Derrick?' She was puzzled.
'A guy we know,' Del said. 'He's in the icebox down at the morgue.'
