bangs open and this guy comes outa there like a rocket ship. I go running after him but as I go past the door I see Spivak hanging by the neck, so I gotta stop and run inside and try to lift him up by the legs so he don't strangle, and then your guys got there. About an hour later.'
'Two fuckin' minutes,' one of the uniformed cops said. 'And we looked for the guy. We knocked on doors down there to see if anybody saw anybody tearing out of there in a hurry, or anything.'
'Nobody saw anything,' said another cop.
'What pisses me off,' Andreno said, 'Is that when your guys got here, one of them points his pistol at me and says, 'Okay, drop him,' and Spivak is going aaagggaaaaaaghh.'
They all looked at him for a moment and then Lucas started to laugh, and then another cop started and then the second one, and the chief rubbed his forehead and said, 'Ah, for Christ's sakes.'
Spivak was at the medical center with rope burns around his neck and on his face where the rope had cut against it. He had pulled muscles in his neck and back, and had a damaged larynx. He could talk-croak-but just barely, said the cops who'd brought him in.
His wife, a short, broad woman who might have been Spivak's sister, was in the hallway outside the hospital room where Spivak was being treated, and when she saw them coming, she said, 'John Terry, I don't want you talking to him. You go away.'
She was frightened and angry. Terry said, 'I'm sorry, Marsha, but we gotta talk to him. This is a murder investigation. Two people have been murdered…'
'He almost got hung,' she wailed, and then she started to cry, 'You almost got him killed…'
Two more people came around the corner, a man and a woman, both short and stocky, both in their late twenties or early thirties, both Spivaks, Lucas assumed. One of them said, 'Ma, what's wrong. Ma? Is he okay?'
'He's okay,' she sniffed. 'The police say it's a murder investigation…' and she cracked again and wandered over to a chair and sat down. The young woman said, 'John, what the heck is going on here?'
'Carol, you just go take care of your mom. We need to talk to your dad for a minute. We don't know exactly what happened yet, but we're working on it.'
'Did you catch anybody?'
'Not yet. That's what we're working on. You go sit down and we'll talk to your dad for a minute and then you can come in.'
Spivak was propped up in a hospital bed, covered to the waist with a sheet, his neck wrapped in gauze, more gauze taped to the left side of his face, another blob stuck on his earlobe. When they walked in, he looked at Lucas and croaked, 'What the hell?'
Lucas asked, 'Did you recognize the guy?'
'No. Never saw him before.' The words came out in spurts, as though each one hurt. 'Tall guy. Black hair. Black eyes. Skinny. Big nose. Maybe forty. Black raincoat. Gloves. Waited in bar. Everybody gone. Asked him to leave. Pulled a gun. Made me tie rope up. Made me stand on beer bottles. Hung me. Had radio. Kicked out beer bottles when he heard cops was coming. Ran out back.'
'American? Foreign?'
'American. I think. No accent. Shot me in ear.'
'In the ear?' Andreno asked. 'I saw blood, didn't hear no shot.'
'Silencer. When I wouldn't stand on bottles. Shot my earlobe off. Bullet one inch from eye. Scared shit out of me.'
'What did he want?' Lucas asked.
'Same as you. Wanted to know, who was in room.'
'What'd you tell him?'
'Same as you. Don't know.'
'You didn't know a single one of them?'
'No. Told you.'
They went on for a while, but Spivak knew nothin' about nothin'.
Finally, Lucas said, 'I'll tell you, Mr. Spivak, you're bullshitting us. There are already two people dead and you were almost a third. This guy is nuts, and he could come back if we don't catch him.'
Spivak's eyes flicked away, and without looking back at Lucas, he shook his head.
They spent five minutes with the family, but the family claimed they knew nothing about any meeting at the bar, and pushed the cops off and disappeared into Spivak's room.
The chief said, 'This is really screwed up.'
Lucas asked, 'How well do you know Spivak?'
He shrugged: 'Well-I think he moved here from somewhere else when he was a kid, so I've only known him since kindergarten. That's what, fifty-four years?'
'He's a good guy?' asked Andreno.
Terry nodded: 'Yeah, he's okay. He's just a guy. He runs a bar. He can be an asshole, sometimes. Most of the time, he's okay.'
'Goddamnit. The problem is, there's something going on with this spy shit, and I don't know what it is,' Lucas said. 'Spivak isn't talking, and he knows some shit…'
Terry nodded in agreement. 'I saw him look away. I'll tell you what, maybe you scared him. I'll go in and bullshit with him when you're gone. Tomorrow morning, see what he has to say. We've known each other a long time.'
'I'd keep an eye on him,' Lucas said. 'This guy out there, whoever he is-he's not fuckin' around.'
'I'll get them to put him down in intensive care. That way, he'll be behind the nurses' station and there'll always be somebody right there. I'll have guys stop by and we got an extra car, I'll park it out front.'
'Good. Talk to him, then. Call me.'
'Get this guy some ID,' Terry said, tapping Andreno on the chest. 'And tell him to watch his mouth. He wise- assed us so much some of the guys wanted to shoot him to stop the bullshit.'
Andreno said, 'You guys…' But Lucas waved him off.
'I gotta ask you a favor,' Lucas said to Terry. 'I'd like to put out a story-your newspaper, the TV, however-that you got a call from a passerby about something weird happening at Spivak's. Maybe somebody heard a scream. When you sent a car, you missed the bad guy, but a cop or a passerby saw Spivak hanging there and cut him down. Just have somebody else do what Micky did. Tell your guys to keep their mouths shut-tell the family that. I want to keep Micky a little secret.'
'Gonna be tough. This is a small town,' Terry said.
'If you jump right on the story, it oughta work. I'm not worried about rumors: I just don't want Micky on the TV news, where out-of-towners are gonna hear about him. These guys, these Russians, I don't think they have local sources. They won't hear the rumors.'
'Do what I can,' Terry said.
Lucas had met Micky Andreno on a case in St. Louis. Andreno had retired early from the St. Louis Police Department, had a decent pension and a part-time job at a golf course, and, in his middle-fifties, was good undercover. He looked more like an Italian grocer than a cop. Lucas had used him twice before, on minor lookout jobs.
They found an all-night diner out on the highway, got a booth in the back where they could talk, and ordered cheeseburgers. Andreno said, half laughing, 'Hell of a night.'
'I'm sorry about this,' Lucas said. 'I never thought you'd get tangled up in anything rough.'
'Hey, I like it,' Andreno said. 'I'm having a good time. I'm just sorry I got busted so fast. I could use an ID. If I'd had an ID, it would have cooled things out a lot quicker.'
'I'll get you something,' Lucas said. 'When did you get here?'
'Flew in at noon. Rented a van.'
'Nothing going on until this?'
'Hard to tell. Must've been two hundred people in and out of the bar. Any one of them could have been talking to Spivak that I couldn't see.'
'Nothing we can do about that,' Lucas said.
'One thing: the guy who hanged Spivak. Spivak said tall and thin and dark haired. I don't think tall. And he
