“C’mon.”
She sighed. “I’d go with the river. That’s where he always lives, except when he can get a gig like this apartment. If you get set up in a cave, especially one with water, you can be safe, dry, hidden, and you can even keep yourself clean. Scrape likes to stay clean, when he can.”
Lucas said, “Huh. Where are these caves and sewer things?”
“All along the riverbank. Best thing to do is, find people who are living there now,” she said. “Ask them. They’ll know.”
“And if they don’t want to talk to me?”
She looked out the side window and said, “I hate telling you this stuff.”
“Why? The girls…”
“I feel terrible about the girls, which is why I’m talking to you at all. But talking to cops, if any of the guys see me, and figure I’m a snitch… it doesn’t help my work, and might even cause me trouble. Most of them are harmless, but some of them are crazy. Very crazy. If they thought I was working with the cops, I don’t know what they’d do.”
“Okay. I see that,” Lucas said. He waited a beat, and then said, “You were going to tell me something, that you didn’t want to.”
She turned back to him. “They hate going to jail. They don’t do well there, not well at all, because of their handicaps. If I were desperate to find somebody, and wanted to get information from these guys, I’d threaten them. You know-‘How’d you like to spend a couple weeks in jail?’ That kind of thing.”
“Good,” Lucas said. “Specifically, the riverbank…”
“I’d start at Hennepin Avenue, and work south. Like I said, he’s not stupid: I don’t think he’d go back to the part of the riverbank where he was before.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Where can I drop you?”
She popped the door. “Thanks anyway, I’ll just take the bus.”
Ten minutes later, Lucas stood on the edge of the Mississippi River, looking up and down the bluffs, and realized that the idea that he might search it himself was ridiculous. He also realized that if he were running from the cops, and needed to hide out for a couple of days, he’d head for the river.
And that’s what he told Daniel, at police headquarters.
“There are all those bridges, there’s two spans to each one of them, I could see at least one catwalk under a bridge, which means people could be living up there, right under the road deck. If we’re gonna do a search, we’re gonna need twenty guys, and it’s gonna take a couple of days, at least. We’ll probably need people from St. Paul-”
“I’ll have to talk to the chief,” Daniel said. “The problem is, the Strib is all over us. They know something happened. They know we picked somebody up and turned him loose again. I think the Joneses might be talking to them… so the shit’s about to hit the fan.”
“I could go back out alone…” Lucas yawned.
“No, no, I hear what you’re saying about the river,” Daniel said. “We got railroad security checking the rail yard, but the riverbank is just too big.”
“Maybe you ought to talk to the paper, call a press conference,” Lucas suggested. “Get yourself some airtime. We got a good mug of Scrape, put it out there. The more eyes the better.”
Daniel thought about it, then said, “That’s an idea. I’ll talk to the chief. You, go home. Get some sleep. You been up for two days.”
“I can handle it for a while.”
“Ah, you did pretty good. We’ll take it from here.”
Lucas saw himself back in uniform, searching the riverbank in a line of cops: “Wait a minute. I don’t want to quit this. We got this other possibility to think about, that Scrape didn’t do it. That the kids were picked up in a vehicle. I’ve got this guy I’m looking for. I got this feeling…”
Daniel was shaking his head. “We can cover that. This is turning into a snake hunt. When we find Scrape-”
Lucas leaned forward: “Listen, Chief, I’ll take vacation days. I’ll work free. Just back me up for a shot at this other guy.”
Daniel pursed his lips, eyebrows up, then he said, “All right. Don’t take vacation, though. I’ll keep you on for three days. I got Del still working on Smith; get with him, talk this thing over, and between the two of you, figure out Smith and figure out this missing guy you got. I’d like to know who he is, myself-and what the hell is he doing?”
“I’m outa here,” Lucas said.
“Hey, hold on,” Daniel called after him. “Del works late. Get some sleep. You really do look like shit.”
Lucas called Del, who answered on the eighth or ninth ring. “What?”
“This is Davenport. You up?”
“Jesus, it’s not even noon yet,” Del said. “What do you want?”
“We’re hooking up, looking for Mysterio,” Lucas said. “What time do we meet?”
“Ah… six o’clock. Meet me at six. No, wait: seven. Downtown. Don’t call back.”
7
Five hours of sleep wasn’t enough-he would have killed for seven-but the alarm blew him out of bed at five- thirty. Lucas cleaned up, put on khaki slacks, a black golf shirt and a sport coat, regulation black steeltoed uniform shoes, with the Model 40 in a shoulder rig.
When he got downtown, he found Daniel in his office, cleaning off his desk, ready to go home. “What happened?” Lucas asked.
“The chief had his press conference, we’re still looking for Scrape,” Daniel said. “We got fifteen guys on the street, and we’re getting jack shit. Don’t know where he could’ve gone. His face is all over the TV.”
“We get a hard time about turning him loose?” Lucas asked.
“Not yet, but we will, sooner or later,” Daniel said. He kicked back in his chair, put his feet on his desk. “But the chief can tap-dance. He made it sound like brilliant police work, picking him up the first time. Then, we’re civil liberties heroes, letting him go. Now we’re all working together, the people and the police, hand in hand, getting him back.”
“Wish I’d seen it,” Lucas said.
“Taught me one thing: I gotta learn how to tap-dance,” Daniel said. “What’re you doing here?”
“Waiting for Del. We’re going out on the Smith thing again. Different angle this time. Was Smith a hero? Maybe loosen some people up. And we’re gonna see what we can find out about Fell.”
“Good luck. I don’t think there’s anything there, but-good luck.”
Del showed up at six-thirty, yawning, rubbing his unshaved face with the back of his hand. “You look like a cocker spaniel, your tongue is hangin’ out,” he said to Lucas. “Let’s get some coffee, somewhere. Something to eat. Fries. Figure out what we’re doing. Maybe you could do some push-ups, or something.”
“I could attract some women for us,” Lucas offered. “Just as a personal favor to you.”
“Coffee. Fries. You can fantasize on your own time.”
“Jealousy is hard to live with,” Lucas said. “But there are government programs for the handicapped. Maybe I could find one for you…”
They walked over to the Little Wagon, ordered coffee, two twenty-one shrimp baskets with fries, and Lucas sat for a few minutes beside a uniformed cop named Sally, working through her latest romantic trauma, before moving back to Del when the food arrived.
“You are a goddamned hound,” Del said.
“Just trying to help her out,” Lucas said. “Her boyfriend smokes a little dope, but now she thinks he might be
