Silken Prey (22 page)

“That . . .” Grant waved her arms dismissively. “I really do have to talk to somebody about you. Professional killers? They’re decorated war veterans. Were you in the military? Did you—”

Dannon interrupted her, and said to Lucas, “We had nothing to do with anything like that. We’re professional security guys, end of story. If you have any evidence of any sort, bring it out: we’ll refute it.”

“I want to have a crime-scene guy take DNA samples from you,” Lucas said. “Doesn’t hurt, nothing invasive—”

“DNA?” Grant sputtered. “You know what—”

“It’s okay with us,” Dannon said, and now there was something in his eye, a little spark of pleasure, a job well done. Lucas thought,
This isn’t good.

Grant snapped at Dannon: “Don’t interrupt. I know that you had nothing to do with this, I know the DNA will come back negative, but don’t you see what he’s doing? When the word gets out that my bodyguards have been DNA-typed in a murder case? This guy is working for Smalls—”

“No. I’m not,” Lucas said. “I guarantee that nothing about the DNA samples will get out before the election. I’ll get one guy to take the samples and I’ll read him the riot act. He will not say a word, and neither will I. If word gets out, I’ll track it, and if it’s my guy, I’ll see that he’s fired and I’ll try to put him in jail.”

Grant, Schiffer, Carver, and Dannon exchanged glances, and then Grant said to Dannon, “You’ve got no problem with this?”

“No. It’s probably what I’d do in his place.” He showed a thin white smile: “Because, you know, he’s right. We
are
trained killers.”

He poked Carver in the ribs with an elbow, and Carver let out a long, low, rambling laugh, one of genuine amusement, and . . . smugness. Lucas thought,
They know something.

•   •   •

W
ITH THEIR CASUAL ACQUIESCENCE
to the DNA tests, Lucas was left stranded. He asked some perfunctory questions—where were you last night at one o’clock? (At our apartments.) Did anyone see you there? (No.) Any proof that you were there? (Made some phone calls, moved some documents on e-mail.) Can we see those? (Of course.) Did you know either Tubbs or Roman? (No.)

Lucas walked away and made a call, asking them to wait, got hold of a crime-scene specialist, and made arrangements for Carver and Dannon to be DNA-typed.

He went back to them and said, “We’d like you to stop in at BCA headquarters on your way back through St. Paul, anytime before five o’clock. You’ll see a duty officer, tell him that you’re Ronald and Douglas—you won’t have to give your last name or any other identifier—and that you’re there at my request, Lucas Davenport’s request, to be DNA-typed. A guy will come down to do the swabs. This will take one minute, and then you can take off. The swabs will be marked Ronald and Douglas, no other identifiers.”

Carver and Dannon nodded, and Grant said, “What a crock,” and tossed the remains of her ice cream cone into a trash can. “If you’re done with us, I’m going to go shake some hands. I’ll tell you what—nothing about this better get out.”

“It won’t,” Lucas said. To Carver and Dannon: “Don’t go anywhere.”

Grant led her entourage across the street, with Green lingering behind. She said to Lucas, “Interesting.”

“They did it,” Lucas said. “You take care, Alice.”

“I can handle it,” she said.

“You sure? You ever shot anyone?”

“No, but I could.”

Lucas looked after Dannon and Carver: “If it should come to that—and it could, if they think you might have figured something out—don’t give them a chance. If you do, they’ll kill you.”

R
ay Quintana was a fifty-one-year-old Minneapolis vice cop, a detective sergeant, and having thought about it, he figured that he’d thoroughly screwed the pooch, also known as having poked the pup or fucked the dog. He didn’t know who’d been calling him about Helen Roman, but he suspected that whoever it was had gone over to Roman’s house the night before and killed her.

Quintana wasn’t a bad cop; okay, not a terrible one. He might have picked up a roll of fifties off a floor in a crack house that didn’t make it back to the evidence room; he might have found a few nice guns that the jerkwads didn’t need anymore, that made their way to gun shows in Wisconsin; he might have done a little toot from time to time, the random scatterings of the local dope dealers.

But he’d put a lot of bad people in jail, and overall, given the opportunities, and the stresses, not a bad guy.

When Tubbs had come to him, he’d put it out there as a straight business deal: Tubbs had heard from somewhere unknown that the Minneapolis Police Department had an outrageous file of kiddie porn. Quintana had known Tubbs since high school; Tubbs had been one of the slightly nerdy intellectuals on the edge of the popular clique, while Quintana had been metal shop and a football lineman.

Tubbs had said, “I’ll give you five thousand dollars for that file. Nobody’ll ever know, because hell, if I admit it went through my hands, I’d be in a lot more trouble than you.”

Quintana had asked him what he was going to do with it, and Tubbs had told him: “I’m gonna use it to screw Porter Smalls. I’m gonna get Taryn Grant elected to the U.S. Senate. When that happens, I’ll be fixed for life. I’ll remember you, too.”

Had Grant hired him?

“I don’t know—I’m being funded anonymously,” Tubbs said. “But that’s obviously where it comes from. I got the cash, and enough to split off five thousand for you.”

How much had Tubbs gotten?

“That’s between me and Jesus,” Tubbs said. “I’m taking all the risk. You get more than it’s worth, and if you don’t want the money—well, I’ll get another file. I know they’re floating around out there.”

Quintana wanted the five grand. Hadn’t really needed it, but he
wanted
it.

Quintana’s problem now was that Marion from Internal Affairs was on the trail, as was Davenport. Quintana knew Davenport, had worked with him, both on patrol and as detectives; Davenport scared him. Eventually, he thought, they’d get to him. Tubbs hadn’t exactly snuck into city hall. They might even have been seen talking together.

Quintana was thinking all of this at his desk, on a Sunday morning, staring at the wall behind it, over all the usual detective litter. He was so focused that his next-door desk neighbor asked, “You in there, Ray?”

“What?”

“I thought you were having a stroke or something.”

Quintana shook his head. “Just tired.”

“Then what are you doing in here? It’s Sunday.”

“I was thinking I shoulda gone to Hollywood and become an actor. I could have made the big time.”

“Man, you
have
had a stroke.”

He went back to staring.

His delivery of the porn file could get him jail time. Worse, he suspected that whoever was calling him had killed Roman. Even worse than that, he’d talked casually with Turk Cochran when he’d come in from Roman’s place, and Cochran said that Davenport thought it might be a pro job.

Even worse than that . . . Quintana suspected the same pro might be coming to shut
him
up.

If Quintana kept his mouth shut, he might be killed as a clean-up measure. If he kept his mouth shut, Davenport could plausibly come after him as an accessory to murder, especially if word got out that he’d interviewed Roman, or had been seen with Tubbs.

That all looked really bad.

There was a bright side: Tubbs was presumably dead, and Roman certainly was. That meant that any story that he made up couldn’t really be challenged. If he could just come up with something good enough, he would probably stay out of jail, and might even hang on to his pension. At least, the half that his ex-wife wasn’t going to get.

But what was the story? How could he possibly justify handing the file over to Tubbs? He thought and thought, and finally concluded that he couldn’t.

So he thought some more, and at one o’clock in the afternoon, picked up the phone and called the union rep at home, and said he needed to talk to the lawyer, right then, Sunday or not.

The union guy wanted to know what for, and Quintana said he really didn’t want to know what for. At two o’clock, he was talking to the lawyer, and at two-thirty, they called Marion. The lawyer, whose name was James Meers, said Quintana needed to talk with Marion and probably with Davenport, as soon as possible. Immediately, if possible.

Lucas took the call from Marion, who said, “We got a break.”

He’d set up the meeting for four o’clock.

•   •   •

L
UCAS PARKED HIS
P
ORSCHE
in one of the cop-only slots next to city hall and threw his BCA card on the dash, which usually managed to piss somebody off; but they’d never towed him. The attorney’s office, where the meeting would be held, was a block or so away, in the Pillsbury building. As he walked along, he spotted Marion, whistled, and Marion turned, saw him, and waited.

“I thought somebody liked my ass,” Marion said.

“Probably not,” Lucas said. “You know what Quintana’s going to say?”

“Well, since it’s you and me . . . I suspect it might have something to do with the porn. We’ve been looking at possibilities, and his name’s on the list. He had access to the relevant computers both in Vice and Domestics.”

“Ah, boy. I’ve known him for a long time,” Lucas said. “Not a bad cop—give or take a little.”

“You know something about the take?” Marion asked.

“No, no. If he’s taken anything, he’s smart enough that nobody would know,” Lucas said. “That’s what’s odd about this deal—why in God’s name would he give a porn file to anyone? Especially when it was going to be used like this? You know, a public hurricane. That doesn’t sound like the Ray Quintana we know and love. He’s always been a pretty cautious guy.”

“Mmm. Got a pretty clean jacket, too,” Marion said. He looked up at the Pillsbury building. “I guess we’ll find out.”

•   •   •

Q
UINTANA AND
M
EERS
were waiting, Quintana was in a sweat, and showing it. Meers was a soft-faced blond with gold-rimmed glasses in his mid-thirties, who looked like a British movie star, but Lucas couldn’t think which one. A guy who’d been in a tennis movie. When Lucas and Marion were seated, he said, “Ray’s got a problem. I don’t think it has to go any further than this . . . it’s not criminal, or anything, but he sorta screwed up.”

Marion looked skeptical, lifted his hands, and looked at Quintana. “So what is it?”

Before Quintana could say anything, Meers added: “He also has some valuable information for you, he thinks. The fact is, he didn’t have to do this—he’s doing it voluntarily, this meeting, and he’s not even going to try to deal on the information. He’s just going to give it to you, because he’s a good cop. I hope you keep that in mind.”

Marion looked at his watch: “Are we done with the introductions?”

Lucas was the good guy: he looked at Quintana and asked, “How you doin’, Ray?”

“Ah, man, I messed up,” Quintana said.

“What happened?”

Quintana leaned forward in his chair, his hands clenched in his lap, and spoke mostly to Lucas. “About two weeks ago, Bob Tubbs came to see me. I knew him all the way back in high school, and we’d bump into each other from time to time. We weren’t friends, but you know, we were friendly. So, he comes to see me in the office. He sits down and says he’s got a big problem.”

Quintana told it this way:

Tubbs said, “You guys have an extensive file of kiddie porn somewhere in your computers. Here in Vice, and down in Domestics. I don’t care about that, but there’s one picture in there that I need to see. I need to see it off the record.”

Quintana: “What’s this all about?”

Tubbs: “A very large person in the state legislature is banging a girl on the side. Young, but not too young. But now it turns out that she might have been involved in some kind of porn ring and probably prostitution, and was busted by you guys. I need to look at her picture. I can’t get at it through regular sources, because she was underage when she was busted, and the file is sealed.”

Quintana: “Why do you need to look at it?”

Tubbs: “Because this guy is in a pretty tender spot. He’s in the process of getting a divorce. His wife’s lawyer is a wolverine, and if she gets a sniff of this chick—and maybe she already did—they’re going to make an issue of it. Then, it’s all gonna come out. He needs to know if this girl’s the one involved in porn and prostitution and all that. I’ve seen his girlfriend. Now I need to look at the file.”

Quintana: “Even if she was, what would he do about it?”

Tubbs: “Put her ass on a plane to Austin, Texas. He’s got a buddy in the Texas legislature who’ll give her a job, and his old lady won’t be able to find her.”

Quintana: “Why doesn’t he do that anyway?”

Tubbs: “Because it’ll cost an arm and a leg. If she’s not the one, he won’t do it. The other thing is, he doesn’t want to ask the girl, because he’s afraid it’ll change things. And she might decide to ask for a little cash herself. If she’s the one. All he wants to do is
know
.”

Lucas asked, “You gave him the file?”

Quintana shook his head. “No. All I did was sit at the computer and call up the file. I knew what he was talking about, the girl, because it went back to Tom Morgan’s case three years ago.

“I showed him the picture, and he asked me to enlarge it, the best shot of her face. He looked at it and then he said, “Close, but no cigar. She’s not the one.”

Marion: “Then what?”

“I closed the file and he said thanks, and he went away.”

Marion: “Didn’t give you a little schmear?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Quintana said. “Look, this was a fast favor for a guy. Didn’t look at the porn, didn’t do any of that. A favor for a guy big in the legislature. You know how that works.”

“You believed all that bullshit?” Marion asked.

Quintana shook his head: “It looks bad now, but yeah, I believed him. Like I said, I knew him forever.”

Lucas said, “If you didn’t give him the file, how’d he get it?”

Quintana shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve got my suspicions.”

“Like what?”

“He was standing behind me when I signed on,” Quintana said. “He might have seen my password . . . it’s . . . this sounds even stupider . . . it’s ‘yquintz.’ And I mean, he was right there. Once you’ve got the password, you can get in even from outside, if you need to. After I signed on, I looked up the file. He saw that, too.”

Marion said, “Unbelievable.”

Quintana ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I know. Oldest goddamn trick in the book,” Quintana said. “I never saw it. I mean, all he wanted to do was look at one face.”

Lucas mostly didn’t believe it, but was willing to buy it if he got anything that would aim him at Carver and Dannon. He asked, “What was this information you got?”

“Yesterday I was working over on Upton—we think there might be a high-ticket whorehouse over there, don’t tell anybody. Anyway, I was sitting in my car taking down tag numbers and taking pictures of these girls coming and going, and I get this phone call. The guy says that he bought the pornography file from Tubbs and Tubbs said he got it from me. I say, ‘That’s bullshit, I didn’t give him anything.’

“The guy says, ‘Well, he said he got it from you, and I think he might have told a woman over in Smalls’s office. And he might’ve told her about me, too. She’s the one who put the porn in. Nobody knows who I am, but somebody needs to go over and talk to this woman, this Helen Roman. Like a cop. Needs to ask her where the porn came from, and where it went.’

“I said, ‘I didn’t give anybody any porn. Who is this, anyway?’

“He said, ‘A guy who doesn’t like Porter Smalls.’

“I said, ‘I don’t like Porter Smalls either, but I didn’t give a thing to Tubbs.’

“The guy says, ‘Look, all you have to do is check with her.’

“I say, ‘Not me.’

“Then the guy hangs up,” Quintana said.

“And you’ve got the phone number,” Lucas said.

Quintana nodded: “I do.” He dug in his pocket and handed Lucas a slip of notepaper, with a phone number on it.

Lucas took the paper, and Marion said, “I’m gonna need that.”

Lucas nodded, took out a pen and a pocket notebook, and wrote the number down, and passed the original slip back to Marion. “I’m going to run down the number and look at the activity on that phone,” Lucas said. “If this is real, it could be a serious break.”

“I just hope I get credit for it,” Quintana said.

Meers said, “That’s pretty much the story. A simple request from a friend, to help out a guy in the legislature. If you go after a guy for that, we wouldn’t have a police department left.”

Marion said, “You know the problem, though: it’s not important unless it becomes important. Ray’s now all tangled up in what could be a double murder case. One way or another . . .”

Quintana said, “Come on. If I hadn’t told you, you’d never have found out. I could’ve lied. Instead, I came right in, as soon as I worked it out. I even gave you what Lucas said could be a break. A
serious
break.”

Marion looked at Lucas and asked, “What’s the BCA think?”

Lucas said, “This is all on you guys. Do what’s best: I don’t care. I just want the phone number.” He looked at Quintana: “Where’s the phone they called you on?”

“In my pocket.” He fished it out: an iPhone.

“I’m going to need to take it with me. I need to take it to our lab, we’ll get in touch with your . . . Who’s your service provider?”

“Verizon.”

“We’ll get in touch with Verizon, and when we know where our targets are, we’re going to want you to call them,” Lucas said.