Wicked Prey (34 page)

The main door of the St. Andrews faced Rice Park, but there were other entrances from the second-floor skyway, and out the back door onto St. Peter Street. Cohn and Cruz took their time, walking off the skyway escape route, with Cohn counting the steps: Cruz had already measured the distance, and, one afternoon in June, had put on jogging shorts and a T-shirt and jogged the route, timing herself, but she didn’t disturb the count.

When they dropped down the stairs into the lobby, Cohn nodded at Cruz; he bought her timeline. Of course he did, because she wouldn’t mess up anything that basic. At the same time, she appreciated the check. If anything went wrong, they needed to know their escape moves, and know them exactly.

Inside the hotel, they walked from the front desk to the bar, which was jammed with politicos and media, pouring it down as fast as it could be served. At the front desk, Cohn got a map from the desk clerk, consulting with her about the best route to the interstate entrance. And about the safe-deposit boxes: “I have a friend staying with me tonight, after the ball. If she needs one, would you have one available?”

The clerk shook her head. “As of now, we’re all full. First time that’s happened. Have you looked at your room safe?”

“She’ll be wearing some fairly, mmm, important jewelry,” Cohn said. “We thought that a real safe-deposit box might be more appropriate.”

“If you can leave your name and room number, we can let you know about any availabilities,” the woman offered.

Cohn shook his head: “Ah, it’s six to eight hours. I guess we can do with the room safe. I thought I’d ask.”

Back down the hall to Cruz: “They have no boxes available. They’re all taken. I tried to impress her by telling her that we had some important jewelry coming in. She wasn’t impressed. They must have goddamn Tiffany’s in those boxes.”

“Told you,” Cruz said.

A guy went by with a broom and a dustpan, hurrying to clean up a mess somewhere. He was wearing a neat gray uniform, with his name in red script in a white oval. Cohn looked after him and asked, “How many janitors working overnight?”

“Couldn’t find that out,” Cruz said. “Probably a couple.”

“Would have been nice to know.”

* * *

THEY WALKED through the hotel for fifteen minutes, got a drink, watched the crowd, checked where the cops were. “The only really bad, serious, unpredictable factor would be if the protesters broke through the police lines and started trashing the area,” Cruz said. “In that case, we walk away. There’d be cops every fifteen feet. Chaos. But from what I can tell, from walking it, they’ll be kept well away, over to the north of the convention center. They’re not going to allow anything down here. Lots of cops, but all out on the perimeters.”

“The biggest problem won’t be cops—the biggest problem is that we have to take down so many people that I can’t control them,” Cohn said. “Would have been easier with McCall. Goddamn McCall.”

“You shoot him?” Cruz asked.

Cohn did a double take on the question. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Just . . . wondered,” Cruz said. “If he was hurt, couldn’t walk . . . I thought maybe you made sure.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. The red-eyed anger was right there. “He was shot in the head and the heart by the cop. He was dead before he hit the ground. If I’d gone through first, it would’ve been me.”

“Sorry,” she said. But she wasn’t; and she wasn’t quite sure of Cohn’s answer.

* * *

 

AN HOUR and fifteen minutes after they left the apartment, they were back. They found Lane standing in the apartment—almost crouched, when they pushed the door open. He looked past them. Cohn asked, “What?”

“Is Lindy with you?”

“Ah, shit,” Cohn said, looking around the apartment.

“She’s not here,” Lane said. “Her clothes are gone. So’s the money. All of it.”

* * *

AFTER A while—a while—Cohn had to laugh. “She’s fucked us, that’s for sure. Now, there’s no choice. Now, we have to do it. No calling it off.”

“I should have thought of it,” Cruz said. “It honest-to-God never occurred to me, because I didn’t think anybody in the group would have the balls to do it to you.”

“With good reason,” Cohn said. “When I catch her, and I will, I’m going to kill her and anyone she’s with. I’m gonna take my time with it, so she can see it coming.”

Lane said, after a bit: “She has to know that.”

Cohn looked at him.

Lane said, “She has to know that you’ll kill her. So she has to believe that you won’t be able to. She either figures the whole plan is fucked . . . or . . .”

“Or the bitch is gonna turn us in,” Cohn said, erupting from the couch where he’d sat down. “Just to make sure . . .”

* * *

 

THEY PACKED up, and wiped the apartment, in fifteen minutes. As they were stuffing what they could into their bags, Cohn said to Cruz, “You didn’t say, ‘I told you so.’ You never wanted her here.”

Cruz said, “I didn’t have to say it. You knew it. No point in pouring salt in the wound. Wouldn’t get us anywhere.”

Then Cohn said, “You know what? She might turn us in—might get us raided. But she’s not going to tell them about the hotel. She’s not going to implicate herself. She’s going to call in anonymously, and tell them that we’re here. Call from a Target store. Like she’s some citizen. Then, she’s got to figure that whatever happens, she’ll come out okay. If they get us, fine. If they get us at the hotel, that’s fine. If they don’t get us, and we get out with twenty million dollars, she figures that she can buy her way back in with us. Keep me from killing her. Tell us she panicked, and here’s the money back . . .”

“Still can’t take a chance,” Cruz said. “Pack faster.”

“But we’re still good for the hotel,” Cohn said.

“We can’t do it, without Lindy as a desk clerk,” Cruz said.

Cohn said, “You’re the desk clerk.” When Cruz opened her mouth to object, Cohn waved her down. “Yeah, yeah, you have to watch the radios. Well, watch them from the desk. Bring them with you. Anybody coming through the door will just think you’re listening to the cops fighting the protesters.”

Cruz said, “I’ve never been inside.” That wasn’t true. She’d just never been inside with Cohn.

“First time for everything,” Cohn said. “We go with what we got, and you’re what we got.”

They were out of the building in fifteen minutes, and gone.

* * *

LUCAS LEFT Shafer with the Secret Service. He’d be pushed around a little more, but nobody expected much: nobody mistook either Shafer or Briar for masterminds. Shafer was probably going to be locked up again, until after the convention and things had calmed down. After talking to Lucas, the Secret Service expressed little interest in Briar: her involvement was local, as far as they were concerned.

Lucas decided to take her back to the BCA, with Shrake trailing in her van. He took her up to the third floor, to the labs, where he sat her down with a guy who’d done the photo touch-ups. “When you’re done with the pictures, you can take off,” he told her. “Don’t leave town. I’ll need your address and phone number.”

She gave him her mother’s address and phone, and Lucas went down to his office, collected Shrake and Jenkins, and suggested that they go back to his house for an early dinner and to talk over the next move. He worked the phones as they drove along, trying to round up some help, and to warn the housekeeper that they were coming. He and Shrake and Jenkins trooped into the house together, and the housekeeper fixed them up with cold fried chicken, apple pie from the pie place on the corner, and milk and coffee.

“I want to suggest something,” Lucas began, poking a drumstick at them. “That is, they must know the jig is up on these moneymen robberies. We ambushed them on the last one, and even if somebody got away, we killed one of them. They won’t do another one.”

Jenkins and Shrake both nodded.

“So, at this point, now that they know we have Shafer, there are really only two possibilities,” Lucas continued. “First, they take off. They have a rep for being bold on strategy and careful on tactics. If they’re gone, then there’s nothing we can do about it. Put together what we’ve got, try to get as much publicity as we can, and let somebody else catch them.”

“That’s boring,” Shrake said.

Lucas held up a finger: “The second option is, they go ahead with whatever they’re planning. They know we’re looking, they know we got to Shafer. But they also probably figured out how we got to Shafer—through Diaz’s house in Venice. And they
still
were setting us up, taking a look at us. I think they were going ahead with whatever it is. They were checking on Shafer’s status, and now they know.”

“But what the hell is Shafer for?” Jenkins asked.

“I got one possibility,” Lucas said. “It looks like they were lying to him from the start. He really doesn’t have anything to do with the main job. But what if he’s a diversion? Like this: they get him to come up here, go around to some quarries where he’s sure to attract attention—he’s shooting a .50-cal, for Christ’s sake. They drag him through the gun stores, while
they
stay out of sight. They plant some shells, with his prints on them, up on the hillside . . .”

Jenkins picked it up: “So when they do whatever it is, they call nine-one-one and say they’ve seen Shafer with his gun. Cops rush in from all over.”

“And the target is clear. Whatever it is. The commo guys start screaming about Shafer, and everybody starts running. There’s panic . . .”

“What are they going to hit?” Shrake asked, as much to himself as to the others, looking up at the ceiling. “They do banks and armored cars. God knows there’s enough cash floating around.”

“We need to scout some places. Armored-car warehouses. Someplace with . . . big money. Big money. We scout them, like we were going to hold them up—and then, if we find a couple of places that look particularly ripe, we set up ambushes.”

They thought about it through their pie; halfway through, Shrake mumbled, “You know what? They’re still here.”

* * *

LETTY HAD been lying on her bed, thinking about her next move, when they arrived, and she wandered into the kitchen as they were talking. Shrake said, “Hello, sweet thing,” and Jenkins said, “The movie star.”

Letty patted Shrake on his broad back and said, “If only you were forty years younger,” which made Lucas laugh so hard that he choked. “A piece of chicken breading went up my nose,” he said. Shrake pretended to sulk: “For Christ’s sakes, I
am
only forty.”

“And in good shape,” Letty said. “For a guy that old.”

“What’re you up to?” Lucas asked.

“Not much going on tomorrow. I’m going to write the
Mockingbird
essay tonight, I guess.”

“Better than messing around with hookers,” Lucas said. He gave a short recap to Shrake and Jenkins.

“Sounds like a good story to me,” Shrake said.

“You get better-looking by the minute,” Letty said.

Jenkins squinted at her: “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

Jenkins looked at Lucas and shook his head: “Jesus Christ, Lucas, you
attract
trouble. You’re a fuuuhhh . . . trouble magnet.”

“Was that a French trouble magnet?” Letty asked. “A freaky trouble magnet? A fancy trouble magnet? A . . .”

“Fuck off, kid,” Jenkins said.

* * *

AFTER TRADING a few more insults with Jenkins and Shrake, Letty got a single-serving milk bottle and walked back up to her bedroom, sat on the bed and thought about it some more.

What if Randy killed Juliet? If he did, it’d be Letty’s fault. The thought went round and round like a carousel, and always came back, no matter how she twisted it up.

What if Randy did something so
awful
. . .

And yet she had the feeling that Randy was too manipulative for that. He’d fly into a rage, he’d beat Juliet, maybe, but he wouldn’t kill her. She was his sexual ATM. If she timed it just right, if she listened outside the house, she could have the police there within a couple of minutes.

And the original threat remained. If Lucas found out that Randy had been stalking Letty, he’d kill Randy. If he did it with his usual intelligence, it would be taken care of quietly enough; but now, because of Letty, Jennifer knew about it. What she would do, if Randy disappeared, Letty didn’t know. She really
was
a goody-goody.

One way or another, Letty had to make the call. Had to make it.

19

THEY MET IN A BCA classroom as the sun was sliding down in the west, everyone that Lucas had managed to scrape up: two St. Paul detectives, six BCA agents who volunteered time because of the Benson shooting—more would have volunteered, but they were already on the street, working the convention—and two detectives from Minneapolis, along with Shrake and Jenkins. Two Secret Service agents sat in the back, but the Secret Service was so pressed by the night’s political ceremonies that they couldn’t free any men for the actual search.

Lucas unrolled oversized printouts from the county assessor’s office, showing every building in downtown St. Paul. One of the assessor’s men had gone over the maps and marked the buildings that had either rental apartments, or condos that somebody might rent out on their own.

“We didn’t have time to write all this stuff on each individual map, so everybody take a contact sheet from Carol,” Lucas said. Carol waved a stack of Xerox paper at them. “On it, you’ll find the latest phone number we have for the condo association president or the apartment manager. Talk to them face-to-face.”

They had too many buildings, but divided them up as well as they could, some of them getting a few large ones, some getting a bigger batch of smaller ones.

“Warn the president or the manager or the owner, or whoever you get, not to go nosing around on his own, or make any inquiries. We’re pretty sure they’re in there somewhere, and if we miss them, we’ll either have to start over, or figure something else out. Carol is passing out updated photos of the suspects, changing hair color and other stuff according to what we’ve found out about them.”