John Sandford - Eyes of Prey

"Jesus, look what the fuckin' cat drug in," said the oldest cop. He was in his late forties, burly, with a brush mustache going gray and gold-rimmed glasses. He sat in a booth with three other cops. Two more huddled over coffee cups in the next booth down.

"I thought you guys could use some guidance, so I drove right over," Lucas said. A circular bar sat at the center of the restaurant floor, surrounded by swivel stools, with booths along the wall. Lucas took one of the stools and turned it to face the cops in the booth.

"We appreciate your concern," said the cop with the mustache. Three of the four men in the booth were middle-aged and burly; the fourth was in his twenties, slender, and had tight blue eyes with prominent pink corners. The three older cops were drinking coffee. The younger one was eating French toast with sausage.

"This guy a cop?" the youngest one asked, a fork poised halfway to his mouth with a chunk of sausage. He was staring at Lucas' jacket. "He's carrying…"

"Thank you, Sherlock," an older cop said. He tipped his head at Lucas and said, "Lucas Davenport, he's a detective lieutenant with Minneapolis."

"He drives a Porsche about sixty miles an hour down Cretin Avenue at rush hour," said another of the cops, grinning at Lucas over his coffee cup.

"Bullshit. I observe all St. Paul traffic ordinances," Lucas said.

"Pardon me while I fart in disgust," said the speed-trap cop. "It must've been somebody else's Porsche I got a picture of on my radar about five-thirty Friday."

Lucas grinned. "You must've startled me."

"Right… You workin' or what?"

"I'm looking for Poppy White," Lucas said.

"Poppy?" The three older cops looked at each other, and one of them said, "I saw his car outside of Broobeck's last night and a couple of nights last week. Red Olds, last year's. If he's not there, Broobeck might know where he is."

Lucas stayed to talk for a few minutes, then hopped off the stool. "Thanks for the word on Poppy," he said.

"Hey, Davenport, if you're gonna shoot the sonofabitch, could you wait until after the shift change…?"

A red Olds was parked under the neon bowling pin at Broobeck's. Lucas stepped inside, looked down toward the lanes. Only two were being used, by a group of young couples. Three people sat at the bar, but none of them was Poppy. The bartender wore a paper hat and chewed a toothpick. He nodded when Lucas walked up.

"I'm looking for Poppy."

"He's here somewhere, maybe back in the can."

Lucas went to the men's restroom, stuck his head inside. He could see a pair of Wellington boots under one of the stall doors and called, "Poppy?"

"Yeah?"

"Lucas Davenport. I'll wait at the bar."

"Get a booth."

Lucas got a booth and a beer, and a minute later Poppy appeared, holding wet hands away from his chest.

"You need some towels back there," he complained to the bartender. The man pushed him a stack of napkins. Poppy dried his hands, got a beer and came over to Lucas. He was too heavy, in his middle fifties, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt under a leather jacket. His iron-gray hair was cut in a Korean War flattop. A good man with a saw and a torch, he could chop a stolen Porsche into spare parts in an hour.

"What's going on?" he asked, as he slid into the booth.

"You need a starter motor?"

"No. I'm looking for somebody with new money. Somebody who might of hit a woman over in Minneapolis the other day."

Poppy shook his head. "I know what you're talkin' about and I ain't heard even a tinkle. The dopers are sweatin' it, because the papers are saying a doper done it and they figure somebody's got to fall."

"But not a thing?"

"Not a thing, man. If somebody got paid, it wasn't over on this side of town. You sure it was a white guy? I don't know about the coloreds anymore."

He was looking for a white guy. That's the way it went: whites hired whites, blacks hired blacks. Equal-opportunity bigotry, even in murder. There were other reasons, too. In that neighborhood, a black guy would be noticed.

He left Poppy at the bowling alley and headed west to Minneapolis, touched a gay bar on Hennepin Avenue, two more joints on Lake Street and finally, having learned nothing, woke up a fence who lived in the quiet suburban town of Wayzata.

"I don't know, Davenport, maybe just a freak. He wastes the woman, splits for Utah, spends the money buyin' a ranch," the fence said. They sat on a glassed-in porch overlooking a pond with cattails. The lights from another house reflected off the surface of the water, and Lucas could make out the dark shapes of a raft of ducks as they bobbed shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the pond. The fence was uncomfortable on a couch, in his pajamas, smoking an unfiltered cigarette, his wife sitting beside him in a bathrobe. She had pink plastic curlers in her hair and looked worried. She'd offered Lucas a lime mineral water, cold, and he rolled the bottle between his hands as they talked. "If I were you," the fence said, "I'd check with Orville Proud."

"Orville? I thought he was in the joint, down in Arizona or someplace," Lucas said.

"Got out." The fence picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it away. "Anyway, he's been around for a week or so."

"Is he setting up again?" He should have known. Proud had been in town for a week-he should have known.

"Yeah, I think so. Same old deal. He's hurtin' for cash. And you know the kind of contacts he's got. Fuckin' biker gangs and the muscle guys, the Nazis, everybody. So I says, 'The word's out that it might have been a hit, the husband brought somebody in.' And he says, 'That ain't a good thing to be talking about, Frank.' So I stopped talking about it."

"Huh. You know where he is?"

"I don't want none of this coming back," the fence said. "Orville's a little strange…"

"Won't be coming back," Lucas assured him.

The fence looked at his watch. "Try room two twenty-one at the Loin. There's a game."

"Any guns?"

"You know Orville…"

"Yeah, unfortunately. All right, Frank, I owe you."

" 'Preciate it. You still got that cabin up north?"

"Yeah…"

"I got some good deals coming on twenty-five horse Evinrudes."

"Don't push your luck," Lucas said.

"Hey, Lieutenant…" Frank grinned, reaching for charm, and his teeth were not quite green.

The Loin was the Richard Coeur de Lion Lounge amp; Motel on the strip across from Minneapolis-St. Paul International. The place started straight, lost money for a few years, then was picked up by a more creative management out of Miami Beach. After that, it was called either the Dick or the Loin, but Loin won out. As a nickname, it was felt by the people who decided such things, "Loin" had more class. The better gamblers, slicker coke peddlers, prettier whores and less discriminating Viking football players populated the bar and, most nights, the rooms in the attached motel.

The bar was done in red velvet and dark wood with oval mirrors. There were two stuffed red foxes in the foyer, mounted on chunks of driftwood, on either side of a bad reproduction of The Blue Boy. Upstairs, the rooms had water beds and pornographic movies on cable, no extra charge.

Lucas walked through the lobby, nodded at the woman behind the desk, who smiled, almost as though she remembered checking him in, and walked up the steps to the single hallway that ran the length of the motel. Room 221 was the last one on the left. He stood outside the door for a moment, listening, then took his.45 out of the shoulder rig and stuck it under his belt in the small of his back. He knocked on the door and stepped back across the hall, where he could be seen through the peephole. The peephole got dark for a moment; then a voice said, "Who is it?"

"Lucas Davenport wants to see Orville."