John Sandford - Wicked Prey

"I'll keep my eyes open," the guy said.

"You do that," Cohn said. To McCall: "How much money we got in there?"

"Shit, I can't tell. It's stuffed. Fifties and hundreds, just like the other one. All used."

Cohn nodded, then got on his cell phone and called Lane: "G."

He put his phone away, stepped away from the bearded man, then lashed out, hitting the man on the cheekbone below his left eye. The man went down, and then crawled, on his elbows, saying, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus," and then rolled over and looked up, frightened now. The blow had cut open his cheek, and he was bleeding heavily.

Cohn went over to the bag, where he took out as many bundles of cash as he could span in one hand. He knelt next to the bearded man and said, "Sorry-it won't hurt for long. Need the verisimilitude, you know ' There's gotta be fifty thousand in this little pile." He dropped it on the guy's chest. "It's yours. Give it to somebody you trust before you call the cops. Or hide it where they won't look. Maybe in two years, get a real payday, huh?"

He patted the man on the leg, and they left: down the hall, down the stairs, where they met Lane on the way down, out on the street, down to the cars.

As they walked along, Lane said, "I scared the shit out of them." He laughed, a low growl that went huh-huh-huh. "When you left, the little asshole started running his mouth, about how all the cops would be looking out for us, because of how important he is. I picked him up by his shirt and shook him like a baby."

"Didn't hurt him too bad?" Cohn asked.

"No, no. I was careful. He's bleeding, he's gonna have so many bruises he'll look like he's been in a car wreck, but he's not hurt."

"How about the Nazi signs?" McCall asked.

"The chick saw them-I saw her looking at them," Lane said. "Some poor sonofabitch cop is going to spend the next week with his nose in the tattoo files."

Cohn nodded. "Good." And it was good: he had a competent crew.

At the motel, they were like ballplayers after a big win, knuckle-bumping each other and laughing, reliving it; even Cruz, when she showed up, got into it. Then they dumped the money on the bed and started counting: it was all fifties and hundreds, all used, nonsequential, and showed nothing under a black light. Counting took the best part of a half hour, with all of them at it, ten-thousand-dollar bundles, wrapped with rubber bands.

When they finished, Cohn counted the bundles: "One forty-one, one forty-two, one forty-three ' and a half."

Cruz said, "One million, four hundred and thirty thousand, and a half."

"Good one," Lane said.

McCall gave Cruz a squeeze: "You da man."

In the years they'd been married, the telephone rang in the bedroom once too often, so they finally took it out. At five o'clock Sunday morning, when the phone started ringing, Lucas had been asleep for four hours. Because of the convention, he got up and staggered out through the living room to the nearest portable and looked at the caller ID. Nothing but a number, but he recognized the number. "Yeah."

"Can you come down to my office?"

"Right now?"

"That'd be good."

"Half hour?"

"Okay."

Who was that?" Weather asked. Sunday was her day to sleep in.

"Neil Mitford." Mitford was Governor Elmer Henderson's executive assistant, chief weasel, confidant, fixer, and maybe bagman. He'd been in Washington for the fight over the Homeland Security arrests.

"What'd he want?"

"Dunno," Lucas said.

She went back to sleep and Lucas stared in the bathroom mirror for a couple of minutes, trying to get his eyes open, then shaved, brushed his teeth, stood in the shower and let hot water beat on the back of his neck. Toweled off, he got dressed: jeans, a blue T-shirt, walking shoes, sport coat, Colt Gold Cup.45. On the way out, he remembered the convention credentials, got them off the dresser, slipped them into his pocket with his ID. The cameras were still in the car.

Feeling tired, but not bad; and the morning was perfect, cool, crisp. August was Minnesota's most perfect month, and this was the final day of it. September might be fine, too, but not perfect. Sometimes, they saw snowflakes in September.

He rolled the Porsche out of the garage, yawned, headed through the quiet city streets out to I-35Every, the car's exhaust burbling along, north to the Capitol. When he got there, he took a lap around it, to see what was going on, if anything. A speaker's shell had been set up on the Capitol lawn, for an antiwar rally later in the day. A few people in message T-shirts were wandering around, two of them smoking, and a kid was going through a garbage can, looking for something to eat. He drove back up the hill, parked in the state garage behind the Capitol and walked down to the building, flashed his ID at a Capitol guard, and continued up to Mitford's broom closet office. He knocked, tried the door, but it was locked, and he heard Mitford call, "Hang on."

"It's Lucas."

Mitford came to the door buttoning his pants, the belt undone. He was in a day-old undershirt and stocking feet, unshaven, beat up. He said, "Come on in," his voice creaking. He looked up and down the hall, then closed the door and locked it. A blanket lay on the floor next to the couch; he'd been asleep. "Got a big problem," he said.

Lucas nodded: "Yeah, I guess. It's not even six o'clock."

"I've been up all night'" Mitford walked around his desk and sprawled in his chair, pointed Lucas at the visitor's chair. "A hurricane is coming into New Orleans, probably going to flatten the place again. McCain may not come, the president and vice president have canceled, the whole thing is going up in smoke."

"Plus they're already pissed at your boss."

"There's that, but that's a good thing," Mitford said.

"So…"

"So three people got robbed at gunpoint in the High Hat last night," he said. "One of them's still in the hospital, one's a woman, she's still freaking out because the robbers threatened to take her with them, supposedly to gang-bang. The Minneapolis cops have all the information, but I want you to talk to them."

"How much did they get?" Lucas asked.

Mitford held up a finger. "They were violent, intimidating. Hats and masks and gloves. One white guy, one black, one undetermined- the white guy had swastikas tattooed on his wrists. In and out, and gone."

"How much?"

"Not much ' a few hundred dollars ' four-fifty, maybe."

Lucas waited for the rest of it. Mitford didn't call him in for a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar armed robbery.

Mitford didn't get the reaction he expected, so he said, "Listen, you've been around. Political campaigns take all kinds of donations. Some of them, people don't want to know about. They tend to be in cash, for street-workers, canvassers…"

"Vote buyers…"

"Whatever," Mitford said. "But we don't really buy votes-it'd cost too much."

"How much?"

"I'm not sure exactly," he said. "I'd guess ' a million-two? A million-five? Depending on how much they'd already moved."

"In cash?"

"Mmm'"

"Small, used, unmarked bills?" Lucas asked. Of course they would be.

"Mmm. In Philly they call it street money."

"So what's the problem? Put the cops on it," Lucas said. "Hell, it's a bunch of Republicans. If the news leaks…"

"Nice thought, but I'm afraid that some of the people with, you know, this kind of cash, uh, might have been in Denver a couple weeks ago," Mitford said. The Democratic convention had been in Denver.

"Ah, man."

"And these guys can't really talk about it," Mitford said. He was all but wringing his hands. "Somebody, you know, could point out that moving this much money around might constitute some kind of infraction."