John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"Your old pal tell you anything?"

"She worked for Jefferson Sparks," Lucas said.

"Sparky," one of the cops said enthusiastically. "I do believe I know where he's staying."

"Pick him up," said Lucas. "Soliciting or something. We'll talk to him downtown tomorrow morning."

"Sure."

Anderson was talking to the medical examiner. When he finished, he walked over to Lucas, shaking his head.

"Nothing?" asked Lucas.

"Not a thing."

"You're dragging the neighborhood for witnesses?"

"Got guys all over the place. Won't know anything until tomorrow."

"We got a name on the pimp," Lucas said. "Vice is going to look for him. Probably have him tomorrow."

"I hope he's got something," Anderson said. "This is getting old."

Lucas worked on his game for half an hour, editing the scenarios. It was the worst part of the job. The finishing touches were never done. With the murder of Heather Brown, he couldn't focus on the work.

He quit at two o'clock, ate a cup of strawberry yogurt, checked the doors, and turned out the lights. He had been in bed for ten minutes when the doorbell rang. Crawling out of bed, he tiptoed into the workroom so he could look out a window down the length of the house to the front door.

The doorbell rang again as he peeked out. Annie McGowan, alone in the streetlight, self-conscious as she waited by the door. Lucas sat down with his back to the wall, staring into the dark room. Jennifer was pregnant. Carla was waiting at the cabin. Lucas loved women, new women, different women. Loved to talk to them, send them flowers, roll around in the night. Annie McGowan was stunning, a woman with the face of Helen and what promised to be an exquisite body, pink nipples, pale, solid flesh.

And she was dumb as a stump. Lucas thought about it, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Outside, Annie McGowan waited, and after another minute turned away from the house and started back toward her car. Lucas stood up and peered through a crack between the curtain and the wall as she opened the car door, hesitated, looked back at the house. The window opened vertically, with a crank. His hand was on the crank and it would take only a second to open it, call out to her before she got away. He didn't move. She slid into the driver's seat, pulled the door shut, and backed out of the drive.

In another second she was gone. Lucas walked back to the bedroom, lay down, and tried to sleep.

Visions of Annie…

Lucas' office door was open and the vice cop ambled in and plopped down in one of the extra chairs.

"Sparky's gone," he said.

"Damn. Nothing's coming easy," Lucas said.

"We found his place, down on Dupont, but he split last night," the vice cop said. "The guy who lives upstairs said Sparky came home about midnight, threw his shit in the car, and took off with one of his ladies. Said it didn't look like he was coming back."

"He knew about Brown," said Lucas, leaning back and planting his feet on the desktop.

"Yeah. Looks like."

"So where'd he go?"

The vice cop shrugged. "We're asking around. He's got a couple of other women. We've heard they're working a sauna out on Lake Street. Used to work at a place called the Iron Butterfly, but that's closed now. So we're looking."

"Relatives?"

"Don't know."

"When did we last have him in?" Lucas asked.

"'Bout a year ago, I guess. Gross misdemeanor, soliciting for prostitution."

"He do time?"

"Three months in the workhouse."

"File upstairs?"

"Yeah. I could get it."

"Never mind," Lucas said. "I'm not doing anything. I'll walk over and take a look."

"We'll keep looking for him," the vice cop said. "Daniel's all over our backs."

Lucas flipped the lock on his office door and was pulling it closed when the phone rang. He stepped back inside and picked it up.

"Lucas? This is Jennifer. Are we going out tonight?"

"Sure. Seven o'clock?" An image of Carla flashed into his mind, her back arched, her breasts flattened, her mouth half-open.

Carla Ruiz.

Jennifer Carey, pregnant. "Yeah, that'd be fine. Pick me up here?"

"See you at seven."

The maddog was waiting for files in the clerk's office when Lucas walked in. The maddog recognized him immediately and forced himself to look back at the file he was holding. Lucas paid no attention to him. He walked through the swinging gate, behind the service counter, and across the room to the supervisor's cubicle. He stuck his head in the door and said something the maddog couldn't quite make out. The supervisor looked up from her desk and laughed and Lucas went in and perched on the edge of her desk.

The detective had an easy way about him. The maddog recognized and envied it. The files supervisor was an iron-girdled courthouse veteran who had seen one of everything, and Davenport had her fluttering like a teenage girl. As he watched, Lucas suddenly turned and looked at him and their eyes touched briefly. The maddog recovered and looked down at the file again.

"Who's the dude at the counter?" Lucas asked.

The supervisor looked around him at the maddog, who dropped the file in the return basket and headed for the door. "Attorney. Can't remember the firm, but he's been around a lot lately. He had that Barin kid, you know, that rich kid who drove into the crowd…"

"Yeah." The maddog disappeared through the door and Lucas dismissed him. " Jefferson Sparks. Bad guy. Pimp. I need the latest on him."

"I'll get it. You can use Lori's desk. She's out sick," the supervisor said, pointing at an empty desk behind the business counter.

Sparks had three recent files, each with a slender sheaf of flimsies. Lucas read through them and found a half-dozen references to the Silk Hat Health Club. He picked up the phone, called vice, and asked for the detective he had talked to that morning.

"Is the Silk Hat still run by Shirley Jensen?" he asked when the detective came on the line.

"Yup."

"I find the name in a couple of places in Sparky's file. Could that be where his women are working?"

"Could be. Come to think of it, Shirley used to do the books on the Butterfly."

"Thanks. I'll run out there."

"Stay in touch."

Lucas hung up, tossed the files in the return basket, and glanced at his watch. Just after noon. Shirley should be working.

The Silk Hat was a black-painted storefront squeezed between a used-clothing store and a furniture-rental agency. The neon sign in the window said "Si k Hat t ealth Club" and the glass in both the window and door had been painted as black as the siding. There was a small wrought-iron door light over the door and a wise guy had spray-painted it red. Or maybe not a wise guy, Lucas thought. Maybe the owner.

Lucas pushed through the door into a small waiting room. Two plastic chairs sat on a red shag carpet behind a coffee table. A fish tank full of guppies perched on the sill of the blacked-out window. There were a half-dozen well-thumbed copies of Penthouse magazine on the coffee table. The chairs were facing a six-foot-long business counter that looked like it might have been stolen from a doctor's office. A door beside the counter led into the back of the store.

As Lucas stepped into the waiting room, he heard a buzzer sound in the back, and a few seconds later a young woman in a low-cut black dress stepped up behind the counter. She was chewing gum, and a June-bug tattoo was just visible on the swell of her left breast. She looked like Betty Boop but smelled like Juicy Fruit.

"Yah?"

"I want to talk to Shirley," Lucas said.

"I don't know if she's here."

"Tell her Lucas Davenport is waiting and if she doesn't get her fat ass out here, I'm going to fuck the place up."