John Sandford - Rules of Prey

The woman looked at him for a second, working her jaw until the gum snapped. She was not impressed. "Pretty tough," she said laconically. "I got a guy here you might want to talk to. Before you fuck the place up."

"Who?"

She looked him over and decided he might recognize the name. "Bald Peterson."

"Bald? Yeah. Tell him to get his ass out here too," Lucas said enthusiastically. He reached under his jacket and took out the P7 and the woman's eyes widened and she put up her hands as though to fend off a bullet. Lucas grinned at her and kicked the front panel of the counter and it splintered and he kicked it again and the woman turned and started running toward the back.

"Bald, you cocksucker, come out here," Lucas shouted into the back. He reached across the counter, grabbed the bottom side of the top sheet and pulled and it came up with a groan and he let it go and he kicked the front panel again and a piece of board broke off. "Bald, you motherfucker…"

Bald Peterson was six and a half feet tall and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds. He had had a minor career as a boxer, a slightly bigger one on the pro wrestling tour. Some people on Lake Street were sure he was psychotic. Lucas was sure he was not. Bald had attacked Lucas once, years before, when Lucas was still on patrol. It happened in a parking lot outside a nightclub, one-on-one. Bald used his fists. Lucas used a nine-inch lead-weighted sap wrapped in bull leather. Bald went down in six seconds of the first round. And after he went down, Lucas used his feet and a heavy steel flashlight and broke several of the bones in Bald's arms, most of the bones in his hands, the lower bones in both legs, the bones in the arches of his feet, his jaw, his nose, and several ribs. He also kicked him in the balls a half-dozen times.

While they were waiting for the ambulance, Bald woke up and Lucas gripped him by the shirt and told him that if he ever had any more trouble with him, he would cut off his nose, his tongue, and his dick. Lucas was suspended for investigation of possible use of excessive force. Bald was in the hospital for four months and a wheelchair for another six.

If Bald had been psychotic, Lucas thought, he would have come after Lucas with a gun, a knife, or, if he was really crazy, with his fists, as soon as he could walk. He didn't. He never looked at Lucas again, and walked wide around him.

"Bald, you dickhead…" Lucas shouted. He kicked the front panel of the desk and it caved in. There was a clattering on a back stairs and he stopped kicking and Shirley Jensen hurried up the hallway toward the counter. Lucas put the P7 away.

"You asshole," Jensen yelled.

"Shut up, Shirley," Lucas said. "Where's Bald?"

"He's not here."

"The other cunt said he was."

"He's not, Davenport, I mean, Jesus Christ on a crutch, look at this mess…" Jensen was in her late forties, her face lined from years of sunlamps, bourbon, cigarettes, and potatoes. She was a hundred pounds overweight. The fat bobbled under her chin, on her shoulders and upper arms, and quivered like jelly beneath her gold lame belt. Her face crinkled and Lucas thought she might cry.

"I want to know where Sparky went."

"I didn't know he was gone," she said, still looking at the wreckage of the counter.

Lucas leaned forward until his face was only four inches from her nose. Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed. "Shirley, I'm going to tear this place up. My neck is on the line with this maddog killer, and Sparky might have some information I need. I'm going to wait here…" He looked at his watch, as though timing her. "Five minutes. Then I'm coming over the counter. You go find out where he is."

"Sparky knows something about the maddog?" The idea startled her.

"That was one of his girls who got ripped last night. The maddog's starting on hookers. It's a lot easier than scouting out the straights."

"Don't kick my counter no more," Shirley said, and she turned and waddled down the hallway and out of sight.

A few seconds later the front door opened and Lucas stepped back and away from it. A narrow man with a gray face, thin shoulders, and a seventy-dollar suit stepped inside, blinked at the ruined counter, and looked at Lucas.

"Jeez, what happened?"

"There's a police raid going on," Lucas said cheerfully. "But if you just want to exercise, you know, like push-ups, and drink some fruit juice, that's okay. Go on back."

The narrow man's Adam's apple bobbed twice and he said, "That's okay," and disappeared out the door. Lucas shrugged and dropped into one of the plastic chairs and picked up a Penthouse. " I didn't believe things like this really happened, " he read, " but before I tell you about it, maybe I should describe myself. I'm a junior at a big midwestern university and the coeds around here say I'm pretty well-equipped. A girlfriend once measured me out at nine inches of rock-hard -"

"Davenport…" Shirley emerged from the back.

"Yeah." He dropped the magazine on the table.

"Don't know where he is exactly, what hotel," she said, "but it's like in Cedar Rapids, some downtown hotel-"

"Iowa?"

"Yeah. He trolls through there a couple of times a year, Sioux City, Des Moines, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids. So one of his girls says he's down there, she don't know exactly the place, but she says it's a hotel downtown."

"Okay." Lucas nodded. "But if he's not there…"

"Fuck you, Davenport, you broke my desk."

Jennifer liked the flowers. Each table had two carnations, one red and one white, in a long-necked vase. The restaurant was run by a Vietnamese family, refugees who left a French restaurant behind in Saigon. The old man and his wife financed it, their kids ran the place and cooked, the in-laws worked the tables and bar and cash register, the ten-year-old grandchildren bused the tables and washed up.

"The big problem with this place," Jennifer said, "is that it's about to be discovered."

"That's okay," Lucas said. "They deserve it."

"I suppose." Jennifer looked at the red wine in her glass, watching the light reflections thrown through the Venetian blinds from the street. "What are we going to do?" she asked after a moment of silence.

Lucas leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "We can't go on like this. You've really hammered me. Daniel knows about our relationship, and every time something breaks in the press, he's looking at me. Even if it's Channel Eight."

"I'm done reporting, at least for now," she answered. She tilted her head and let her hair fall away from her face, and Lucas' eyes traveled around the soft curve of her chin and he thought he was in love.

"Yeah, but if you get a lead… tell me you won't feed it to one of your pals," he said.

Jennifer sipped the wine, set the glass on the table, ran her finger around its rim, and suddenly looked up into his eyes. "Did you sleep with McGowan?"

"Goddammit, Jennifer," Lucas said in exasperation. "I did not. Have not."

"Okay. But I'm not sure about you," she said. "Somebody's feeding stuff to her, and whoever he is, he's tight with the investigation."

"It's not me," Lucas said. He leaned forward and said, "Besides, the stuff she's getting…" He stopped, bit his lip. "I could tell you something, but I'm afraid you'd quote me and really louse me up."

"Is it a story?" she asked.

Lucas considered. "It could be, maybe. It'd be pretty unusual. You'd be cutting on McGowan."

Jennifer shook her head. "I wouldn't do that. Nobody in TV does that. It's too dangerous, you'd set off a war. So tell me. If it's like you say, I swear nobody will hear it from me."

Lucas looked at her a minute. "Really?"

"Really."

"You know," he said casually, as though it were of no importance, "I've threatened to stop talking to you in the past, but there were always reasons to get together again. I could always find a way to excuse what you did."