John Sandford - Silken Prey

“What’re you doing next?” Lucas asked.

“I’ve got to talk to the chief about that, but I’m inclined to try to figure out who was the least likely to have dumped the porn to Tubbs, and offer him immunity for information.”

“When are you going to do it?”

“After I talk to the chief, I’ll have to get with the lawyers . . . I’m thinking it couldn’t be any earlier than this evening, and most likely tomorrow.”

“Keep talking to me,” Lucas said.

• • •

ON THE WAY BACK to his office, he called Smalls:

“How’s the campaign going?”

“Not well: that bitch has got everybody she knows whispering that the porn was really mine.”

“I thought she told the TV people that her campaign wasn’t doing that, and she’d fire anybody who did,” Lucas said.

“Well, of course she said that,” Smalls said. “She’s lying through her teeth.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what I’d do.”

Lucas said, “Okay. Listen, we’re making more progress, but we need to find Tubbs’s accomplice in your office. That’ll break the thing wide open. If this was done for ideological reasons, if it was done by a spy, then somebody in your campaign has got to have doubts about that person. It’s not that easy to hide your basic beliefs . . . especially if you’re a college kid. So, I need somebody, not you but maybe your campaign manager, to talk to everybody about who that might be. We’re trying to catch a spy. I’m going to work it from the other end, the Democratic side, see if I can get them to cough somebody up.”

Smalls was silent for a moment, then said, “I can do that. In fact, if we leak to the TV people that we’re looking for a spy . . . that might help convince them that there really was a dirty trick.”

“Whatever,” Lucas said. “I’m not really trying to get you reelected.”

Smalls laughed and said, “Gotta be killing a good liberal like you.”

“Ah, I’m not that political. Anyway, if you could do that, I’ll start on the other side.”

“Four days to the election,” Smalls said. “If it ain’t done by Sunday, I’m screwed.”

• • •

LUCAS CALLED KIDD: “Anything happening?”

“Not yet. It’s delicate.”

• • •

FROM HIS OFFICE, he called Rose Marie Roux and asked, “What Democratic Party operator would be most likely to know who is spying on who?”

“Well, that’d be Don Schariff, but don’t tell him I said so. Why?”

“I’m going to jack him up,” Lucas said. “Where can I find him?”

Schariff had an office at the DFL headquarters—Minnesota’s Democratic Party was technically called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party—and Lucas found him there, by phone, and said he wanted to come over.

“Should I be worried?” Schariff asked.

Lucas said, “I don’t know. Should you?”

“I’m wondering if I should have a lawyer sit in?”

Lucas said, “I don’t know. Should you?”

The DFL headquarters was a low white-brick building in a St. Paul business park across the Mississippi from downtown that possibly looked hip for fifteen minutes after it was built but no longer did. Lucas talked to a receptionist, who made a call. Schariff came out and got him, and said, “We’re down in the conference room.”

“Who’s we?” Lucas asked.

“Me and Daryl Larson, our attorney,” Schariff said. He was a stocky, dark-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and dark-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with a couple of pens in a plastic pocket protector. In any other circumstance, Lucas would have been willing to arrest him on the basis of the pocket protector alone. “I asked, and everybody said when you’re talking to a cop . . . especially one investigating the Grant-Smalls fight . . .”

“Okay,” Lucas said.

Larson was a tall, thin man whom Lucas knew through Weather’s association with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Larson raised money for the orchestra, usually by wheedling rich wives; it’d worked with Weather. When Lucas stepped into the room, Larson put down the paper he’d been reading and stood to shake hands. “Lucas, nice to see you. How’s Weather?”

“Broke. She’s broke. She’s got no money left. She’s wondering how we’re going to feed the kids.”

“Hate to hear that,” Larson said, with a toothy smile. “I’ll call her with my condolences.”

The pleasantries out of the way, they settled into the conference chairs and Lucas outlined some of what he knew and believed about Tubbs’s disappearance. He finished by saying, “You guys are probably not going to want to talk about this, because when the media puts Tubbs’s disappearance together with the porn trick . . . it’s gonna look bad.”

“I think we can agree on that,” Larson said for Schariff, who’d kept his mouth shut. “But how does this involve Don?”

“I’ve been told, by somebody who knows these things, that Don knows a lot about the, mmm, tactical maneuverings of the party, and everybody involved in these things.”

“I don’t do dirty tricks,” Schariff said.

Larson put up a finger to shut him up, and said to Lucas, “Go on.”

“So the technical fact of the matter is, the booby trap on Smalls’s computer had to be set the same morning it went off. Tubbs wasn’t there that morning. Hadn’t been there for a few days,” Lucas said. “So, he had an accomplice. That accomplice might have been acting out of pure greed . . . Tubbs might have paid him. But it’s equally likely that it’s an ideological thing, that Tubbs knew that there was a spy among the volunteers and got the guy to set the trap. Since Don knows most of the party’s operators . . . well, we thought he might also know who the spy is. If there is one.”

“Getting information like that isn’t a crime,” Larson said.

“I didn’t say it was—but framing Smalls is. Anybody who helped the spy put that stuff on the computer, or knows about it and doesn’t say so, is also in trouble. Conspiracy and all that. Prison time,” Lucas said. “I’m not trying to be impolite here, but you see where I’m going.”

Schariff said, “Well, I—”

Larson put the finger up again and said, “No.” Then to Lucas, “Don and I have to talk. I’ll call you later today.”

“How about in ten minutes?” Lucas asked. “Things are getting really tight with the election.”

“Later today,” Larson said. And he wouldn’t budge.

• • •

OUT ON THE SIDEWALK, Lucas took a phone call from Ruffe Ignace, a crime reporter for the Star Tribune : “We’re getting all kinds of different signals on Smalls. Smalls says he’s been cleared by Rose Marie Roux, and she says she’s made her statement, which, when you look at it, doesn’t quite clear him. In the meantime, people are whispering to our political people that the porn was his. Which way should I lean?”

“I’d have to go off the record on that,” Lucas said. “Better yet, why don’t you call Rose Marie directly?”

“She tends to blow me off,” Ignace said. “Anyway, could we stay a little bit on the record? A highly placed source in the investigation?”

“I’m the only one investigating, so that won’t work,” Lucas said. “I need to go completely off.”

“Shit. All right, we’re off the record,” Ignace said. “Which way should I lean?”

“Smalls was framed. . . . He’s innocent.”

“Thanks. We’re almost even now. You only owe me a little bit.”

“Call me back in one minute,” Lucas said. “I might have something else for you.”

“You in the can?”

“No, I’m in a parking lot, leaning on my car,” Lucas said. “I need to think. One minute.”