John Sandford - Silken Prey

“Is Clay still alive?”

“Far as we know. He was last night. He was hanging out at Smackie’s,” Cochran said.

“If he was paid to kill Roman, he’d be dead himself, and we wouldn’t be finding the body,” Lucas said. “He sure as hell wouldn’t be hanging around Smackie’s.”

“Lucas, what it is, is what it is,” Cochran said.

“You gonna find him?” Lucas asked.

“Sooner or later. Sooner, if he goes back to Smackie’s.”

“We need him right now,” Lucas said. “You know Del?”

“Sure.”

“Del knows all those guys. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go get him and look around town.”

“Hey, that’s fine with me. If you find him first, give me a call—I’ll do the same, if we find him.”

Lucas walked out to his car, calling Del as he went. Del picked up and Lucas asked, “Where are you?”

“In my backyard, looking at a tree,” Del said.

“Why?”

“We got oak wilt,” Del said. “We’re gonna lose it.”

“Look, I’m sorry about your tree, but I need help finding a guy. Right now. I’m going to get some paper on him. Meet me at my place.”

“Half hour?”

“See you then.”

• • •

LUCAS WAS TEN MINUTES from his house, driving fast. On the way, he called his office, talked to his secretary, told her to call Turk, get the specifics on James Clay, including any photos, and e-mail them to him. “I’ll be home in ten minutes. I need it then,” he said.

The house was quiet when he got home. Letty was in school, Sam in preschool, the baby out for a stroll with the housekeeper.

He went into the study, brought up the computer, checked his e-mail, found a bunch of political letters pleading for money, and a file from his secretary. He opened it, found four photos of James Clay along with Minneapolis arrest records and a compilation of Chicago-area arrests from the National Crime Information Center.

Clay had somehow managed to make it to thirty-one, despite a life of gang shootings, street riots, drugs, knife fights, beatings, burglaries, and strong-arm robberies. His last parole officer wrote that there was no chance of rehabilitation, and that the best thing anyone could hope for was that Clay would OD. He sounded pissed.

The photos showed a light-complexioned black man with cornrows, a prison tattoo around his neck—ragged dashes and a caption that said, “Fill to dotted line”—and three or four facial scars, along with a nasty jagged scar on his scalp. A photo taken from his right side demonstrated the effects of being shot in the ear with a handgun with no medical insurance. Some intern had sewn him up and sent him on his way, and now his ear looked like a pork rind.

Lucas was reading down the rap sheet when Del knocked on the door. He walked through the living room to the front door and let him in: “What kind of shape are you in at Smackie’s?”

“They won’t buy me a free beer, but they know me,” Del said. He was dressed in jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and running shoes. “Is that where we’re going?”

“Yeah. To start with.” He picked up all the paper on Clay and thrust it at Del. “I’ll drive. You read.”

They took Lucas’s Lexus SUV, which had gotten a little battered during the last trip to his Wisconsin cabin, when a tree branch fell on the hood. Lucas couldn’t decide whether to get it fixed, or wait until he was closer to trading it in. Something else to think about.

On the way up Mississippi River Road, headed to Minneapolis, Lucas filled Del in on the problem. Del was reading Clay’s sheet, and said, “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t know the guy. Any reason to think that he might be holed up somewhere, with a gun?”

“Turk apparently went in to Smackie’s looking for him, so if he had any friends there, somebody might have told him to start running. If he gets down to Chicago, it could be a while before we find him.”

“I see his mother lives here,” Del said. “There’s a note on the probation report.”

“I hate that. The mothers always turn out to be worse than the children,” Lucas said. “You remember that one mother, those two brothers—”

“I heard about it. Shrake thought it was fun.”

“Sort of was, I guess,” Lucas said. “Especially when he fell off the roof into that thornbush. He was crying like a Packers fan at the Metrodome.”

They crossed the Marshall/Lake Bridge into south Minneapolis, and four minutes later left the car on the broken tarmac of the Pleasure Palace Bar & Grill parking lot. An “A” had fallen off the sign over the bar’s door, so it now said “Ple sure Palace,” but it didn’t make any difference, because everybody who was nobody called it Smackie’s.

The bar was painted Halloween colors of black and orange, supposedly because it was once all black, and when the new owner decided to paint over the flaking black concrete blocks, he ran out of orange halfway through; either that, or got tired of doing the work. The bar had two long, low, nearly opaque windows decorated with neon beer signs and stickers from various police and fire charitable organizations.

Del led the way inside. Smackie’s was dark, and smelled like boiled eggs floating in vinegar, and maybe a pickled pig’s foot. Fifteen men, and four women, half of them black, half white, were scattered down a dozen booths, looking at beers or the TV set mounted in a corner or nothing at all. A bartender was leaning on the back of the bar, eating an egg-salad sandwich. As they came up to the bar, he swallowed and said, “Del.” Nobody else looked at them, because Lucas was so obviously a cop.

Del said, “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Almost a month,” the bartender said.

Del said to Lucas, “He had a hernia operation.”

“Fascinating,” Lucas said. He pulled out a picture of Clay. “You seen this guy?”

The bartender took another bite of the sandwich, chewed, then said, through the masticated bread and egg, “Yeah, the Minneapolis cops already been here. They’re looking for him, too. He was here last night, pretty late, then he went away. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Does he live around here?” Lucas asked.

“Every time I’ve seen him, he was walking, so probably around here somewhere. The Minneapolis cops were asking if his mother comes in here.”

“Does she?” Del asked.

The bartender shrugged. “I don’t know. I never seen him with any old ladies, and we don’t get many old ladies in here.”

“Is he in here pretty regular?” Del asked.

“Yeah, most days.”

Lucas tipped his head toward the people in the booths: “Any of these people know him?”

The bartender looked past him, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so. I don’t pay that much attention to who sits with who. We got a waitress comes in later this afternoon, she’d know better than me.”

“But you think he comes from around here.”

“Yeah, unless he takes a bus. I seen him coming from the direction of the bus stop.”

Del looked at Lucas and shook his head. Not that many people would take a bus to a dive like Smackie’s. It wouldn’t be worth the money, since almost any other place would be better.

Del said, “We’ll check back,” and he and Lucas started for the door. They were almost there when the bartender called, “Hey, guys. C’mere.”

They walked back to the bar and the bartender flicked a finger at the window on the left side of the bar. The glass was dark green and dirty, not easily seen through, but they could see a very short man walking down a street toward the bar. The bartender said, “You owe me.”

Del: “That’s him?”

“Uh-huh.”

• • •

THEY WATCHED THE SHORT MAN until he crossed the street and started toward the bar entrance. Lucas looked around and said, “Better take him outside,” and Del said, “Yeah,” and they went to the door, waited for a few seconds, then pushed through into the daylight. Clay was only fifteen feet away. He saw Lucas, and quick as a rat, turned and started running.