Текст книги "Lucas Davenport Novels 1-5"

Автор книги: John Sandford

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Текущая страница: 39 (всего у книги 105 страниц)

CHAPTER

22

Sam Crow raged through the house while Aaron sat silently in the La-Z-Boy, bathed in flickering light from the television set. Shadow Love’s picture was everywhere, views from the front and both sides, close-ups of his tattooed arms.

“That fuckin’ kid is ruinin’ us,” Sam shouted. He crowded against Barbara, who, frightened by his anger, wrapped and rewrapped her hands with a damp dish towel and pretended to do dishes between bouts of weeping. “How could you fuckin’ go along?”

“I didn’t want to,” she cried, “I didn’t know . . .”

“You knew.” Sam spat. “For Christ’s sakes, did you think he was delivering a fuckin’ Christmas card?”

“I didn’t know . . .”

“Where’d you leave him?”

“He got out by Loring Park . . . .”

“Where was he going?”

“I don’t know . . . . He said you wouldn’t want him here. He said he had to work alone . . . .”

“Fuck meee,” Sam called out. “Fuck meee . . . .”

Aaron appeared in the doorway. “C’mere, look at this.”

Sam followed him back to the living room. For the past half-hour, they’d seen report after report from Minneapolis: from the hillside where Hart’s body had been found, from the chief’s office, from Indian Country. Man-in-the-street interviews. Lily, working the crowd, an NYPD badge pinned to her coat. People talking to her, thrusting their faces in front of the camera.

Now that had changed. A room with light blue walls. An American flag. A podium with a circular American-eagle seal under a battery of microphones, and a man in a gray double-breasted suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket.

“It’s Clay,” Aaron said.

“ . . . terrorist group has now begun striking at its own people. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous but will, I hope, make it obvious to the Indian people that these killers don’t care any more about Indians than they do about whites . . . .”

And later:

“ . . . worked with Indian people during my entire career, and I’m asking my old friends of all Indian nations to call us at the FBI with any information about this group . . .”

And more:

“ . . . I will be accompanied by a task force of forty specialists, men and women from around the nation who will be brought in to break this ring. We are prepared to stay in Minnesota until we are successful in this endeavor. We will remain in full and immediate contact with the Washington center . . . .”

“Lawrence Duberville Clay,” Sam said, almost reverently, as he stared at the man on the TV screen. “Hurry up, motherfucker . . . .”

“There’s somebody here,” Barbara called from the kitchen, fear thick in her voice. “Somebody on the porch.”

The doorbell rang as Aaron hurried into the back bedroom, where he had been sleeping, and returned with an old blue .45. The bell rang again and then the front door pushed open. A dark figure, short hair, black eyes; Aaron, flattened against the hallway wall, at first thought it might be Shadow Love, but the man was too big . . . .

“Leo,” Aaron called in delight. A smile lit the old man’s face and he dropped the pistol to his side. “Sam, it’s Leo. Leo’s home.”

CHAPTER

23

“You’re sleeping with that New York cop. Lily.” Jennifer looked at him over the breakfast bar. Lucas was holding a glass of orange juice and looked down at it, as if hoping it held an answer. The newspaper sat next to his hand. The headline read: CROWS KILL COP.

He wasn’t a cop, Lucas thought. After a moment he glanced away from the table and then back at the newspaper and nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“Are you going to again?” Her face was pale, tired, her voice low and whispery.

“I can’t help it,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her. He turned the glass in his hand, swirling the juice.

“Is this . . . a long-term thing?” Jennifer asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Look at me,” she said.

“No.” He kept his eyes down.

“You can come back and see the baby, but call first. Once a week for now. I won’t continue our sexual relationship and I don’t want to see you. You can see the baby on Saturday nights, when I have a sitter. After Lily goes back to New York, we’ll talk. We’ll make some kind of arrangement so you can visit the baby on a regular basis.”

Now he looked up. “I love you,” he said.

Tears started in her eyes. “We’ve been through this before. You know what I feel like? I feel pathetic. I don’t like feeling pathetic. I won’t put up with it.”

“You’re not pathetic. When I look at you . . .”

“I don’t care what you see. Or anybody else. I’m pathetic in my own mind. So fuck you, Davenport.”

When Jennifer left, Lucas wandered around the house for a few moments, then drifted into the bedroom, undressed, and stood under a scalding shower. Daniel wanted every man on the street, but after Lucas had toweled off, he stood in front of an open closet, looking at the array of slacks and shirts, and then crawled back into bed and lapsed into unconsciousness. The Crows, Lily, Jennifer, the baby and game monsters from Drorg all crawled through his head. Every once in a while he felt the pull of the street scene outside Hood’s apartment: he’d see the bricks, the negotiating cop, a slice of Lily’s face, her .45 coming up. Each time he fought it down and stepped into a new dream fragment.

At one o’clock, Lily called. He didn’t answer the phone, but listened as her voice came in through his answering machine.

“This is Lily,” she said. “I was hoping we could get some lunch, but you haven’t called and I don’t know where you are and I’m starving so I’m going out now. If you get in, give me a call and we can go out to dinner. See you.”

He thought about picking up the phone, but didn’t, and went back to the bed. The phone rang again a half-hour later. This time it was Elle: “This is Elle, just calling to see how you are. You can call me at the residence.”

Lucas picked up the receiver. “Elle, I’m here,” he croaked.

“Hello. How are you?”

“A down day,” he said.

“Still the shotgun dream?”

“It’s still there. And sometimes during the day. The sensation of the steel.”

“It’s a classic flashback. We see it all the time with burn victims and shooting victims and people who’ve gone through other trauma. It’ll go away, believe me. Hold on.”

“I’m holding on, but it’s scary. Nothing’s ever gotten to me like this.”

“Are you going to play Thursday night?” Elle asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you come a half-hour early? We can talk.”

“I’ll try to make it.”

The bed was like a drug. He didn’t want it, but he fell back on the sheets and in a minute was gone again. At two o’clock, suddenly touched with fear, he sat up, sweating, staring at the clock.

What? Nothing. Then the cold ring of the shotgun muzzle rapped him behind the ear. Lucas clapped a hand over the spot and let his head fall forward on his chest.

“Stop,” he said to himself. He could feel the sweat literally pop out on his forehead. “Stop this shit.”

Lily called again at five o’clock and he let it go. At seven, the phone rang a fourth time. “This is Anderson,” a voice said to the answering machine. “I’ve got something . . . .”

Lucas picked up the phone. “I’m here,” he said. “What is it?”

“Okay. Lucas. God damn.” There was the sound of computer printouts rustling. Anderson was excited; Lucas could picture him going through his notes. Anderson looked, talked and sometimes acted like an aging hillbilly. A few months earlier he had incorporated his private computer business and was, Lucas suspected, on his way to becoming rich with customized police software. “I went into Larry’s genealogical files for the Minnesota Sioux—you know how he had them stored in the city database?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I looked up all the Crows. They were all too old—not many Crows in Minnesota. So I got a typist and had her put all the names from Larry’s file into my machine in a sort routine . . . .”

“What?”

“Never mind. She put them in my machine in a list. Then I went over to State Vital Records and found all the women named Love who had babies between 1945 and 1965. You said this Shadow Love dude looked like he was in his thirties . . . .”

“Yeah.”

“So I pulled all of those. There were a hell of a lot of them, more than four hundred. But I could eliminate all the girl babies. That got rid of all but a hundred and ninety-seven. Then I put the names of the fathers into my machine—”

“So you could run them against the genealogy—”

“Right. I got about halfway through and found a Rose E. Love. Mother of Baby Boy Love. No name for the kid, but that wasn’t uncommon. Get this. I don’t know how she did it, but she got them to list two names in the space for the father.”

“Interesting . . .”

“Aaron Sunders and Samuel Close.”

“Shit, Aaron and Sam, it’s gotta be . . .”

“Their race is listed as ‘other.’ This was back in the fifties, so it’s probably Indian. And they turn up on Larry’s genealogy. They are the grandsons of a guy named Richard Crow. Richard Crow had two daughters, and when they married, the Crow name ended. We got Sunders and Close—but I’d bet my left nut those are the real names for Aaron and Sam Crow.”

“God damn, Harmon, that’s fuckin’ terrific. Have you run—”

“They both had Minnesota driver’s licenses, but only way back, before the picture IDs. The last one for Sunders was in 1964. I called South Dakota, but they were shut down for the day. I asked for a special run and the duty guy told me to go shit in my hat. So then I rousted the feebs and they got on the line to the SoDak people. They got to the duty guy and now he’s shitting in his hat. Anyway, we got the special run. They’re checking the records now. I figure with everything that’s happened, that’s the most likely place . . . .”

“How about NCIC?”

“We’re running that now.”

“We ought to check prison records for Minnesota and the Dakotas and the federal system. Be sure you check the feds. The federal system gets the bad-asses off the reservations . . . .”

“Yeah, I’ve got that going. If the Crows were inside in the last ten or fifteen years, it’ll show at the NCIC. The feebs said they’ll check with the Bureau of Prisons to see about their records before that.”

“How about vehicles? Besides the truck?” Lucas asked.

“We’re looking for registrations. I doubt they’d leave a car on the street, but who knows?”

“Any chance that Rose Love is still alive?”

“No. Since I was over there anyway, I went through the death certificates. She died in ‘seventy-eight in a fire. It was listed as an accident. It was a house in Uptown.”

“Shit.” Lucas pulled at his lip and tried to think of other data-run possibilities.

“I went through old city directories and followed her all the way back to the fifties,” Anderson continued. “She was in the ’fifty-one book, in an apartment. Then she missed a couple of years and was in ’fifty-four, in an apartment. Then in ’fifty-five she was in the Uptown house. She stayed there until she died.”

“All right. This is great,” Lucas said. “Have you talked to Daniel?”

“Nobody’s at his house, that’s why I called you. I had to tell somebody. It freaked me out, the way it all came out of the machines, boom-boom-boom. It was like a TV show.”

“Get us some fuckin’ photos, Harmon. We’ll paper the streets with them.”

Anderson’s discoveries brought a flush of energy. Lucas paced through the house, still naked, excited. If they could put the Crows’ faces on the street, they’d have them. They couldn’t hide out forever. Names were almost nothing. Pictures . . .

Half an hour later Lucas was back in bed, falling into unconsciousness again. Just before he went out, he thought, So this is what it’s like to be nuts . . . .

“Lucas?” It was Lily.

“Yup.”

He looked down at the bed. He could see the outline of where his body had been from the sweat stains. The dreams had stayed with him until he woke, a little after seven in the morning. He reached out, popped up the window shade, and light cut into the gloom. A moment later, the phone rang.

“Jesus, where were you yesterday?” Lily asked.

“In and out,” he lied. “Tell you the truth, I went back to my old net, to see if any of my regulars had heard anything. They’re not Indians, but they’re on the street . . . .”

“Get anything?” she asked.

“Naw.”

“Daniel’s pissed. You missed the afternoon meet.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Lucas said. He yawned. “Have you had any breakfast yet?”

“I just got up.”

“Wait there. I’ll get cleaned up and come get you.”

“Turn on a TV before you do that. Channel Eight. But hurry.”

“What’s on?”

“Go look,” she said, and hung up.

Lucas punched up the TV and found an airport press conference with Lawrence Duberville Clay.

“ . . . in cooperation with local enforcement officials . . . expect to have some action soon . . .”

“Bullshit, local officials,” Lucas muttered at the television. The camera pulled back and Lucas noticed the screen of bodyguards. There were a half-dozen of them around Clay, professionals, light suits, identical lapel pins, backs to their man, watching the crowd. “Thinks he’s the fuckin’ president . . .”

Lucas’ heart jumped when Lily came out of the hotel elevator. The angles of her face. Her stride. The way she brushed at her bangs and grinned when she saw him . . .

Anderson had a stack of files for the morning meeting. South Dakota, he said, had files on Sunders and Close. There were photos in the driver’s-license files, bad but recent. And when the white names were run through the NCIC files, a list of hits came back, along with fingerprints. With a direct comparison available, fingerprint specialists confirmed that Sunders and Close were the men the Minneapolis cops had just missed in the apartment raid. An FBI computer specialist said later that the wide-base search of the fingerprint files would have identified them in “another four to six hours, max.”

The South Dakota files had been faxed to Minneapolis, and the best possible reproductions of the driver’s-license photos arrived on an early-morning plane. Copies were being made for distribution to all the local police agencies, the FBI and the media.

“Press conference at eleven o’clock,” Daniel said. “I’ll hand out the photographs of the Crows.”

“We got some more coming from the feds,” Anderson announced. “Sunders spent time in federal prison, fifteen years ago. He shot a guy out at Rosebud, wounded him. He spent a year inside.”

“Old man Andretti has agreed to put up an unofficial reward for information leading to the Crows. They don’t have to be arrested or anything. He’ll pay just to find out where they are,” Daniel said. He looked at Lucas. “I’d like to get that out to the media through the back door . . . . I’ll confirm it, but I don’t want to come right out and say there’s a price on their heads. I want to keep some distance from it. I don’t want it to sound like we’re turning a bunch of vigilantes loose on the Indians. We’ve got to live with these people later.”

Lucas nodded. “All right. I can set that up. I’ll get the guy from TV3 to ask a question at the press conference.”

Daniel flipped through his Xerox copies of the rap sheets. “It doesn’t seem like they’ve done much. A couple of small-time crooks. Then this.”

“But look at the pattern,” Lily said. “They weren’t small-time crooks like most small-time crooks. They weren’t breaking into Coke machines or running a pigeon-drop. They were organizing, just like Larry said.”

The files on Sunders and Close showed a sporadic history of small crime, except for the shooting that sent Sunders to prison. Most of it was trespassing on ranches, unlawful discharge of firearms, unlawful threats.

The latest charge was six years old, on Sunders, who had been arrested for trespassing. According to the complaint file, he had entered private property and allegedly damaged a bulldozer. He denied damaging the bulldozer, but he did tell police that the rancher was putting a service trail through a Dakota burial ground.

Close’s file was thinner than Sunders’. Most of the charges against him were misdemeanors, for loitering or vagrancy, back when those were legal charges. There was a notation by a Rapid City officer that Close was believed to have been responsible for a series of burglaries in the homes of government officials, but he had never been caught.

On a separate slip of paper was a report from an FBI intelligence unit that both Sunders and Close had been seen at the siege of Wounded Knee, but when the siege ended, they were not among the Indians in the town.

“I’d say they’ve got a deep organization, going all the way back to the sixties, and maybe back to the forties,” Lily said, looking at the file over Lucas’ shoulder. A lock of her hair touched his ear, and tickled. He moved closer and let her scent settle over him. He had not yet told her about Jennifer. The thought of it made him uncomfortable.

“The Star Tribune this morning called them our first experience with dedicated domestic terrorists,” Lucas said.

“They picked that up from the Times,” Lily said. “The Times had an editorial Friday, said the same thing.”

Daniel nodded gloomily. “It’ll get worse when they do whatever it is they’re planning to do. Something big.”

“You don’t think . . . like the airport?” Anderson asked.

“What?” asked Sloan.

“You know, like the Palestinians? I mean, if you were going to do something big, shooting up the airport or blowing up a plane would do it . . . .”

“Oh, Christ,” Daniel said. He gnawed on his lower lip, then got up and took a turn around his desk. “If we go out there and suggest tighter controls and the word gets out, the airlines’ll take it right in the ass. And I’ll be right there with them, gettin’ it in the same place.”

“If we don’t tell them, and something happens . . .”

“How about just a light touch . . . just talk to the security, a hint to the FBI, maybe put some people out there undercover?” suggested Sloan.

“Maybe,” said Daniel, sitting down again. He looked at Anderson. “Do you really think . . . ?”

“Not really,” Anderson said.

“I don’t think so either. All the people they’ve hit so far have been symbols of something. Shooting up an airport full of innocent people wouldn’t prove anything.”

“How about the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” Lucas asked. “A lot of old-line Indians hate the BIA.”

“Now that’s something,” Daniel said, his eyes narrowing. “An institution instead of an individual . . . It’d be a logical step, to go after the people they see as their oppressors. I better talk to the feebs. Maybe they could put a couple of people in the BIA office.”

“Wait a minute,” Lucas said. He stood up and walked around his chair, thinking. Then he looked at Daniel and said, “Jesus—it could be Clay.”

They all thought about it for a moment, and Daniel shook his head. “Everything they’ve done has been pretty well planned. Nobody knew that Clay was coming in until the last couple of days.”

“No, no, think about it,” said Lucas, jabbing a finger at Daniel. “If you look at this whole . . . progression . . . in the right way, you could see it as a lure to pull Clay in. The terrorist angle, the publicity . . . . That’s exactly the kind of thing Clay’d bite on.”

“That’s an awful big jump,” Daniel argued. “They couldn’t be sure he’d come. You could wind up killing a half-dozen people and getting all of your own people killed, and Clay might sit on his ass in Washington.”

“And why Clay?” Sloan asked.

“Because he’s a big target and he’s got a bad rep among Indians,” Lily said. “You remember that hassle out in Arizona with the two factions on that reservation? I can’t remember what the deal was . . . .”

“Yeah, he sent in all those agents to kick ass . . .” Anderson said.

“If I remember right, there was an article in Time that said Clay has had a bunch of run-ins with Indians over the years. Doesn’t like them . . .” Lucas said.

“The Crows can’t get at him,” said Sloan. “He’s got an unbelievable screen of bodyguards—you should have seen them this morning. If the Crows tried to shoot their way through them . . . I mean, these guys got Uzis in their armpits.”

“All it takes is a guy on a rooftop with a deer rifle,” said Lucas.

“Ah, shit,” said Daniel. He whacked the desktop with an open palm. “We can’t take a chance. We’ll talk to Clay’s security people. And let’s put some people around his hotel. Up on the rooftops, in the parking garage. Just put some uniforms in street clothes . . . . Christ, the guy is a pain in the ass.”

“We oughta take a look at the hotel too,” Lucas said. He was still moving around the office, thinking about it. The idea fit: but how could the Crows get at Clay? “Look for a hole in the security . . . .”

“I still don’t think it’s Clay. It’s gotta be something they could plan for,” Daniel said. “Keep thinking about it. Let’s get some more ideas going.”

The meeting broke up, but ten minutes before the press conference, Daniel called them back together.

“I’m going to tell you this quick and I don’t want any argument. I’ve been talking to Clay and his people, and the mayor. Clay will come here and will make the announcement about the identification of the Crows. He’ll pass out the photos.”

“God damn it,” said Anderson, white-faced. “That’s our work . . . .”

“Take it easy, Harmon. There’s a lot going on here . . . .”

“They bought the information from us, is that right?” Anderson demanded. “What’d we get?”

“You won’t believe it.” Daniel smiled a self-satisfied smile, spread his arms and peered at the ceiling, as though receiving manna from heaven. “You’re looking at the new Midwest on-line information-processing center . . . .”

“Holy shit,” Anderson whispered. “I thought Kansas City had that wrapped.”

“They just came unwrapped. We’re doing the deal right now.”

“Our own Cray II,” Anderson said. “The fastest fucking machine ever built . . .”

“What a crock of shit,” said Lily.

“Let’s try to keep that opinion to ourselves,” Daniel said. “After the press conference, Clay wants to talk to the team. I think he wants to give us a pep talk.”

“What a crock of shit,” Lily repeated.

“Did you suggest that he might be the target?” asked Lucas.

“Yeah,” Daniel nodded. “He agreed with me that it was unlikely, but he also went along with the idea of a screen of cops on the buildings around the hotel. And his guys are looking for holes in the security.”

Four advance men arrived ahead of Clay. One waited outside City Hall, where Clay’s car would unload. The other three, guided by a cop, walked the hallway to the room where the press conference would be held. Lucas and Lily, lounging outside the door of the conference room, watched them coming. Two of the men stopped, a pace away.

“Police officers?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Lucas.

“Got an ID?”

Lucas shrugged. “Sure.”

“I’d like to see it,” the advance man said. His tone was courteous, but his eyes were not.

Lucas looked at Lily, who nodded and flashed her NYPD case. Lucas handed over his ID. “Okay,” said the advance man, still courteous. “Could you point out the other plainclothes people inside . . . ?”

It was quick and professional. In five minutes, the room was secure. When Clay arrived, he got out of his car alone, but two more advance men blocked either end of the car. The mayor came out and met Clay at the car, and they walked, chatting as casual friends, into City Hall. If any of the newsies noticed that the two men were walking through an invisible corridor of professional security, none of them said anything.

Clay and Daniel did the press conference together, the mayor beaming from the wings. Anderson and an FBI functionary passed out photos of the Crows.

“An hour from now, the Crows won’t be able to go on the streets,” Lucas said as the conference ended.

“We’ve had Shadow Love’s face out there, and that hasn’t gotten anywhere . . .” Lily said, when he got in the car beside her.

“We’re tightening down. It’ll work, with a little time.”

“Maybe. I just hope they don’t pull some shit first. We better get down to Daniel’s office for this meeting with Clay.”

Sloan, Lucas, Lily, Anderson, Del and a half-dozen other cops had been waiting ten minutes when Daniel and Clay arrived, trailed by the mayor, two of Clay’s bodyguards and a half-dozen FBI agents.

“Your show, Larry,” Daniel said.

Clay nodded, stepped behind Daniel’s desk and gazed around the crowded office. He looked like an athlete gone to fat, Lucas thought. You wouldn’t call him porky, but you could get away with “heavyset.”

“I always like to talk to local police officers, especially in serious situations like this where everything depends on cooperation. I spent several years on the streets as a patrolman—got to the rank of sergeant, in fact . . .” Clay began, and he nodded at a uniform sergeant standing in the corner of the room. He was a solid speaker, picking out each local cop in turn, fixing him with his eyes, soliciting agreement and cooperation. Lily glanced up at Lucas after Clay had given them the treatment, and cracked a smile.

“Good technique,” she whispered.

Lucas shrugged.

“ . . . wide experience with Indians, and I will tell you this. Indian rules are not our rules, are not the rules of a rational, progressive society. That statement—I’d prefer to keep it in this room—is not a matter of prejudice, although it can be twisted to sound that way. But it’s a solid fact; and most Indians themselves recognize it. But we don’t have two sets of rules in America. We have law, and it applies to everybody . . . .”

“Heil Hitler,” Lucas muttered.

When they finished, Clay whipped out of the building in his cloud of bodyguards.

“Let’s go look at his hotel,” Lucas suggested.

“All right,” Lily said. “Though I’m starting to have my doubts. His guys are pretty good.”

Clay’s chief of security was a nondescript, pale-eyed man who looked like a desk clerk until he moved. Then he looked like a viper.

“We’ve got it nailed down,” he said after Lucas and Lily identified themselves. “But if you think you might see something, I’d be happy to walk you through.”

“Why?” asked Lucas.

“Why what?”

“Why are you happy to walk us through, if it’s all nailed down?”

“I never figured myself to be the smartest guy in the world,” the security man said. “I can always learn something.”

Lucas looked at him for a minute, then turned to Lily. “You’re right. They’re good,” he said.

They took the tour anyway. Clay was on the fourteenth floor. There were higher buildings around, but none closer than a half-mile.

“Couldn’t take him through a window,” the security man said.

“How about something set up in advance? Clay’s stayed at this hotel before, right?”

“Like what?”

Lucas shrugged. “A bomb in an elevator?”

“We sniffed the place out. Routine,” the security man said.

“How about a suicide run? The Crows are crazy . . . .”

“We’ve checked the staff, of course. No Indians at all, nobody with the kind of background that we’d worry about. Most of them are career people, been here a while. A few new people on the desk and kitchen staff, but we screen them out when the boss comes and goes . . . . And when he does come and go, we check the lobby and the street first. He’s in and out in a hurry, with no warning. So it wouldn’t be anybody on the street.”

“Hmmph,” said Lucas.

They were headed back down in the elevator and Lucas asked, “Is there any way to get up on top of the elevator from the basement or the roof, ride up that way?”

The security man allowed himself a small grin. “I’m not going to talk about that,” he said, glancing at Lucas. “But in a word, no.”

“You’ve got the elevators wired,” said Lily.

The security man shrugged as the elevator stopped at the third floor. An elderly woman wearing a fur wrap got on, peered nearsightedly at the lighted buttons and finally pushed the button for the second floor. A room-service waiter pushed a dinner cart past the elevators just as the doors were closing.

“How about a disguise?” Lucas asked after the old lady had gotten off. “What if somebody came in disguised as an old lady . . .”

“Metal detectors would pick up the gun.”

“ . . . and had a gun stashed on the third floor. Rode up to the third floor, picked it up and then went up to fourteen . . .”

The security man shrugged again. “That’s a fantasy. And when they got up there, they’d have to shoot their way past three trained agents. And the boss is armed, and he knows how to use it.”

Lucas nodded. “All right. But I got a bad feeling,” he said.

He and Lily left the security man in the lobby and headed for the doors. Just as they were about to go out, Lucas said, “Wait a minute,” and turned back.

“Hey,” he called to the security man. “How did that room-service food get up on three?”

The security man looked at Lucas, then at Lily, then at the elevators.

“Let’s go ask,” he said.

“In a dumbwaiter,” a cook told them. He pointed to an alcove, where they could see the opening for the chain-driven lift.

The security man looked from the dumbwaiter to the cook to Lucas. “Could a man ride up in that?” he asked the cook.

“Well . . . I guess a couple guys have. Sometimes,” the cook said, his eyes shifting nervously.

“What do you mean, ‘sometimes’?”

“Well, when it’s busy, you know, the boss doesn’t want a lot of waiters riding up in the elevators with the customers. The waiters are supposed to take the stairs. But sometimes, I mean, if it’s on the tenth floor . . .”

“How often do guys ride up?” the security man asked.

“Look, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble . . . .”

“Nobody’ll hear a word from us,” Lily promised.

The cook wiped his hands on his apron, then lowered his voice and said, “Every day.”

“Shit,” said the security man.

The security man laid it out: “A suicide run. Four guys. They come down the alley to the service dock. They push the bell. One of the staff opens the door to see who it is. The Crows stick a gun in his stomach. One guy stays in the kitchen while the other three ride up in the dumbwaiter, one at a time. They come out in the service area on fourteen. They’ve got automatic weapons or shotguns. They check the hall, somehow . . . maybe just peek, or they use a dental mirror . . . they come out and take the two agents in the hall. That leaves one guy with the chief. They knock the door out with a shotgun, and then it’s three on two, maybe three machine guns or shotguns against two pistols . . . .”