When Rose Marie was gone, he called Mallard and gave him the Miami number, and called Del and gave him the local number. Del called back fifteen minutes later and said, "That number is out to another blind phone, but Narcotics knows it. They picked it up on a pen register a couple of months ago, a guy named Herb Scott. That's all they know, a number and a name in the computer. Want them to look a little closer?"
"Absolutely. Put him on the list. If nothing happens by tomorrow night, we're gonna sweep them all, and see if we can shake anything loose."
Mallard called back a few minutes after Del. "That number goes with a guy who lists his address in a place called Gables-By-The-Sea. I guess it's a ritzy neighborhood. I've got a guy checking with the locals."
"Thanks."
Piling it up.
For a moment, he thought about running down the new real estate dealer, but decided against it: That might make the phone tap obvious, and the phone might still be valuable.
Sloan called. "Come on down to Homicide. There's something you got to see."
Lucas walked down, and found a half-dozen cops laughing around a small-screen TV. "What?"
"That's Rodriguez's apartment," Sloan said.
"Penthouse," somebody said.
A wavering picture was focused on a window surrounded by reddish concrete. Then, moving in slow motion, Rodriguez appeared in the window and pulled the curtain across it. When he was out of sight, the loop started again: the window, Rodriguez, the curtain.
"Guilty, guilty, guilty," a cop said.
And somebody else, with a little edge of sarcasm: "If he wasn't guilty, why would he pull the curtain?"
And a third guy: "If it was me, I'd be pointing a rifle out the window."
"They'd love that."
"Yeah, until a little bullet hole appeared on the forehead of one of them blonde c"
A woman with a gun said, "Watch it."
"cameramen."
Olson came by, trailing the Bentons, the Packards, and Lester Moore, the newspaper editor. "Who is this Rodriguez?" Olson demanded. "Everybody's saying he did it."
Rose Marie said, "He's a suspect. Lucas"
Lucas said, "We think he's a drug dealeractually, we're sure he is. And we have at least two sources who say that he was running Sandy Lansing. That is, Sandy Lansing was the street dealer for drugs brought in by Rodriguez."
"Rodriguez was the wholesaler?"
"More like the local franchise owner, and Lansing was one of his employees."
"Amazing,"Olson said. "Franchises and employees. Did he pay her Social Security?"
Moore broke in: "Can you get him?"
"Not yet," Lucas said. "Maybe on drugs. We have no direct connection to the murder, but we can put him at the party, we can connect him with Lansing, we have him denying that he knew her, we can probably show that they dealt drugs together. We can project it as a drug argument that went bad. He killed Lansing, maybe even accidentally, by cracking her head against a doorjamb. Alie'e comes out of the bedroom just at that point, and he kills her, to get rid of a witness."
Olson stood up slowly, peered at the Bentons and then at Moore. "You mean she was killed as a bystander? That all this happened because she was at the wrong place?"
"That's a possibility," Lucas said.
Olson said, "I don't believe it. This is not a casual killing. All these people dead. It can't just be chance. It can't be."
"We don't really know that it is," Rose Marie interjected. "Lucas is just outlining one possible theory."
"My good God," Olson said. He put his hands on the side of his head, as he had the day he found his parents, and pulled the hair straight out, as he had that day, just before his collapse.
Lucas stood up, stepped toward him, took his arm. "Easy."
"I can't, I can't"
"Sit down."
Olson stumbled, and Lucas guided him around to the chair. Olson looked around the room, at the faces all pointed toward him, and said, "This cannot stand. This cannot."
When he was gone, Frank Lester said, "If that doesn't get him cranked, I don't know what will."
Lane came back. "Took all goddamn day, but the bank examiner conies in on our side. She says the loans are funky."
"That's the technical expression: funky."
"Exactly. But there's a problem," Lane said. "I created it. I made the fundamental investigatory error: I asked one too many questions. NoI asked two too many."
"I've told you about that," Lucas said.
"Yeah. So I've got this bank examinerwho's got nice legs, by the way, even if she wasn't a big rock 'n' rollerand I say, 'What would you do if you'd caught him doing this? During a bank examination.' And she says, 'We'd tell him that the loan was weak, and depending on the status of their other loans, we might require action.' And I say, 'That's it?' And she says, 'What'd you think we were gonna do? Shoot him?' "
"So then I make the next mistake. I ask another question."
"You already had two questions."
"Naw, that was like question one and one-a. Now I'm at question two. I ask, 'How many commercial loans are there in Minnesota? Gotta be hundreds of thousands, huh?' And she says, 'Well, many tens of thousands, anyway' And I askthis is question two-b'How many are this bad?' I figured she'd say something like, we get one or two a year. You know what she said?"
"I'm afraid to know," Lucas said.
"Bevery afraid," Lane said. "She said, 'There might be a few thousand.' "
Lucas said, "Goddamnit."
"Yeah. Our hold on Spooner just got slipperier. On the other handI thought of this on the way over here"
"What?"
"Spooner doesn't know it," Lane said.
"You're a sneaky fuck," Lucas said. "It's a quality I admire in a cop."
As the earlier darkness settled in and the lights came up, Del came by with an ice cream cone and said, "I'm gonna go see Marcy. Wanna come?"
"Yeah, let me get my coat."
On the way over, Lucas told Del about Catrin. Del listened, finished the cone in the cold night, and then said, "She's probably gonna want to jump in bed with you. To prove to herself that she's still desirable and that she's as good as she was in the old days."
"What am I gonna do?"
"Well, I don't think jumping her is gonna be the answer." He looked at Lucas. "Or is it?"
"No. I mean man, she's really nice, but she's really fucked up."
"So give her a really understanding talk about how sheis fucked upyou might want to find a different phraseand that she shouldn't do anything until she's gotten herself straight again."
"That doesn't sound like something Catrin would go for," Lucas said.
"How do you meet these women, anyway? They're all so fuckin' tangled up."
"I don't know. It's a special talent."
"What you need is some chick that comes up and says, 'Wanna see my Harley?' And you say, 'Is it a Sportster?' And she says, 'It's whatever you want it to be.' "
"I've often wondered if you had a fantasy life," Lucas said. "I guess that question's answered."
"Yeah, well, if I were you, I'd go home and think about this Catrin chick for a long time. Especially if she's still a friend." They walked along for half a block, and then Del added, "There is one bright side to the problem."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It's your problem, and not mine."
Marcy was sitting up, awake, but she looked distant, her eyes a little too bright. "The docs are worried that she might have a touch of pneumonia," Black said. "They say it shouldn't be serious but they've got to deal with it."
Lucas squatted to look straight into her face. "How're you feeling?"
"A little warm."
"Still hurt?"
"Always hurt."
"Goddamnit." He stood up. "There's gotto be better drugs."