The waitress came and they ordered coffee and Lucas asked for a waffle and bacon. The waitress left and Nadya said, "Do you think the… news… of our relationship will be successfully suppressed?"
Lucas shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't help anybody if it gets out, but police departments are the biggest rumor mills in the world. Everybody in the department knows by now. The police reporter here, the guy we met down at that shack… he's no dummy. He'll probably hear about it."
"But will he print it?"
"If he does, it could hurt him with his sources in the department-everybody would be pissed off at him. I don't think anyone would confirm it, officially, so he'd have to worry about printing rumors…"
Nadya took a napkin out of a napkin holder and folded it, precisely square, then folded it again. "I have to decide whether to tell my superiors what happened. If I do, it would not be good for me. If I don't, and they find out, it would be worse. But if I don't, and they don't find out, and if we get the killer…"
As she was talking, Lucas noticed another woman approaching their table-not a waitress, but a woman in jeans and a nylon windbreaker. She was dark haired and stocky, and she was moving quickly, beelined toward them, and Lucas said, "Uh…" but the woman ignored him and said to Nadya, "Are you Nadezhda Kalin?" She pronounced the name with authority and a light went on in Lucas's brain and he started to get out of the booth just as the waitress appeared with two cups of hot coffee and blocked him, and Nadya looked at the woman and said, "Yes?"
"I am Jerry Reasons's wife," the woman said, and she launched herself into the booth on top of Nadya, her fingernails flashing, and Lucas said, "Oh, shit," and the waitress with the coffee went down ass-over-coffee-cup and Nadya screamed and slashed back.
Lucas was out of the booth and grabbed Reasons around the waist and tried to pull her off Nadya, but she was strong, angry, out of control, and when Lucas got her back a foot she turned in his arms and slashed at his face with inch-long, highly polished fingernails, cut him across the nose and he grunted and lost her, and she went back after Nadya.
Nadya had gotten her feet up into the booth in front of her and kicked Reasons in the chest, and they were both screaming and waiters were running toward them, and Lucas got Reasons around the waist again and tried to pull back while avoiding the fingernails. Both women now had blood on their faces and Lucas, trying not to hurt Reasons, but at the same time hold on to her, lost her again, and she went back into the booth and Nadya picked up the silver-metal napkin holder and smashed Reasons in the forehead.
Reasons stopped, hung over Nadya for a second, and Lucas wrapped himself around her and pinned her arms, and then Nadya, now screamingly angry herself, smashed her a second time in the forehead, and Reasons went limp.
Lucas was shouting "Whoa, whoa, whoa" at Nadya, who came out of the booth with the napkin holder, looking for a third shot, and Lucas let go of Reasons with one arm, put his hand in Nadya's face, and catapulted her back into the booth.
"Whoa!" he shouted, and the combination of the shout and the impact she took at the back of the booth stopped her. Lucas pivoted away, with Reasons still wrapped up. She was conscious, but loopy, like a fighter who's been tagged hard, but not quite dropped.
The restaurant manager was running toward them and Lucas said, "I'm a state cop. Call the police, tell them to get a car up here."
Without a word, the woman turned and ran the other way. The waitress was back on her feet, holding her coffee-stained shirt away from herself, saying, "I'm really fucked up. I'm really fucked up."
"Are you burned?" Lucas asked.
"Look at my blouse. This is like three days old," she said, and Lucas decided that if she was burned, she wasn't burned badly. Lucas looked back at Nadya, said, "Stay in the booth," and pushed Reasons further away, put her in another booth, and blocked it with his body.
"Jesus…"
Both women were bleeding, and Reasons was still dazed, but neither was badly hurt. One of them started crying, and then the other. A waitress said to Lucas, "You're bleeding like crazy," and pressed a napkin to his forehead. "She must have got you with her fingernails."
A busboy was gawking at Lucas and said, "Boy, I wish I could have seen this," which made Lucas laugh despite himself.
Then the cops arrived, a sergeant and a patrolman, and trailing them, Andreno, with a look of wonderment. Lucas explained what happened to the cops, and the sergeant said, "Ah, shit," and then, "What do you want to do?"
"Could you take Mrs. Reasons home? Talk to her?"
"Well, uh, are we gonna have charges here?"
"Just a goddamn bar fight, kind of, except in a restaurant," Lucas said.
"And except that it's in a big restaurant in the middle of the morning and nobody's drunk and everybody's bleeding," the patrolman said.
"Won't do anybody any good if it gets out," Lucas said. "Why don't we just do something?"
"Disappear it?" the sergeant suggested.
"That would be good."
"We oughta call in and see what they want to do," the patrolman said cautiously. A new guy, Lucas thought.
"Why don't you call the chief directly," Lucas said to the sergeant. "Go off the record-there's been a lot of shit since last night, and we're trying to handle it. Nobody wants charges. What's the good of an assault charge against a woman whose husband just got murdered?"
The cop nodded, looked at Nadya and then at Reasons, and then at his partner. "I'll make the call right here. Nothing happened."
"Atta boy," Andreno said.
"Who the fuck are you?" the partner asked.
"BCA undercover," Lucas said. "Pretend you never saw him."
"What about my shirt?" the waitress asked. "It's new, it's probably ruined."
Lucas asked, "What's the biggest tip you ever got for coffee and waffles?"
"Maybe five dollars."
"Brace yourself; your ship just came in."
She nodded, looked down at her blouse, and up at Lucas: "All right. Hope it's like one of them supertankers."
The Duluth cops took Reasons out, and Andreno said, "You got a cut on your nose. You need another napkin."
"That woman was like a hurricane of fingernails," Lucas said. He touched his nose, and it stung. "I hope she didn't give me something."
"You mean, like the clap?" Andreno said. He was having a pretty good time, now.
"What is this clap?" Nadya asked. She had tears running down through her makeup, and Lucas shook his head at Andreno, said, "Let's get her to her room."
Andreno proved to be expert at gently cleaning and bandaging wounds, and he did both Nadya and Lucas, using Band-Aids from Lucas's Dopp kit. "Leave them on until the blood dries-tomorrow would be good-and then wash them off. You'll still have grooves, both of you."
"I'm not leaving it on my fuckin' nose," Lucas said. "I'd rather bleed."
"What is this groove?" Nadya asked. She'd become quiet, somber after the fight.
"Fingernail cuts," Andreno said. "Nasty. I always hated to break up fights between women. When women fight, civilization goes right out the window. They don't know how to play-fight, like guys. They go right for the eyes."
"I hit her hard, with those napkins," Nadya said, with just a sliver of satisfaction.
"Yes, you did," Lucas said. "She wasn't exactly a lightweight, either. I think I fucked up my back, getting her off you."
"Two Aleves," Andreno said. "Get a couple for Nadya."
Nadya was reluctant, but they went back to the restaurant when Andreno complained that he hadn't had breakfast. The manager looked at them with trepidation, but the waitress was right there: Lucas had given her a hundred-dollar bill. After they ordered, Andreno said, "Tell me everything. I don't know shit."