"That's okay, Larry. We'll see you back downtown," Lucas said.
"Sure, man. And thanks, Lily."
They pulled away from the curb and Lucas turned to Lily. "I hope we don't need him to talk to the guy."
"We won't. Like he said, you're not planning to interrogate him."
"Hmph."
Lucas watched Hart in his rearview mirror. Hart was peering after them as they continued down the street after Harry. Then Hart turned and walked away, around a corner. Up ahead, Harry stopped on the street corner to talk to a fat white man in a black parka. The parka was a full season too big, the kind you wore in January when the temperature went down to minus thirty. Harry and the white man exchanged a few words, the white man shook his head and Harry started pleading. The white man shook his head again and stepped away. Harry said something else and then turned, despondent, and started down the street again.
"Dealer," said Lily.
"Yeah. Donny Ellis. He wears that parka 'til June, puts it back on in September. He pisses in it, never washes. You don't want to get downwind of him."
"This is going to be stupid, Lucas… Nobody ever sold anybody that much crack on credit. Especially not…"
"Hey, we don't have to convince anybody. It's just… Okay, there's Stone…" Lucas picked up the radio and said, "Stone just came around the corner."
"I got him," Sloan said.
Lucas looked at Lily. "You know what? We should have gotten rid of Larry sooner than we did. He's the kind of guy who might go to the Human Rights Commission."
"Maybe, but I don't think so. That's why he was sweating," she said. She was watching as Elwood Stone walked toward Harry Dick, who was still shambling along the sidewalk. "It's not like we're going to do anything with the Liss kid. Hold him a couple of days and then kick him out of the system. My sense of Larry Hart is that his career means everything to him. He's a success. He makes some money. People like him. They depend on him. If he went outside with this, he'd be on the city's shit list. End of career. Back to the res. I don't think he'd risk that. Not if we kick the kid back out on the street after a couple of days."
"Okay."
"But it will make him feel like a small piece of shit," Lily added. "We whipsawed him between his job and his people and he's smart enough to see that. He'll never trust you again."
"I know," Lucas said uncomfortably. "God damn, I hate to burn people."
"Professionally, or personally?"
"What?" Lucas asked, puzzled by the question.
"I mean, you hate to burn a guy because it loses a contact, or because it loses a friend?"
He thought about it and after a minute said, "I don't know." Up the street, Harry spotted Elwood Stone and quickened his step. Stone was one of the tightest dealers on the street, but it never hurt to ask. All he needed was a taste. Just a taste to tide him over.
"They're talking," Sloan said on the radio. "That goddamn Stone is shuckin' like he's on Broadway."
"I told him not to overdo it," Lucas muttered to Lily. Lucas had pulled into a parking place and couldn't see well from the driver's side. He crowded against Lily, who had her face pressed against the passenger-side window, and let his hand drop on her thigh.
"Watch it."
"What?"
"The hand, Davenport…"
"God damn it, Lily."
"It's going down," she said.
"It's going down," Sloan said. "He's got it."
"Let's take him," Lucas said.
Sloan came in from the west, Lucas from the east. Sloan pulled into the curb ahead of Harry, Lucas did a U-turn into a fire-hydrant zone behind him. Harry was still grinning, still had his hand in his jacket pocket, when Sloan hopped out of his car. He was inside fifteen feet before Harry figured out something was happening. He turned to run and almost bumped into Lucas, who was closing in from behind. Lily stayed in the street, blocking a dash to the side. Lucas grabbed Harry by the coat collar and said, "Whoa." A second later, Sloan had him by the arm.
"Hey, man," Harry started, but he knew he had been bagged.
"Come on, on the wall," Lucas said, "on the wall." They pushed him onto the wall. Sloan frisked him and found the baggies in his pocket.
"Holy shit," Sloan said. "We got us a dealer."
He opened his palm to Lucas, showed him the two eight-balls.
"I'm no fuckin' dealer, man…"
"A quarter-ounce of dog-white cocaine," Lucas said to Harry. "That's a dealer load, kid. That's presumptive prison term."
"I'm a juvenile, man, look at my ID." Harry was old enough to be worried.
"You don't get no juvenile break on a presumptive-dealer rap," Lucas said. "Not unless you're ten years old. You look older than that."
"Oh, man," Harry moaned. "I just got it, a guy give it to me…"
"Right," Sloan said skeptically. "He gave it to you all right. He gave it to you right in the ass." He cranked down one arm while Lucas hung onto the other, and Sloan put on his handcuffs. "You got the right to remain silent…"
Daniel wanted to push as hard as they could. If they waited, he thought, Len Meadows would get Liss' family organized and protected.
"You can fly out to Sioux Falls and rent a car…" Daniel started.
"Fuck fly," Lucas said. "I'm driving. We'll be there in four hours. We wouldn't get there any faster if we waited for an airplane and then drove up from Sioux Falls."
"Are you going?" Daniel raised an eyebrow and looked at Lily.
"Yeah. We'll be dealing with this Louise Liss. Maybe a woman would do it better."
"Okay. But take it easy with the Liss woman, will you? This whole thing is a little shaky. Larry Hart is shitting bricks. He's scared," Daniel said. "Worse than that, he's pissed off."
"Can you talk to him?"
"I already did and I'll go back with him again. I'll tell him if we squeeze anything out of Liss, we can probably send him back to work at Welfare…"
They took overnight bags to Brookings. If they didn't get the information the first night, there wouldn't be much point in staying a second.
"Your friend… Jennifer. She's in Brookings, right?"
"Yeah. They sent out a crew. She's producing." They were crossing the Minnesota River at Shakopee. A flock of Canada geese were standing on the riverbank, watching the water go by. Lucas said, "Geese."
"Mmm. Will you stay with her?"
"What?"
"Jennifer. Will you stay with her?"
Lucas downshifted as they came into town and rolled up to a stoplight. He glanced at her, then turned right on the red light. "No. I'd rather that she not know I was there. She has a way of reading my mind. If she sees me, she'll know something is up."
"Do you know where she's staying?"
"Sure. It's out by the interstate that comes up from Sioux Falls. The Brookings cops told me that Louise Liss is staying in a place downtown. I thought we'd check in there."
They were going through the town of Sleepy Eye on Highway 14 when they passed a man on bicycle, dressed in cycling clothes: a green-striped polo shirt, black cycling shorts, white helmet. It was cool, but his bare legs were exposed and pumped like machine pistons. Lucas estimated that he was breaking the speed limit through the downtown.
"He looks like David," Lily said. "My husband."
"David's a cyclist?"
"Yeah. He was pretty serious about it, once." She turned her head to watch the cyclist as they went by. "He'd go out every Saturday with a group of people and they'd ride centuries. Sometimes two. A century's a hundred miles."
"Jesus. He must be in great shape."
"Yeah." She was watching the storefronts in the tiny town. "Bicycles bore the shit out of me, to tell you the truth. They always break down, then you've got to fix them. Or they're not broken, then you've got to fiddle with them to get them tuned up exactly right. The tires go flat all the time."
"That's why I bought a Porsche," Lucas said.
"A Porsche's probably cheaper too," Lily said. "Those goddamned racing bikes cost a fortune. And you can't have just one."
A few minutes later, back in the countryside, they passed a herd of black-and-white dairy cows.