"Uh-oh," he said. He waved her back inside, and then looked at the tractor. "How hotis this thing?"
"Nobody even knows it's stolen yet," Roy said nervously.
Davenport came around the corner of the building, fifty yards away. Knox said, quietly, "Here he comes. Don't look. I know this guy, and he's not here about the tractor."
"I'll take the two thousand," Roy said, his Adam's apple bobbing. Knox stepped away from the trailer to greet Davenport.
"Nice-looking machine," Lucas said as he strolled up. "I use a B20 up north."
"No offense, but that's practically a fucking lawn mower," Knox said. Enough small talk. "What's going on?"
Lucas was offended, but tried not to show it. Instead, he looked at the freckle-faced thief: "Why don't you go get a Coke?"
"Sounds good," Roy said. He hopped off the trailer and hotfooted it across the parking lot, toward the Service Department door. Through the glass panel of the door, Lucas could see the pale face of Knox's daughter peering out at them.
"Why's everybody so nervous?" he asked. "What's everybody doing at work on a Sunday?"
"You work every day if you have a small business, and you're not sucking out of the state trough," Knox said.
"That can't be it," Lucas said. He looked at the Kubota. "What, that hick steal this tractor?"
"Jesus, Davenport, he's a goddamn basement excavator who's going broke and has to sell his job. What do you want?"
"A list," Lucas said. "We chase all over town, going after the big dope wholesalers, the gangs, the people pushing shit on the street, and we pretty much know every one of them. The ones we don't know, the ones we can't get at, are the really smart ones who only move a kilo or so a week, to rich people. Nobody ever complains, nobody ever gets caught. Nobody's standing on a street corner. We need some of those names."
"You know I don't mess with dope. Too dangerous."
"But you do loan-sharking, Carl. And you got that layoff business with the sports-book guys. You know a lot of rich people who get their money in strange ways, and put a lot of it up their nose, and who don't buy their shit down in the ghetto."
"You're gonna get my nuts cut off," Knox said.
Lucas shrugged. "So who's ever gonna know that you're talking to me? And it gives us just that much less incentive to figure out what you reallydo for a living. You know, the ugly details."
"Is this part of the Alie'e Maison thing?"
"Yeah, part of it."
"Nobody ought to be killing young girls," Knox said. "I saw the story in theStar-Tribune this morning, the interview with her parents." He looked toward the service door, where his daughters face still floated in the rectangle of black glass in the service door. "I can ask around," he said. "But like the last time, I might come up empty."
"That helped, when you came up empty," Lucas said. "It eliminated some possibilities."
"So I can ask," Knox said. "Now, you wanna take a hike before my kid breaks out in hives?"
Lucas left. Halfway back to the corner of the building, he turned and said, "I'll anxiously await your call."
Knox shook his head and watched until Lucas had turned the corner. The freckle-faced thief eased out of the building and asked, "What'd he want?"
"Just bullshit," Knox said. He turned to the thief. "You said nobody knows the tractor is gone yet?"
"Won't nobody know until tomorrow, when the owner gets back from Vegas."
"Can you get it back there?"
"Get it back? I just stole it," Roy said.
"Yeah, but this guy is gonna look it up, just sure as shit. If it's on a list, he's gonna be back here, and he's gonna want to know where it went. I'd have to tell him I turned you down, and then he'd come looking for you."
"You wouldn't tell him"
Knox shrugged. "You're not a real big part of my business."
"Well, goddamn, Carl"
"So you take it back," Knox said. "When does your guy go to Vegas again?"
"He goes every couple of months."
"So steal it again, then. I'll give you three thousand," Knox said.
"Three?"
"Take it or leave it."
The thief looked up at the big orange tractor and said, "I'm gonna be out fifty bucks for gas."
"Hey, Roy?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell somebody who gives a shit."
Lucas stopped back at headquarters, left a note for a guy in Property Crimes, asking him to check on stolen Kubota 2900 tractors. He looked at his watch every thirty seconds for ten minutes, then headed for a restaurant called The Bell Jar. No sign of Catrin. He was a few minutes early, but he started to worry. Maybe she'd bailed
The maоtre d' put him in a corner, where he could see the room. A waitress came by and dropped off the drinks menu; a couple of minutes later she came back and he ordered a martini. "Will you be dining by yourself today?" she asked.
"No, I" And Catrin came in the door. "I'm meeting that lady right there."
Catrin, he thought, had dressed as carefully as he had, in a light gray-wool skirt, a black cashmere sweater, and low heels. She was wearing small diamond earrings. She looked, he thought, absolutely wonderful. She read his face and might have colored, just a bit, as he stood up to meet her.
"Lucas."
"How are you?" He was fumbling already. "I mean, with your friend"
"Funeral's on Tuesday," she said. "It's over. With what she'd been through, it was time. I don't feel the least bit bad about it."
"Okay"
She smiled and said, "Did you order?"
"A martini."
"A martini? What happened to the Grain Belt?"
"Only on special occasions," he said. He looked around the restaurant, "if you ordered bratwurst in this place, the chef'd probably faint."
"So I'll have a martini," she said. "An old-time drink with an old-time friend."
And she was fumbling, he thought.
"Last time I saw younot this morning, but back whenyou were really upset."
"I remember," she said. "You were such a punk. You were unbelievable. You were also pretty sure you were God's gift to women, if I remember correctly."
"C'mon. I wasn't Gods gift to anyone."
"Easy to say now."
"You weren't exactly a ride in the park yourself."
"Are we gonna fight?" But she said it smiling, almost delightedlike something was still the same.
"The last time I saw you," he said, dropping his voice, "you were absolutely buck naked. The last thing I saw was you standing there with your fists on your hips, looking for your underpants."
"That was something you weren't supposed to bring up," she said, and now shewas pink. "Though I do remember that we spent quite a bit of time running around naked."
"Yeah. Jesus. Are we old now?"
"No, but we were definitely young then." A waiter came, gave them menus and left water, and promised to come back. Catrin opened the menu and looked over it to say, "You really made me angry, back then. I almost couldn't stand it. I never told Jack about you, and he was a hockey fan, and he used to take me to hockey games the next year, before he graduated. He was one of your fans. I remember how pissed off I'd get when you'd be skating around. Cruising around, backward or something, all arrogant macho tough asshole, smiling at the girls"
"Jesus." He was impressed.
"Still pisses me off, thinking about it." Her eyes dropped to the menu.
That was the end of the sex talk. After they ordered, the conversation drifted to their current lives.
"When you said your husband took you to hockey games before he graduated When did he graduate?"
"The next year. We got married June of my sophomore year, and he did his internship with a military hospital in Koreahe was a captain. Then, when we came back, he joined his fathers practice in Lake City and that's where we've been."
"What about you? You didn't finish school?"
"No you know. I got pregnant while we were in the army. I mean, I took classes over the years, but I never got back to school full-time. I thought about going this fall, to Macalester, but I just I don't know. I didn't go. Now I'm supposed to go this winter, and I still don't know I'm kind of fucked up." She heard herself say it, and stopped. "The last time I said thatused those words, 'fucked up'was when we were dating."