"Traffic was light," Lucas said.
The bank presidents name was Reed. He was a genial man, overweight, a patriotic panoply: red face, white hair, blue eyes; red tie, white shirt, blue suit; an American flag in the corner, with a plastic eagle atop the staff, in gold.
When Lucas outlined the general nature of their questions, Reed leaned back in his leather executive chair and said, "I've known Bill since we were lads. He was six years behind me at Cretin. His parents, God bless 'emthey're both dead nowused to play canasta with my parents. There's never been anything wrong with any of his accounts; he's one of our best loan officers. I was godfather for his oldest son."
"I'm sure there's nothing wrong now," Lucas said. "We just want to talk with him about Mr. Rodriguez. Their personal relationship. Anything he might be able to tell us that could help us in our investigation."
"I don't know that we could help much. Our financial records are confidential"
Long interrupted. "Mr. Reed, we know about your confidentiality requirements, and we're just trying to handle this whole matter as discreetly as possible. If you wish, we can get a subpoena for your loan records, and we can call a squad car and transport Mr. Spooner to Minneapolis for questioning. We thought this would be better. Chief Roux thought it would be better."
"I appreciate that. Senator Roux was a good friend," Reed said. After a moment of silence and a thoughtful inspection of Lucas, he said, "Let's go talk to Billy and see what he has to say."
Billy was a Minnesota WASP, fair-haired, once slight, but now carrying a few too many pounds. He was wearing a gray off-the-rack suit and black lace-up shoes. And he was guilty of something, Lucas thought: His eyes went flat at the introductions, and when they settled into their chairs and Lucas explained what they wanted, he said, "As far as I know, Richard Rodriguez is entirely legitimate. He has a perfect payment record."
"That's ourproblem," Lucas said. "It's a little too perfect. From our review, it appears that he needs a one-hundred-percent residency rate to make his payments. We're wondering why you would give somebody a loan under those conditions."
"A lot of small reasons, and one big one," Spooner said. "The big one was, he helped our minority loan level. In our neighborhood, we have to be sensitive to redlining issues, and as a responsible, hardworking, intelligent minority person, we decided we could go with him as long as the risk wasn't too great. The first building he was interested in was for sale at such a good price that we could have loaned him almost all of the money even if he hadn't had a down payment. But he did have a down payment. Not much, but it was all of his savings, and guaranteed that he'd stay right on top of the business. And he had the minority status, of course. That swung it. After that, with a lot of hard work, he kept his record perfect, and we were always ready to help when he wanted to expand his horizons."
"So he got a great price on the original building," Long said. "What are the chances that he delivered part of the original purchase price to the seller, under the table, to drive down the apparent price?"
"I wouldn't know about that," Spooner said stiffly.
"What are the chances that he uses dope-dealing money to make up shortfalls in tenant rents?" Lucas asked.
"Dope? Richard Rodriguez? I don't think so."
Lucas leaned into Spooner's desk. "If we got a subpoena for your loan records and asked a state examiner to look them over, you think he'd say they met state loan standards?"
"Absolutely. The minority status alone would bring applause from the state banking department." Spooner leaned back and relaxed a hair, the way a fence relaxes when he realizes that a cop doesn't really have anything on him.
Lucas looked at Long and shrugged. Long dipped into his brief-case, found a paper, and handed it to Reed. "It's a subpoena for your loan records."
Reed's face turned a little redder. "I thought we were handling this on a friendly basis."
"We wanted to," Lucas said. "But Bill here is bullshitting us, so we're gonna have to see all the records."
"I'mnot bullshitting you," Spooner said.
"You're bullshitting us, Billy, yes, you are," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what. This case is part of the Alie'e Maison murder investigation. If Rodriguez turns out to be involved, because of his drug dealing, and you're helping him cover up well, then, you're involved. That's called murder one on the TV shows. Murder one in Minnesota is a minimum of thirty years in a cell the size of your desk. You look like you might be young enough to do the whole thirty."
"Wait, wait, wait," Spooner said. "I have absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I want a lawyer. Right now."
"Those are the magic words," Long said to Lucas. "No more questions, and read him his rights."
When they were done with the reading of the rights, Reed agreed to print out the loan records and Long walked out to the parking lot with Lucas. "It's the reading of the rights that scares the shit out of them," he said.
Lucas nodded. "The question is, will Spooner make a call?"
He made the call.
Long went back into the bank and Lucas climbed in the passenger side of the city car. "He's driving the Lexus in the corner," Del said.
Lucas looked down at a silver-toned car nosed in next to a power transformer. "So he's spending some money."
"He's a banker," Del said. "He's gotta have some kind of car to impress the neighbors."
Del took the car to the end of the block and found a spot where they could see Spooner's car. Del's phone rang twenty minutes later, and Long came on. "I'm not going to make lunch. I've got a thing I've got to do with a subpoena," he said.
"He's moving?"
"Absolutely, sweetheart," Long said.
Del said, "He's moving," and a minute later they spotted Spooner pushing through the front door, carrying his briefcase, pulling on a thigh-length black trench coat. He went to the Lexus, tossed the brief-case across the front seat onto the passenger side, and rolled out of the lot. They followed, a block behind, a half-dozen cars between them, past the capitol, down the hill toward downtown St. Paul, where Del closed up and Lucas eased down in the seat.
Halfway through downtown, Spooner took the Lexus into a parking ramp. Del pulled to the side, shoved the gearshift into park, said, "I'll catch him at the Skyway exit. Turn on your phone," and jumped out. When Spooner was out of sight, up the ramp, Lucas walked around the car and went looking for a parking meter.
Del called ten minutes later. "Got him. He's at an attorneys office."
"Goddamnit."
"So what do we do?"
"I'll call you back in two minutes," Lucas said. He punched the Off button, redialed Lane's cell phone number. Lane answered, and Lucas said, "Where's Rodriguez?"
"In his office. I can see his sleeve."
"Nothing going on?"
"A few things. My feet hurt like hell; I've got Homicide's interview notebook on the case, and I'm reading all the interviews; a nine-year-old kid tried to sell me what I believe are counterfeit baseball cards; and the St. Paul cops rousted me. That's about it."
"No trouble with St. Paul?"
"Nah. Just checking on why I'd been standing in the Skyway for two hours, reading a notebook," Lane said.
"Okay. Our guy's at an attorneys office. He's about two blocks from you."
"Let me know if anything happens."
"A Mickey Mantle rookie card's gotta be worth more than twenty, doesn't it?"
"Chump." Lucas redialed Del. "Rodriguez is at his office."
"So"
"So let's hang for a while. Give it an hour, anyway."
Twenty-five minutes into the hour, Del called. "He's moving."
"Where?"
"Looks like the parking garage."
"Goddamnit. Stay with him. If he heads to the car, I'll pick you up where you jumped out."
Five minutes later, Del was back in the car. Lucas drove around to the parking garage exit, and as they picked up Spooner, Del's phone rang. He took it out, listened for a second, said, "Lucas's phone is on now," and then handed it to Lucas. "I'm a fuckin' secretary," he said.