"Your boy made the call," Lester said.
"Yeah? When?"
"Six or seven minutes ago. He was calling from a lawyers office."
"Yeah, we took him there. He's out, and we're on him again. What'd he say?"
"Sounded like he was reading out of a script. He said, 'Mr. Rodriguez, allegations have been made against you by the Minneapolis police. I will no longer be allowed to have any direct dealings with you on the mortgages on your buildings, and I wanted to inform you that in the future your account will be handled by Mrs. Ellen Feldman.' Then Rodriguez said, 'What are you talking about? The police?' And then Spooner said, 'I'm not at liberty to discuss it, but you can get more information from Minneapolis Deputy Chief of Police Lucas Davenport or Mr. Tim Long, assistant Hennepin County Attorney' Then Rodriguez said, 'Is this about the party?' And Spooner says, I'm really not at liberty to discuss it. I suggest you call Chief Davenport or Mr. Long. I'm sorry this had to happen. I felt we had an excellent working relationship. I have to go now. I hope this works out for the best.' Then Rodriguez says, 'Okay Well, thanks for everything, you know.' And that's it."
"Thanks for everything," Lucas said. "He means the phone call."
"Pretty goddamn neat phone call, too," Lester said. "He warns him, but there's nothing in it to hang him with. Either one of them."
After Lucas hung up, they tracked Spooner back to the bank. He drove back slowly, well within the speed limit. When he was inside, Lucas said, "Fuck him. Let's go see Marcy."
Weather was outside the intensive care ward talking to Tom Black. They saw Lucas and Del coming, and Weather smiled and Del said, "Something good happened."
"What?" Lucas asked as they came up.
"She's somewhat awake. Everything's pretty much stabilized. She's still critical, but it's looking pretty good. For the first time."
Lucas went to the ward window and looked in. "Can we go in?"
"Let me get a nurse. They just took a guy in."
The nurse came, said, severely, "One minute. Say hello, and out." She gave them masks to hold over their faces, and led the way in.
Marcy's eyelids were at half-mast. When Lucas, Del, and Black loomed beside her, her eyes opened fractionally, and after a moment, the corners of her lips twitched.
"Sleeping on the job," Black said.
"I ain't signing off on the overtimeyou're still on the Homicide payroll," Lucas said.
"If you die, can I have your gun?" Del asked.
She tried to say something, but Lucas couldn't hear and he leaned forward. Her lips looked parched, almost burnt. "What?"
"Fuck all of you," she whispered, and she turned her head another fraction of an inch.
"She's better," Lucas said, delighted. "She says go fuck ourselves."
Weather said, "I can't believe cops. I never could. The bullshit getsso deep." She was smiling when she said it.
Lucas squatted next to the bed, speaking through the blue mask. "You're hurting," he said, "but you're gonna make it. We're tracking the guy who shot you."
Her head rolled away, and her eyelids drooped again. "Everybody out," the nurse said.
In the hall, Lucas said, "She looked pretty good, huh? She looked pretty good."
"Pretty good," Black said.
"I was amazed," Del said. "She took a fuckin'. 44, man. Man, she looked alot better." He hitched up his jeans, and they all nodded at each other.
"She's not out of the woods," Weather said. "Keep that in mind. It's along trip back."
On the way out the door with Del, Lucas stopped, said, "Hang on a minute," and went back inside. Weather was walking away, back to the interior of the hospital. "Hey, Weather."
She stopped, waited. He came up, took a card out of his ID case, scribbled his cell phone number on the back of it, and said, "Keep an eye on her while you're here, okay? You know the docs better than any of us. If anything changes"
"I'll call," she said. She took the card, and Lucas headed back out.
On the sidewalk, Del said, "What?"
"Gave her my number in case anything happens with Marcy," Lucas lied. She could have gotten to him through the police switchboard, and shehad that number. He'd actually gone back because of a little subconscious twitch: He went back to look at her ears. She was wearing inky blue sapphire earrings, one-carat stones. He recognized them, because he'd given them to her.
He smiled on the way back to the office, and Del said, "Our girl's gonna be all right."
"Maybe," he said.
Back at the office, Lucas put in a call to Louis Mallard at the FBI in Washington. Mallard had enough clout to extract anything from any government computer anywhere. He agreed to find and send along everything available on Rodriguez's Miami company. When he got off the phone with Mallard, Lucas walked down to Hose Marie's office.
"Need a meeting," he said.
"Marcy's awake."
"I know. She's gonna make it."
Rose Marie put a finger to her lips. "Shhh. Don't hex her."
While they were waiting for the meeting to get together, Lane called. "I got bored and walked by Rodriguez's office window. He was working on the computer in his office."
"How many people saw you? The secretary?"
"Maybe. But I was disguised as a cool guy, which, for me, takes no effort, and I put a little shine on her, through the window."
"Lane, you fucking"
"Anyway, Rodriguez was signed on to E-Trade."
"E-Trade."
"Yeah. I bet he's scared and dumping stock."
"Like I was saying, you're a fucking genius." Lucas called Mallard back. "Can you get into E-Trade records?"
"If I wanted to," Mallard said.
Del came to the meeting, along with Frank Lester; Towson, the county attorney; and Long, the assistant county attorney, just back from the Atheneum bank with a pile of paper. No public relations people.
"I wanted to make sure everybody knows what we're doing," Lucas said. "We're looking at this guy Rodriguez, and I will tell you this, just based on feel and experience and a few things we know about him: He killed Alie'e and Sandy Lansing."
"You're pretty sure," Towson said.
"Pretty sure. Lansing was dealing several kinds of dope to rich people and wanna-bes, working for Rodriguez. Rodriguez is at the party. They have some kind of conflict, and Rodriguez kills her right there in the hallway. Maybe it's even an accidentthe ME's saying it looks like her head was smashed against a doorjamb. So Rodriguez tried to stuff her in the closet and is surprised by Alie'e, who was in the bedroom. Maybe Alie'e heard the noise of Lansing's head hitting the doorjambor maybe she just woke up at the wrong time. Anyway, she sees something, and Rodriguez takes her out. At this point, he walks away, maybe down the hall to the next room, and goes out the window. Or maybe he just walks through the crowd and drifts away."
"What do we have for sure?" Towson asked.
"We have the fact that Rodriguez was a punk in Detroit, came here with no money, and got rich fast. We have a guy who'll tell us that he's a dope wholesaler, and that Sandy Lansing worked for him, sending dope. I don't doubt that once we start working on that angle, now that we've got his name, we'll be able to find a few other ties between them. We've got Rodriguez at the party. We've got a guyDerrick Dealwho knew Lansing pretty well, and thought she might be selling a little dope; and he was a guy who would do a little blackmail if it looked profitable. He almost certainly knew who her boss was, because a day after I talked to him, he was murdered in a way that was at least reminiscent of the way Alie'e and Lansing were killed: no passion, just brutal efficiency."
"I don't see how you tie Deal to Rodriguez," Rose Marie said.
"I don't, directly. What I'm saying is, Deal didn't know Alie'e. So if he was going to blackmail somebody for murder, it had to be somebody tied to Lansing. The only person at that party tied to Lansing, as far as we know, was Rodriguez."