"Yeah?" She still looked suspicious. "Who is it?"
As he filled her in on Rodriguez, he caught her attention wavering once or twice. She really wasn't back yet, he realized. Almost, not quite. When he finished with Rodriguez, he asked, "What are they telling you about recovery time? Think you could be back by Wednesday?"
"Maybe not," she said. "They said, if everything goes well, I'm gonna have to do some rehab Maybe May?"
"May? Jesus You were hit hard."
"They might have to go back in," Black said. "There're a couple pieces of bone floating around inside that oughta come out. But that's gonna be a while yet."
"You hurt?" Lucas asked her.
She nodded. "Yeah. Started this morning. I don't think it's gonna stop for a while."
"Drugs," Lucas said.
Sloan showed up and chatted for a while, then he and Lucas left, headed for St. Paul and Rodriguez. Outside the door, on the way to the car, Lucas said, "Before, I was scared about her. Now I'm pissed. She's hurting, and there's not a goddamn thing we can do about it."
"Get the guy who did it," Sloan suggested.
"The guy who did it thinks he's the Messiah," Lucas said.
"There's a difference betweenthinks he is andis," Sloan said. "To me, he's just another fat asshole on his way to a cell at Stillwater."
On the way to St. Paul, Lucas said, "Let's stop and see if Spooner is at his office. Bust his balls a little bit."
"Want me to be the nice guy?" Sloan asked.
"We don't need one. We just need to scare this guy."
But Spooner wasn't in. Reed, the bank president, came out to see them and said, "I suspended him. With pay. I think he's innocent, but we don't want a question. I pray to God that he and Alicia understand that."
"Who's Alicia?"
"His wife," Reed said.
"We really need to see him. You think he'd be at home?"
"He was earlier today."
"Do you have his address?" Lucas asked.
Reed frowned, looked at the secretary, and then said, "Give him Billys address." Then, with just a hint of defiancй: "And call Billy and tell him that these gentlemen are on their way."
Spooner lived a block from Highland Park, an affluent residential area ten minutes from the bank. The house was an upright, two-story, white-clapboard place set well back from the street, with oak trees in the front yard. Sloan pulled into the driveway and they got out; as they did, Spooner came to stand in the picture window, and for a second Lucas had the strange feeling that Spooner was somebody elsebut who, he didn't know. When Spooner saw them, he headed to the door. A dishwater blonde replaced him in the window. She was wearing a pink blouse and a gold watch.
Spooner met them on the front steps, pulling on a coat as he stepped outside. He shut the door behind him.
"I've talked to my attorney, and he said that I shouldn't talk to you unless he's present," he said.
"Well shoot," Lucas said. To Sloan: "A wasted trip."
Sloan said to Spooner, "What does your attorney think about us talking to youyou not talking back?"
"I'm just not supposed to talk to you."
"So tell your attorney we're here, and want to set up a meeting. The loan papers we subpoenaed are being reviewed by a bank examiner and an accountant right now, and we need to talk about it," Sloan said.
"And tell your attorney that we're making the case against Rodriguezfor dope dealing and murderand the more we look at him, the more we find," Lucas said. "That the case on Rodriguez is a hell of a lot more serious than a little fudging around with loans, and that you're going to buy a piece of his prison sentence if we don't start seeing some cooperation."
Spooner had his hands in his pockets, and he flapped his coat panels like wings. "Jeez, jeez, you guys, I don't want this. But you come on like I'm going to jail, what can I do but call my lawyer? So why don't you call him and talk to him? I'll come in. I'll tell you everything I know about Richard, but I've got to have some legal protection."
"When?" Lucas asked. "When will you come in?"
"Anytime. Jeez When do you want me to come? This afternoon? When? But I want my lawyer there."
The blond woman was standing in the window with her arms crossed, peering out at them. "Is this your wife?" Sloan asked.
Spooner looked, then said, "Yes, she's really freaking out. My God, my job"
Lucas was thinking: Lane had just gone to see the examiner, and they would want that opinion before they talked to Spooner. "So come in tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. Call your attorney, make an appointment with the chief's secretary. I'll be available anytime you are."
"Okay." Spooner shuffled uncertainly, opened the screen door as if to go back in the house, then said, just as Lucas and Sloan were turning away, "You know, I wasn't lying the other day. I still don't think Richard is involved with any of this."
"You're wrong."
"You're watching him. You know he's done this?"
"We're all over him," Lucas said, "and there's not a lot of doubt. The question is, how much do you know? If you know enough"
"I'll tell you everything, but there's just not much that I know. I mean, his loans, they were a little risky, but his record Thinking that he's a dope dealer, I" His mouth opened and closed a few times, as though he were flabbergasted. "I mean, I don't believe it. He's a nice guy."
"Tell me something nice that he's done," Lucas said.
"Well" Spooner seemed to grope for something, then said, "I can't think of anything specific, but he's been to ourhouse, and he's nice to my wife, and he's nice to other people I mean, he's just a nice guy to sit around and have a drink with."
"Well," Lucas said. "It's something to think about."
In the car, Sloan said, "A nice guy."
"Man, he's dealing dope. People who deal dope know about himthey pick him out of blind photo spreads," Lucas said. "And if you look at those loans the guy's a goddamn hustler."
"Even if he is nice," Sloan said.
"You remember Dan Marks?" Lucas said.
"Now, there was anice guy," Sloan said.
"Everybody agreed, until the trouble started and they took apart his garbage disposal," Lucas said.
"I didn't know fingernails would do that," Sloan said. They thought about fingernails, and headed back into St. Paul.
Rodriguez was at his office. Another patrol cop had been stuffed into a sport coat and left to keep an eye on him. They found him shifting from foot to foot in the Skyway, eating popcorn out of an oversized box. "Hey, guys," he said when Lucas and Sloan stepped into the Skyway. He looked at the popcorn box in his hand and said, "Gift from the St. Paul guys. Their precinct is right inside."
"What's he doing?" Lucas asked.
"Working on his computer. He went away for a while, and I lost him, but he came back."
"In his car?"
"No, he walked back into the building somewhere. You see the building entrance his office opens off that hallway. When he put on his coat, I ran down, but he was already out the door into the hallway. He was out of sight when I got there, so I went back to the parking garage and waited to see if he was coming out He never came out, and when I checked again, he was back in the office."
"So he went someplace inside."
"Yeah, but it's all hooked into the Skyway through there, so he could have gone anywhere. He was gone for maybe twenty minutes."
"Put on his coat."
"Yeah."
They thought about that for a minute, but nothing occurred to them except that he probably hadn't been on his way to the can.
"Maybe we need a couple more guys," Lucas said.
"If we're serious about him," the cop agreed. "As it is, I've got my car parked down on the street, but if he comes out the ramp and turns the wrong way, I'm gonna be pretty obvious doing a U-turn fifteen feet behind him."
Lucas looked at Sloan and said, "More guys."
"And soonmy feet are killing me," the cop said.
Rodriguez was not what Lucas expected. He was not Latino: He didn't look Latino, or sound Latino. He didn't sound like a drug dealer, either. Most drug dealers had a streak of macho in them, or if not that, then a bit of backslapper bullshit.