Helen Manette perched on an antique chair, mouth too wide and too tight, and Lucas thought she might be drunk, although she wasn't drinking anything. Nancy Wolfe, in a soft, moss-colored suit, glared at him from across the room. When he looked steadily back, she bounced her hair and looked away. She was sipping from a small cognac glass, and posed in front of a nineteenth-century oil painting of a woman with cold, dark eyes, a coal-black dress, and a surprisingly sensual lower lip.
The gofer attorney was getting drinks; a Minneapolis Intelligence cop in a plaid sportcoat and t-shirt, with a bump on his hip that was probably a large automatic, leaned in a doorway and gobbled popcorn from a plastic sack. He was waiting for the phone call that had never come, and looked bored.
Manette stood in the center of the circle, wearing a gray suit with an Italian necktie, the knot tight at his throat. He was worn and older than he'd looked only the day before. But somehow, down in his soul, Lucas thought, watching him, Manette also enjoyed being at the center of a tragedy.
"No-go," the chief said to Manette, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."
"Shit." Dunn turned away from them, and Lucas thought he might chunk the bourbon glass into the fireplace. Instead, he leaned against the rock-facing, head down.
"Not a complete loss," Dumbo said. A fine patina of sweat covered his forehead. He hated dealing with the rich, people who knew U.S. Senators by their nicknames and toilet habits. "We had him on, but we couldn't hold him long enough. We had him for twenty seconds and he figured it out. We've got an idea where he is: south of the rivers, down in Eagan or Apple Valley."
"You've got projects down there," Manette said to Dunn.
Dunn turned around, his face sullen, a little heat lightning in his eyes. "Yeah, but I wasn't answering any telephones down there tonight," he growled.
"That's not what I meant," Manette said, squaring off to Dunn. "I meant, you know the area."
Nancy Wolfe caught Tower's jacket sleeve and pulled him back an inch, and Dunn said, "Yeah, and I know there're three hundred thousand people in the fuckin' area…"
"Watch your mouth," Manette snapped. "There are women here."
Lucas, now watching Wolfe, behind Manette, her hand on his sleeve, thought: Huh.
"He, uh, mentioned Davenport," Dumbo said, looking at Lucas. "He apparently, uh, feels Chief Davenport is"-he groped for a word, finally found one-"responsible for the"-he groped for another one-"radio procedure."
"Well, he is," Dunn said to Dumbo. "He's the only cop I've talked to so far doesn't have his head up his ass."
"George…" Manette said, his face still red under his shock of white hair. Dunn ignored him and stepped closer to Lucas. "I want to put up a reward. I don't care how much. A million."
"Not that much," Lucas said. "We'd have freaks coming out of the woodwork. Start at fifty thousand."
"Good. I'm gonna announce it right now," Dunn said. He looked at Manette, but Manette said nothing, just shook his head with a sour, skeptical smile and turned away from them all.
On the way out, the chief said, "Happy little family."
"Nancy Wolfe, Tower Manette, what do you think?"
Nothing surprised Rose Marie Roux: she'd been in politics too long. After a moment of silence, she said, in a voice that was almost pleased, "It's possible. When we briefed them last night, she touched the back of his hand."
"And tonight, she tried to stop him from fighting Dunn… or made a move that way. Protective."
"Huh," the chief said. Then, "You know, Lucas, you have a strong feminine side."
"What?"
"Never mind," she said.
"No, what'd you mean?" Lucas was amused.
The chief said, "You're more willing than most men to rely on intuition. I mean, you suspect that Nancy Wolfe and Tower Manette are having an affair."
"There's no question about it," he said. "Now that I think about it."
"Because she caught his sleeve." Now Roux was amused. "That's a pretty good leap."
"It was how she touched his sleeve," Lucas said. "If that's feminine, I accept the label."
"What'd you think I meant?" Roux asked.
"I don't know," he said vaguely. "Maybe, you know-I had nice tits."
Rom started to laugh: "Christ, I'm running a fuckin' zoo, the people I've got."
The middle of the night, all foul-mouthed, their shirts seeming to pull willfully out of their pants and rumple on their own, they stood around a six-by-five Metro wall map and looked at the red-crayoned box southeast of the airport.
"It's something," Lester insisted. "He was smarter than we gave him credit for. Christ, another minute. One more minute and we've got him."
Lucas threw a paper coffee cup at a waste basket, the old coffee like acid in his mouth. "We gotta go for the full-court press. He'll be calling back. I'm surprised he hasn't already."
"We can do it with the next shift," Anderson says. "Right now, we'd be eighty percent. By tomorrow morning, we'll be at full strength."
"We gotta be ready to do it now," Lucas said.
"We are-just not a hundred percent. It's a matter of getting people through the shifts," Anderson said.
"We should flood the 494 strip, and extra people down I-35 all the way through Apple Valley," Lucas said.
"Smart little fuck," Lester said, staring moodily at the map.
Weather was asleep and moaned softly when he slipped into bed. He needed to wake her up to talk, but she would be cutting on someone in the morning, and he didn't dare do it. Instead, he lay awake for an hour, plotting the twists and turns of the day, feeling the warmth from Weather seeping over him. He finally slept, one arm at her waist, the smell of Chanel around him.
Weather was gone, and Lucas was just out of the shower when the cellular phone rang. He stopped, listening, then hurried into the living room, trailing streams of water. He'd left the phone on the dining room table, and now he picked it up and clicked it on.
"Lucas, how they hanging?" Mail sounded unnaturally cheerful.
"Are they still alive?" The squad cars should be rolling, Thirty seconds.
"Are you trying to trace me?"
Lucas hesitated, then repeated his original question: "Are they alive, or not?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah, they're alive," Mail said grudgingly. "In fact, I've got a message for you from Andi Manette."
"Let me get a pencil," Lucas said.
"Oh, horseshit, this is all recorded," Mail said impatiently. "Not that it's gonna do you any good. I'm using the cellular, but this time I'm riding around, a long way from anywhere."
Shit. "Go ahead: I've got a pencil."
"Here it is. I don't know how clear it'll be…"
George, Daddy, Genevieve, Aunt Lisa, this is Andi. We're okay, Grace and me, and we hope Genevieve is back and everything is fine with her. The man with us won't let us say anything about him, but he was good enough to let us send this. I hope we can talk to you again, and this man with us, please give him whatever he wants so we can come back safely. That's all I can say…
Andi Manette's voice was plaintive, fearful, trembling with hope; cut off with a click of a recorder button.
"That's all for now, sports fans," Mail said cheerfully. "I have to say, though, I liked the disk-jockey thing. It really woke me up. Tell the guy I'm gonna stop by his house and visit his family some day while he's gone. I'm gonna bring a pair of wire cutters with me. We're gonna have a lot of fun."
When Mail hung up, Lucas turned the phone off, laid it on the table, and stared at it like an ebony cockroach; fifteen seconds later, Martha Gresham called from the communications center and said, "We got it all."
"Excellent. Is Lester there?"
"No, but Donna's talking to him now, so he knows."
Lucas hurried back to the bedroom and dressed, waiting for the phone to ring. It rang as he was knotting the tie: "Yeah, Frank. Was it her?"
"It's her. And she's trying to tell us something, but we don't know what," Lester said.