And Weather said something that sounded like "ZZZzzttug."
When he woke, before he opened his eyes, he thought of the Bible verses. Maybe the not was the key. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. But even if the not was the key word, he thought wryly, ye had no understanding. And who was coming near unto whom?
He thought about it through shaving, through the shower, and came up with nothing brilliant, and began dressing. The day was gorgeous: sunlight slanted in through the wooden blinds in the living room, and the whole feel was that of a perfect fall day. As he put on a shirt and tie, he watched the Openers morning show. The weatherman said that the low pressure system responsible for all the rain had rambled off to the east and was presently peeing on Ohio; additional micturatory activity could be expected in New York by evening, if you were going there. The weatherman said neither peeing nor micturatory, but should have, Lucas thought. He found himself whistling, stopped to wonder why, and decided a nice day was a nice day. The kidnapping wasn't the day's fault, but he stopped whistling.
"So we're stuck?" Roux asked. She lit a cigarette, forgetting the one already burning in an ashtray behind her. Her office stank of nicotine, and would need new curtains every year. "All we can do is grind along?"
"I had those Bible verses sent out to Stillwater," Lucas said. "Maybe the local cops will figure something out."
"And maybe the fairy godmother will kiss me on the sweet patootie," Lester said.
"Nasty thought," Roux said. "Nasty."
"I think we ought to start pushing the big four: the Manettes, Dunn, Wolfe. Start taking them apart. Somebody is talking."
Roux shook her head. "I haven't entirely bought that. We've got the wiretaps going, but I don't think I'm ready for a full-scale assault."
"Who's listening to the wires?" Lucas asked.
Lester made a sound like he was clearing his throat.
"What?"
"Larry Carter, from uniform, then tonight, uh, Bob. Greave."
"Ah, shit," Lucas groaned.
"He can do that," Lester said defensively. "He's not stupid, he's just…" He groped for a phrase.
"Investigatively challenged," Roux suggested.
"That's it," Lester said.
Lucas stood up, "I've gotten everything I can out of the raw paper on Dunn, Wolfe, and the Manettes, and I want to look at all the stuff from the hospitals and the possible candidates from Andi Manette's files," he said. "That's where it'll break-unless we get a piece of luck."
"Good luck; there's a lot of it," Lester said. "And you better pick up a new copy of Anderson's book. There's more new stuff in there. We got lists coming out the wazoo."
Lucas spent the day like a medieval monk, bent over the paper. Anything useful, he xeroxed and stuck in a smaller file. By the end of the day, he had fifty pieces of paper for additional review, plus a foot-tall stack of files to take home. He left at six, enjoying the lingering daylight, regretting the great day missed, and gone forever. This would have been a day to go up north with Weather, to learn a little more about sailing from her. They were talking about buying an S2 and racing it. Maybe next year…
They spent a quiet evening: a quick mile run, a small, easy dinner with a lot of carrots. Afterwards, Lucas dipped into the homework files, while Weather read a Larry Rivers autobiography called What Did I Do? Occasionally she'd read him a paragraph, and they'd laugh or groan together. As she sat in the red chair, with the yellow light illuminating half of her face, he thought she looked like a painting he'd seen in New York. Vermeer, that was it. Or Van Gogh-but Van Gogh was the crazy guy, so it must have been Vermeer. Anyway, he remembered the light in the painting.
And she looked like that, he thought, in the light.
"Gotta go to bed," she said, regretfully, a little after nine o'clock. "Gotta be up at five-thirty. We oughta do this more often."
"What?"
"Nothing, together."
When she'd gone, Lucas started through the stack of files again; came to the one marked JOHN MAIL; after the name, somebody had scrawled [deceased.]
This one had looked good, Lucas thought. He opened it and started reading.
The phone rang and he picked it up.
"Yeah?"
Greave: "Lucas, I'm peeing my pants. The asshole is talking to Dunn."
CHAPTER 21
Greave met Lucas at the elevator doors. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie hanging around his shoulders, his hair sticking up in clumps. "Christ, lit me up like a fuckin' Christmas tree," he said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
He led Lucas down a bare but brightly lit hallway toward an open office door, their heels echoing on the tile floor.
"You call the feebs?" Lucas asked.
"No. Should I?"
"Not yet." The office was furnished with a cafeteria-style folding table, three office chairs, and a television. A group of beige push-button telephones and a tape recorder sat on the table with a plate of donut crumbs; the TV was on but the sound was off, Jane Fonda hustling a treadmill. A pile of magazines sat on the floor beside the table.
"Got it cued up," Greave said. He pushed a button on the recorder, and the tape began to roll with the sound of a phone ringing, then being picked up.
"George Dunn,"
"George?" Mail's voice was cheerful, insouciant. "I'm calling for your wife, Andi."
"What? What'd you say?" Dunn seemed stunned.
"I'm calling for your wife. Is this call being monitored? And you better tell the truth, for Andi's sake."
"No, for christ sakes. I'm in the car. Who is this?"
"An old friend of Andi's… Now listen; I want a hundred thousand for the package. For the three of them."
"How do I know this isn't a con?" Dunn asked.
"I'm gonna play a recording." There was some apparent fumbling, then Andi Manette's voice, tinny, recorded: "George, this is Andi. Do what this man tells you. Um, he said to tell you what we talked about the last time we talked… You called me from the club and you wanted to come over, but I said that the kids were already in bed and I wasn't ready to…"
The recording ended in mid-sentence and Mail said, "She gets a little sloppy after that, George. You wouldn't want to hear it. Anyway, you got any more questions about whether this is real?"
Dunn's voice sounded like a rock. "No."
"So. I don't want you to go to the bank and get a bunch of money with the numbers recorded and dusted with UV -powder and all that FBI shit. If you do it, I'll know, and I'll kill them all."
"I gotta get the money."
"George, you've got almost sixty thousand in case money, mostly kruggerrands, that nobody knows about, in a safety deposit box in Prescott, Wisconsin. Okay? You've got a Rolex worth $8,000 that you never wear anyway. Andi has $25,000 in diamond jewelry and a ruby from her mother, all in your joint safety deposit box at First Bank. And you've got several thousand dollars in cash hidden in the two houses… get that."
"You sonofabitch."
"Hey. Let's try to keep this businesslike, okay?" Mail's voice was wry, but not quite taunting.
"How do I get it to you? I've got cops staying with me, waiting for you to call."
"Take I-94 east all the way to the St. Croix, get off on Highway 95, get back on going west, and pull off at the Minnesota Welcome station. You know where that is?"
"Yeah."
"There's a phone by the Coke machine. Get on it just before seven o'clock, but keep your finger on the hook. I'll call right at seven o'clock. If it's busy, I'll try again at five after seven. If it's still busy, I'll try at ten after, but that's it: after that, I'm gone. Don't even think about telling the cops. I'll be driving around, and they can't track me when I'm moving. They've been trying. When I get you on the phone, I'll give you some instructions."