CHAPTER 25
Ice lived in a brick two-story in St. Paul's Desnoyer Park, a few blocks from the Mississippi. Only the upper floor was lit: when Del touched the doorbell, he said, without looking back, "Nothing."
Lucas was in the back of Del's van, invisible behind the tinted glass, a radio in one hand, a phone in the other. His.45 was on the floor; he could see almost nothing in the dark. Behind them was a hurricane fence, and on the other side, the Town and Country Club golf course. "The guy on the porch can't see anything," he said into the phone.
"Should I go down?" Ice asked.
"No, no, just wait. He'll be up, if the door's open."
"It should be…"
"Hang on," Lucas said to Ice. And to Del, on the radio, "Go on in. Straight ahead to the white door, through it, then a hard right up the stairs."
"Jesus, I love this shit," Del said. He was wearing a Derby hat, a white shirt pulled out at the waist, pants that were too large and too short, and a cotton jacket. A guitar case was slung over his shoulder. In the dark, from a distance, he might pass for a musician in his twenties. "I'm going in."
Del pushed through the front door, his right hand crooked awkwardly in front of his belly. He was holding a Ruger.357, trying to keep it out of sight from the street.
When he disappeared into the house, Lucas crawled to the other side of the van and looked out, then quickly checked the street through the front and rear windows. There were only a few lights on. Nothing moved on the street. Lights went on, then off, in Ice's house. Then Del's voice burped from the radio. "I'm at the stairs. Not a sound. I'm on my way up."
Lucas said into the phone, "He's coming up," and to himself, He's gone…
Mail hadn't decided what to do about Ice. Actually, he thought, he'd like to date her. They'd go well together. But that didn't seem possible, not anymore. He was beginning to feel the pressure, to feel the sides of the bubble collapsing upon him. He was beginning to think beyond Andi Manette and her body.
When he became aware of it-became aware of the barely conscious planning for "afterwards"-a kind of depression settled on him. He and Andi were working something out: a relationship.
If he moved on, something would have to be done about her and the kid. He'd started working through it in his mind. The best way to do it, he thought, would be to take Andi out, and upstairs, and out in the yard, and shoot her. There'd be no evidence in the house, and he could throw the body in the cistern. Then the kid: just go down, open the door, and do it. And after a while, he could dump some junk into the cistern-there was an old disker he could drag over, and other metal junk that nobody would want to take out. Then, when somebody else rented the place, even if they looked in the cistern, there'd be no attempt to clean it out. Just fill it up with dirt and rebuild.
Getting close to the time, he thought.
But it depressed him. The last few days had been the most fulfilling he'd known. But then, he was young: he could fall in love again.
With somebody like Ice.
Mail was parked a block from Ice's house, in the driveway of a house with a For Sale sign in the front yard. He'd been driving by when a saleswoman pulled the drapes on the picture window so she could show the view to a young couple from Cedar Rapids. Mail looked in: there was no furniture in the place. Nobody living there. When the saleswoman left, he pulled into the driveway, all the way to the garage, and simply sat and watched the lights in Ice's house. He knew the layout of the neighborhood from fifteen minutes circling the golf course. If he wanted, he could probably get down the alley and come up from the back of the house, and maybe force the back door.
But he wasn't sure he wanted that. He just wasn't sure what he was doing-but Ice's image was in his mind.
He was still waiting when the guitar player arrived in a blue mini-van. And he was waiting when the guitar player left with Ice. An odd time to leave, he thought.
He followed them, staying well back.
Ice and Del came down the sidewalk together, Ice wearing a Korean War-era Army field jacket and tights, smoking a cigarette. She flicked the cigarette into the street, blew smoke, and climbed in the passenger side of the van.
As they headed across the interstate back toward the company offices, she half-turned to talk to Lucas. And he thought how young she was: her unmarked face, the way she bounced in the front seat, out of excitement, engagement.
She was emphatic. "Three people saw him, two of them out front, one of them around by the alley; he was going through in a van, and Mr. Turner, who's the guy behind me, saw his face up close. When I showed him the composites we made, he picked out the one where we aged Mail's face. He was sure. He said Mail was the guy in the alley."
"He saw you on television," Lucas said. "I thought he'd go after the company. I didn't think he'd come after you in person."
"Why me?"
" 'Cause of the way you look," Del said bluntly, after a couple seconds of silence. "We've got an idea of the kind of kid he is. We thought he might go for you."
"That's why the TV people were all over you," Lucas said. "You sorta stand out in a crowd of techies."
She looked Lucas full in the face. "Is that why you were so happy to have me involved?"
Lucas started to say no, but then nodded and said, "Yeah."
"All right," she said, turning back to the front. He saw her eyes in the rearview mirror. "Is this a good time to ask for a raise?"
Lucas grinned and said, "We can talk about it."
"How come you didn't come in with Del?" Ice asked.
"He knows who I am, that I write games," Lucas said. "And he probably knows me by sight. I think I actually ran into the sonofabitch the day after the kidnapping."
"At least he's sniffing around," Del said.
"Yeah," Lucas nodded, looking out the back windows. Another van was back there-and yet another was waiting at a cross street. "He's out there."
"Good thing I had a gun," Ice said.
Lucas turned back to her and said, "What?"
Ice dug into her waistband and came up with a blued.380 automatic, turned it in the dome light, worked the safety.
"Gimme that," Lucas said, irritated, patting his hand out.
"Fuck you, pal," she said. She pushed it back in her waistband. "I'm keeping it."
"You're asking for trouble," Lucas said. "Tell her, Del."
Del shrugged: "I just bought one for my old lady. Not a piece of shit like that, though." He looked at Ice. "If you're gonna have one, get something bigger."
Ice shook her head: "I like this one. It's cute."
"You gotta shell in the chamber?"
"Nope."
"Good. You don't have to worry about blowing your nuts off, carrying it in your pants like that."
Mail stayed a full two blocks back, following them up St. Anthony to Cretin, across the interstate to University. When they turned left, he let them go.
Davenport's, he thought. She's going back to work.
He wondered who the musician was-a full-time relationship, or just a ride?
He'd like to take a look at Davenport's, but it simply smelled wrong. Of course, maybe he was simply being paranoid. Mail laughed at himself. He was paranoid; everybody said so. Still, if he had to look at Davenport's, it might be a good idea to make a test run. To send in a dummy.
He thought, I wonder where Ricky Brennan is…
CHAPTER 26
Haywood called from the roof. "We got somebody coming in." Lucas had been on the cot for an hour, half-wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, his mind moving too restlessly for sleep. He kicked the bag off, groped for the radio. "Coming in? What do you mean?"
"I mean there's this asshole down there along the tracks, coming straight in, kind of dodging in and out like he's in fuckin' Vietnam. But he's coming here. I can see his face, he's looking at the building."