"Who're you?" Lucas asked.
"Harriet Cuervo," the woman snapped. All Lucas could see were her eyes, which were the color of acid-washed jeans, and a pale crescent of face. "Who in the hell are you to be asking?"
"Police," Lucas said. Lucas fished his badge case out of his jacket pocket and flashed the badge at her. Lily waited behind him, down a step. "We didn't know you'd taken over Ray's operation."
"Know now," the woman grunted. The chain rattled off and she let the door swing open. Her husband's murder had left a faint stain on the wooden floor and Harriet Cuervo was standing in the middle of it. She was wearing a print dress that fell straight from her neck to her knees. "I told the other cops everything I knew," she said bluntly.
"We're looking for a different kind of information," Lucas said. The woman went back around Cuervo's old desk. Lucas stepped inside the office and glanced around. Something had changed, something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "We're asking about one of his tenants."
"So what do you want to know?" she asked. She was five feet, nine inches tall and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds, all of it rawboned knobs. There were short vertical lines above and below her lips, as though they'd once been stitched shut.
"You've got a renter named Yellow Hand, down at the Point?"
"Sure. Yellow Hand." She opened a ledger and ran a finger down an open column. "Paid up 'til tomorrow."
"You didn't see him yesterday or today?"
"Shit, I don't do no surveys. I just rent the fuckin' apartments," she said. "If he don't have the money tomorrow, out he goes. Today, I don't care what he does."
"So you haven't seen him?"
"Nope." She peered around Lucas at Lily. "She a cop too?"
"Yeah."
Cuervo looked Lily up and down. "Dresses pretty good for a cop," she sniffed.
"If Yellow Hand doesn't pay, do you go down and evict him yourself?" Lily asked curiously.
"I got an associate," Cuervo said.
"Who's that?" Lucas asked.
"Bald Peterson."
"Yeah? I thought he'd left town."
"He's come back. You know him?"
"Yeah. We go back."
"Say…" Harriet Cuervo's eyes narrowed and she made a gun of her index finger and thumb and pointed it at Lucas' heart. "You ain't the cop that pounded him, are you? Years ago? Like fuckin' crippled him?"
"We've had some disagreements," Lucas said. "Tell him hello for me." He took a step toward the door. "How about a guy named Shadow Love? You seen him around?"
"Shadow Love? Never even heard of him."
"He was living up at the Point…"
She shrugged. "Didn't rent from me," she said. "Must've been one of those other flatheads let him in. You know how it goes."
"Yeah," Lucas said as he turned away again. "Sorry about Ray."
"It's nice somebody is, 'cause I ain't," Cuervo said flatly. Her face showed some animation for the first time. "I was trying to think what I remembered best about Ray. One thing, you know? And you know what come to mind? He had a bunch of porno videotapes. He had one called Airtight Brunette. You know what an airtight brunette is? That's one who is filled up everyplace, if you know what I mean. Three guys. Anyway, his favorite part was when this guy 'jaculates on the brunette's chest. He was running that back and forth, back and forth. Everytime he stopped the VCR and rewound the tape, the regular TV show come on. You know what that was?"
"Uh, no, I wouldn't," Lucas said. He glanced quickly at Lily, who was staring at Cuervo, fascinated.
"Sesame Street. Big Bird was finding out how doctors take your blood pressure. So this guy 'jaculates on the brunette's chest and we get Big Bird. And he 'jaculates again and we get Big Bird. It was like that for fifteen minutes. 'Jac-ulate, Big Bird, 'jaculate, Big Bird."
She stopped to take a breath. "That," she said, "is how I remember Ray."
"Okay. Well, jeez, we gotta get going," Lucas said desperately. He pushed Lily out the door toward the stairs. They were ten steps down when Harriet Cuervo came to the landing.
"I wanted to have kids," she shouted down at them.
Lily grinned at him as they walked back to the car. "Nice girl," she said. "We wouldn't do much better in New York."
"Fuckin' gerbil," Lucas grumbled.
"Did you see the calendar on the wall? Big Boys' Buns?"
Lucas snapped his fingers. "I knew there was something different about the place," he said. "Ray used to have this old Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. A wet-T-shirt shot. These great… ah…"
"Tits?"
"Right. Anyway, it was always the same picture. He found one he liked and stopped right there."
"So what we got is a change in management, but no change in style," Lily said.
"You got it."
In the car, Lucas checked the time. They had been on the street for three hours. "We ought to think about lunch."
"Is there a deli in town?" Lily asked.
Lucas grinned at her. "Can't stand to be away?"
"It's not that," she said. "I've been eating hotel food for too long. Everything tastes like oatmeal."
"All right, a deli," Lucas agreed. "There's one a couple blocks from my place, over in St. Paul. Got a restaurant in the back."
They headed east on Lake, across the Mississippi, then south down along the river through a forest of maples, elms and oaks, past a couple of colleges.
"All religious colleges. Highest density of virgins in the Twin Cities, right here," Lucas said.
"Your neighborhood too. What a shame; what a workload," she said.
"What's that mean?" Lucas asked.
"When I told people I was planning to go out with you, they all gave me the look. Like, Uh-oh, into the hands of Lothario."
"Bullshit," said Lucas.
The deli was in a yellow cinder-block building with a parking lot in back. When they got out of the car, an old woman was watching them through a restaurant window while she gnawed on the end of a whole pickle. Lily's face lit up when she saw it.
"That pickle… There's a marginal chance that this place could be all right," she said. Inside, she scanned the sandwich menu, then ordered a corned beef and cheese combo with coleslaw, a Side order of french fries, a seven-layer salad and a raspberry-flavored Perrier.
"A thousand calories," she said five minutes later, looking ruefully at the brown plastic tray the counterman had just delivered. The counterman snorted as he turned away. "What, you think more than a thousand?" she called after him.
"Honey, the sandwich is six, seven hundred and that's only half of it," the counterman said.
"I don't want to hear it," Lily said, turning back to the food.
Lucas got a sausage on rye, a bag of potato chips and a Diet Coke and led the way to the back.
"I'm an eater," Lily said as they slid into the booth. "I'll weigh two hundred pounds when they bury me."
"You look all right," Lucas said.
Her eyes came up. "I'd look great with ten less pounds."
"I'll stand by my original statement."
Lily got busy with her food, keeping her eyes away from his. "So," she said a moment later. "I understand you've got a new kid but aren't married."
"Yup."
"Doesn't that embarrass you a little?" She licked a fleck of slaw off her upper lip.
"Nope. I wanted to get married, but the woman wouldn't do it. We're still together, more or less. We don't live together."
"When did you last ask her to marry you?" Lily asked.
"Well, I used to ask her once a week. Then I just made a general open offer."
"Do you love her?"
"Sure," Lucas said, nodding.
"Does she love you?"
"She says so."
"So why doesn't she marry you?" Lily asked.
"She says I'd be a great father but a fuckin' terrible husband."
"Hmph." Lily took a big bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, watching him. "Well," she said after she swallowed, "it sounds like you might fool around a little."