"You know, we really could spend more time going through the place," Lily suggested.
"Better not. What you get quick is probably all you're going to get," Lucas said. "Never push when you're inside somebody else's house. All kinds of shit can happen. Friends stop by unexpectedly. Relatives. Get in and get out."
"You sound more and more experienced…"
Lucas shrugged. "You got the warrant?"
"Oh, yeah." Lily took it out of her purse and stuck it in the sleeve of a winter coat in the living room closet. "We'll tell the court we put it one place he'd find it for sure. Of course, he's got to put on the coat."
"Which he probably wouldn't do Until winter…"
"Which is not that far away," Lily said.
"So all right," Lucas said. "Did we change anything?"
"Nothing I can see," Lily said.
"Let me take a last look in the bedroom." He stepped into the bedroom, looked around and finally opened the closet door an inch. "I'm slipping," he said. "The damn door was open when I came in and I closed it."
Lily was looking at him curiously. Lucas said, "What?"
"I'm really kind of impressed," she conceded. "You're pretty good at this."
"That's the nicest thing you ever said to me."
She grinned and shrugged. "So I'm a little competitive."
"I'm sorry about ragging you this morning," Lucas said, the words tumbling out. "I'm not a responsible human being before noon. I don't daylight; I really don't."
"I shouldn't have picked on you," she said. "I just want to get this job done."
"Are we making up?"
She turned away toward the door, her back to him.
"It's all right with me," she said. "Let's get out of here." She opened the door and peered down the hallway.
"Clear," she said.
Lucas was just behind her. "If we're going to make up, we ought to do it right," he said.
She turned and looked at him. "What?"
He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, and the kiss came back for just the barest fraction of a second, a returned pressure with a hint of heat. Then she pulled away and stepped out into the hall, flustered.
"Enough of that shit," she said.
It was a five-minute walk down the block, around the corner, up the alley and into the surveillance apartment. Lily kept her head turned, apparently interested in watching the apartment buildings go by. Once or twice, Lucas felt her glance at him, and then quickly away. He could still feel the pressure of her lips on his.
"How'd we do?" Del asked when they got back to the apartment. Sloan stood up and wandered over. A third detective had arrived and was sitting on an aluminum lawn chair, reading a book and watching the street. A man in a gray suit sat on a folding canvas camp stool next to the window. He was reading a hardcover book and smoking a pipe.
"Found a couple of guns, fucked one of them up," Lucas said. Under his breath he asked, "Feeb?"
Del nodded, and they glanced at the FBI man in the gray suit. "Observing," Del muttered. In a louder voice he said, "Get anything else?"
"A phone number," Lily said. "I'll call Anderson and see how quick he can run down that Ohio phone."
Anderson called Kieffer and Kieffer called Washington. Washington made three calls. Ten minutes after Lily talked to Anderson, Kieffer got a call from the agent-in-charge in Columbus, Ohio. The number was for a motel off Interstate near Columbus. An hour later, an FBI agent showed a motel desk clerk a wire photograph of Hood. The clerk nodded, remembering the face, and said Hood had stayed at the motel the night before. The clerk found the registration, signed as Bill Harris. There was a license-plate number, but a check showed that the number had never been issued in Minnesota.
"He's careful," Anderson said. They were gathered in Daniel's office.
"But he's moving right along," said Kieffer.
"He ought to be here. Or close," Lily said, looking from Lucas to Anderson to Daniel to Kieffer.
Kieffer nodded. "Very late tonight or sometime tomorrow, if he keeps pushing it. He's got Chicago in the way. He either has to go through it, or go way around it… He'd have to push like a sonofabitch to make it here tonight. It's more likely that he'd make it to Madison tonight and get into the Cities tomorrow."
"How far is Madison?" Lily asked.
"Five hours."
"He is pushing it," she said. "So it could be tonight…"
"We'll keep a watch," Daniel said. He looked around. "Anything else?"
"I can't think of anything," Lucas said. "Lily?"
"I guess we wait," Lily said.
CHAPTER 9
Lily went back to the surveillance post with Del, the undercover cop, while Lucas filled out the return on the search warrant. As he was finishing, Larry Hart walked in, carrying an overnight bag.
"Anything more?" Lucas asked.
"Nothing but a bunch of rumors," Hart said, dumping the bag against the wall. "There was something weird going on, just about the time of the bikers. There was a sun dance up at Standing Rock, but that was on the up-and-up. But there was maybe a ceremony of some kind at Bear Butte. A midnight deal. That's the rumor."
"Any names?"
"No. But the guys out there are asking around."
"We need names. In this business, names are the game."
Hart checked in with Anderson, then went home to clean up. Lucas filed the return on the search warrant, walked across the street to a newsstand and bought half a dozen magazines, then headed down to Indian Country.
Del was asleep on an inflatable mattress, his mouth half open. He looked exactly like a bum, Lucas decided. Two Narcotics cops were perched on matching aluminum lawn chairs, watching the street. A cooler sat next to the cop on the left and a boombox was playing "Brown Sugar." The FBI man was gone, although his stool was still there: the seat read L. L. BEAN. Lily was sitting on a stack of newspapers, leaning back against a wall.
"You guys are such a bunch of cutups," Lucas said as he walked in.
"Fuck you, Davenport," the two surveillance cops said in unison.
"I second that," Lily said.
"Anytime, anyplace," Lucas said. The cops laughed, and Lily said, "You talking to me or them?"
"Them," said Lucas. "Duane's got such a nice ass."
"Takes a load off my mind," said Lily.
"Puts a load on mine," said Duane, the fat surveillance cop.
"Nothing happening?" asked Lucas.
"Lot of fuckin' dope," Duane said. "I was kinda surprised. We don't hear too much about it from this area."
"We don't know too many Indians," Lucas said. He looked around the bare apartment. "Where's the feeb?"
"He went out. Said he was coming back. He seems kinda touchy about his chair, if that's what you were thinking," said the thin cop.
"Yeah?"
"Stacks of newspaper down the hall," Lily said.
One of the magazines had a debate on ten-millimeter automatic pistols. A gun writer suggested that it was the perfect defensive cartridge, producing twice the muzzle energy of typical nine-millimeter and.45 ACP rounds and almost half again as much as the.357 Magnum. The writer's opponent, a Los Angeles cop, worried that the ten-millimeter was a little too hot, tending to punch holes not only through the target but also through the crowd at the bus stop two blocks away. Lucas couldn't follow the details of the argument. His mind kept straying to the shape of Lily's neck, the edge of her cheek from the side and slightly behind, the curve of her wrist. Her lip. He remembered Sloan saying something about her overbite, and he smiled just a bit and nibbled at his own lip.
"What're you smiling about?" Lily asked.
"Nothing," Lucas said. "Magazine."
She heaved herself to her feet, stretched, yawned and wandered over. "Hot-hot-hot," she said. "It's a ten-MM?"
Lucas closed the magazine. "Dumb fucks," he said.
Anderson called on the portable a few minutes after one o'clock: The killer in Oklahoma City had vanished. Kieffer had talked to FBI agents in South Dakota about the rumors Hart had heard of a midnight ceremony, Anderson added, but nobody had much.