"Whoever it was, maybe they were wrong," Aaron panted as they started down the stairs.
"They weren't wrong. You think somebody'd just call…?"
"No. And it was an Indian guy. He had the accent…"
Sam stopped at the first-floor landing and peered out at the street.
"Through the back," he said after a second. "There's a guy walking down the street."
"What about the truck?" Aaron asked as he trailed behind his cousin.
"If they know us, if they've got our names, they'll know about the truck. And our fingerprints are all over that room…"
They went down another flight into the basement, then out past the furnace and a storage room, and up a short flight of concrete steps into an alley. The darkness was broken by lights from back windows of the apartments and of houses on the other side of the alley.
"Right through the yard," Sam said in a whisper.
"They'll think we're window peepers," Aaron said.
"Shhh."
They crossed the yard, crouching, staying close to the garage and then to a hedge.
"Watch the clothesline," Sam muttered a second too late. The wire line snapped Aaron across the bridge of the nose.
"Ah, boy, that hurt," he said, holding his nose.
"Quiet…"
They stopped behind a bridal-wreath bush by the corner of the house. A car was moving along the street; it slowed and stopped at the corner. A few seconds later, two men got out. One leaned against the fender of the car and lit a cigarette. The other wandered down the sidewalk toward the back of the Crows' apartment house. They looked like street people but walked with a hard confidence.
"Cops," Sam whispered.
"We got to get across the street before everything is blocked," Aaron said.
"C'mon." Sam led the way again, dragging the duffel bag. They went down the length of the block, crossing yards behind the houses. Most windows were still lit. They heard music from several, or television dialogue muffled by the closed windows.
Aaron suddenly laughed, a delighted sound that stopped Sam in his tracks.
"What?"
"Remember back in Rapid City, when we was hitting those houses? Shit, we wasn't hardly teenagers… It feels kind of good."
"Asshole," Sam grunted, but a moment later he chuckled. "I remember that broad with the yellow towel…"
"Oh yeah…"
At the last house, they moved into a hedge and looked into the street.
"Nobody," said Sam. "Unless they're sitting in one of those cars."
"Right straight across and into the alley," Aaron said. "Go."
They crossed the street as quickly as they could, the duffel banging against Sam's legs. They hurried down the length of the alley.
"I can't carry this motherfucker much farther," Sam panted.
"There's a phone up by the SuperAmerica store. One more block," Aaron said.
They humped down another alley, Aaron helping with the duffel bag. At the end of the alley they stopped, and Aaron sat down behind between a bush and a chain-link fence. The Superamerica was straight across the street, the phone mounted on an outside wall.
"I'll call Barbara," Sam said, fumbling for change. "You wait here. Stay out of sight. I'll have her pull right into the alley."
"What about Shadow Love? If this is right, if there are cops, he'll walk right into them."
"There's nothing we can do about that," Sam said bleakly. "We gotta hope that he spots them, or calls Barb."
"Maybe it's nothing," Aaron said.
"Bullshit," said Sam. "Those were cops. They figured us out, cousin. They're on our ass."
CHAPTER 17
Two pickups and a car with a Sioux Falls television logo were angle-parked outside the all-night coffee shop. A single man in a cowboy hat sat in a window booth, hunched over a cup of coffee and a grilled-cheese sandwich. Lucas hesitated outside the window, looking in, then followed Lily through the door.
"Checking for Jennifer?" she asked with a small smile.
Lucas blushed. "Well, it'd be better if she weren't…"
"Sure." He followed her down the row of booths, watching her hips. She'd changed from slacks to a dress and low heels. She still carried the shoulder bag with the.45.
The waitress, a tired young woman with vagrant strands of black hair dangling in her face, took their order of cheeseburgers and coffee and slouched away.
"What do you think about this Crows business?" Lily asked while they waited for the food.
"I don't know. Larry sounded weird. And shit, I was talking to this other guy, this Shadow Love. I knew at the time there was something not right about him. He… vibrated, you know?"
"Fruitcake?"
"There was something wrong. I don't know." The coffee came, scalding hot, oily.
There was nothing like the Minneapolis Indian community in New York, Lily said. Indians were there, all right, but weren't as visible. "They look kind of… mysterious," she said. "You see them on the street, on the corners. They're not threatening, not hostile. They just seem to watch…"
Lucas nodded. "Sometimes they're like the biggest up-country Scandinavian redneck shitkickers in the world. They bang around in old pickups and work in the lumber business or ranching. Then other times you'll be out fuckin' around somewhere and you'll come across a bunch of Indians doing a ceremony. It looks like a tourist thing, but it's not. It's real…"
They talked for an hour. Lucas at one point decided he was babbling. On the way back to the motel, in the car, they spoke almost not at all. Lucas parked behind the motel and locked the car.
"Think they'll know anything?" she asked as they walked down the hall toward their rooms.
"Maybe. We can call."
"Come on in. We can call from my room." She pushed the door open and Lucas followed her inside. She gestured at the phone, and he sat on the bed, picked up the receiver and dialed. Daniel answered on the first ring.
"Chief: Lucas. What happened?"
"We went in, but we missed them," Daniel said. "They're the right guys, though. There were a couple of press releases balled up and tossed in a garbage bag under the sink and the typewriter's right…"
"They left the typewriter?"
"Yeah. Sloan's down there, with Del, and they say it's kind of odd. They left a lot of junk behind, but the personal stuff is gone. Sloan thinks they blew out of the place in a hurry-maybe when they heard that Liss wasn't dead. Figured he might talk."
"Are you talking to the neighbors?"
"Yeah. Nobody saw them much. They are two old Indians, though. And they left prints all over the place, the FBI's running them now. And somebody said they drove a truck, and that's still parked out front…"
"Jesus. Maybe you ought to shut down the scene and watch it, maybe they'll be back…"
"We're doing that, but Del doesn't think it'll work. He says word'll be up and down the street in an hour, about the raid."
"That's probably right," Lucas said. "Damn."
"We'll talk to you tomorrow-we ought to have everything figured out by then. We'll meet at one o'clock, if you can make it."
"We'll be there," Lucas said. He hung up and turned to Lily, shaking his head. "Missed them."
"But they're the right guys?"
"Yeah, they left some stuff behind. They got a definite ID."
"God damn it," Lily said irritably. She dropped her head and reached back with one hand and rubbed her neck. She was less than a foot away and Lucas could smell the elusive scent she'd worn the first day he'd met her.
"How much longer are we going to fool around?" he asked quietly.
"I'm all done," she said.
"Say what? You're all done?"
"Yeah." She stood and stepped across the room. Lucas started after her, but she reached the lights, snapped them off and then stepped back into the dark, her arms crossed in front of her breasts.