Chapter 12
The news about Weimer got to Lucas through the Secret Service. Dickens heard about it from a St. Paul cop on the security committee, and suggested that the cops call Lucas. A St. Paul lieutenant named Parker called at eight o'clock, and Ellen, the housekeeper, brought the phone to the bedroom and said, "St. Paul police. They say it's important."
Weather was already at work, and Ellen said that Letty was up and waiting for a ride to Channel Three.
"Tell her I'll be ready in fifteen minutes," Lucas said. He took the phone: "Yeah. Davenport."
"Don Parker at St. Paul. We had a robbery last night, and we've been told you're tracking them."
"Lobbyist guy?"
"That's what I'm told," Parker said. "He's not talking much, said they took his travel money, but said it was the same deal as two other ones he heard about. Anyway, he's at St. John's."
"Hurt?"
"Peeing blood. Probably get out tomorrow, depending. They rabbit-punched him a few times. Took him for a ride in a van, robbed his room. There's something going on there."
"I'll go talk to him," Lucas said.
"Dick Clay is working it for us, but he's back in the house already ' if you need anything."
Lucas hung up and thought, All right: the motherfucker's still in town.
Lucas got cleaned up and headed out to the kitchen, where Letty was reading the newspaper and eating toast. They were a little reserved after the fight the night before, and Lucas had a quick microwave oatmeal with milk and a banana, then they loaded into the Porsche and headed north and west toward Minneapolis.
Letty said, finally, looking out the side window, "Can't wait until I get my license."
"You'll be lucky if you get a license at all, after a stunt like yesterday's," Lucas said.
She turned back to him and said, "You want to let it go, or do you want to argue? I mean, I'll argue if you still want to."
"Let it go," Lucas said.
"Okay. Like I said, I can't wait until I get my license." She reached out and ran a hand over the dashboard. "Take this thing out on the highway and blow the coon-farts out of it."
Lucas laughed and said, "You should live so long as to get your hands on this car, sweetie. I'm thinking Hyundai. Used."
"You should live so long as to see me driving a Hyundai," she said.
She got him laughing, and though he could feel the manipulation, it felt kinda good ' because that's what daughters were supposed to do. Then they were across the bridge and into town and down to the station, and he waved and she was inside and he headed back to St. Paul.
Shelly Weimer was propped up in a bed, a fat man with a pencil-thin mustache in the St. John's Intensive Care Unit, a saline drip running into one arm. He was reading the Wall Street Journal, holding it up with one hand, while the other hand took the drip. He folded the paper when Lucas walked in, and asked, "Who're you?"
"I'm with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension," Lucas said. "Lucas Davenport."
"I'm really hurt," Weimer said, and the hand holding the newspaper trembled with the effort of speaking. He reached out, slowly, and dropped it on a service tray.
"I'm sorry," Lucas said.
"Kept hitting me in the back, in the kidneys. Hit me even after they had the money." He groaned, as if to emphasize the money.
"You didn't see any faces?"
"No. The guy who was hitting me was wearing a mask," Weimer said. "The driver I couldn't see at all' You're Mitford's guy."
"Not exactly. We talk," Lucas said.
"But you know the score."
"More or less. You had a shitload of illegal money stashed in your room and a guy named Brutus Cohn and one of his gang members grabbed you in an alley and threw you in the back of a van, and put a bag on your head, got your room key and took the money. And beat you up."
Weimer nodded, shifted in bed, winced, and said: "That's it, in a nutshell. I didn't know his name was Brutus Cohn, and you might want to go easy on that "illegal money" thing. Since you know all of that, why haven't you picked him up?"
"We're looking, we haven't found him," Lucas said. "He's ditched himself somewhere-could be headed out of town by now. But, we're looking. Got his face all over national TV."
"Won't get my money back," Weimer said.
"No, it won't, but it really wasn't your money, anyway," Lucas said. "So: what can you tell me?"
Weimer said, "I've been thinking about it, and I've got one thing."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I'" He groaned and arched his back and flailed at it with his good hand, groaned again, and then went slack, and looked at Lucas. "It keeps twisting, like a muscle's turning back there ' God bless me."
"The one thing," Lucas said.
"Ah ' I was eating in this sandwich shop and I got up to go," Weimer said. "Left the money and the tip on the table, walked out the door, turned left, walked down this little short alley around the building to the parking lot to my car. I opened the door and bam! They got me. Just bam-bam! Like that." He had small round hands and he slapped them twice. "So, I think they had to be watching me, to be all ready. The guys in the van couldn't see me, because you couldn't see into the back of the shop. I think somebody was inside the place."
"You saw somebody?"
Weimer shifted again, his face going pale, and he said, "Ahhh. God, I hate this shit' Okay: There was a tough-looking hillbilly guy and this cool-looking woman in the front booth. They didn't look like they should go together, but they were. I noticed her looking back at me two or three times-caught her looking. I am what I am, and my wife likes me okay, but I'm not exactly a chick magnet, okay? They don't look at me more than once."
"Okay."
"So she was checking me out," Weimer said, "Now I wonder if she was checking me out for this Cohn guy? Maybe she made a call when I got up to leave."
"You see her on a cell phone?" Lucas asked.
"No, but I didn't look."
Lucas asked, "There's no chance that she was a Latina-looking chick, was she?"
Weimer's eyebrows went up: "You know who she is?"
Lucas called Carol, at the office, and had her check his e-mail. The photo from Washington was there. "Print it. I need it. Is there somebody who could run it over to St. John's? Light and sirens?"
"I saw Jenkins down the hall, reading the paper-he could take one of our cars."
"Get him over here. Quick as he can make it," Lucas said.
He tried to pry more information out of Weimer, but the lobbyist didn't have much more: "The whole thing was quick. Professional. Bam-bam-bam. When the two of them were talking, they were totally calm and casual. Like a couple guys going out for a beer. Then, when the guy hit me for not telling about the hideout bag, he didn't seem angry. He hit me like he was punishing a kid. Just' hit me."
Lucas went down to the cafeteria while he waited for Jenkins, got a Diet Coke, read the Star Tribune about the convention: more marches, lots of people already arrested. Finished the story, glanced at his watch, took out his cell phone and discovered that he had no signal. He walked it up the stairs, and then outside, got a signal, and called Jenkins. "I'm two minutes away," Jenkins said. "I had to drive halfway around town to get here."
Lucas waited by the curb, saw Jenkins coming, waved him down. Jenkins passed a manila envelope out the window. "What a mess. You can't get anywhere. St. Paul's closing down the whole downtown area."
"Thanks for this. See you back at the office."
"I hope it's serious."
"It is." Lucas patted the truck on the door, and headed back into the hospital. In the elevator up to Weimer's room, he slipped the photo out of the envelope. The quality was bad-cell phone quality-but the woman was recognizable, and, Lucas thought, somewhat hot.
Dark hair, dark eyes, caught unaware, he thought, as though she had just turned around. She seemed to be in a nightclub, or some kind of night place-there were sparkly lights in the background, the corner of a mirror, the shoulder of another woman in what might have been a cocktail dress. The woman wasn't looking at the camera, but off to the right; she might not have known about the picture, Lucas thought.