Chapter 1 9
They met in a BCA classroom as the sun was sliding down in the west, everyone that Lucas had managed to scrape up: two St. Paul detectives, six BCA agents who volunteered time because of the Benson shooting-more would have volunteered, but they were already on the street, working the convention-and two detectives from Minneapolis, along with Shrake and Jenkins. Two Secret Service agents sat in the back, but the Secret Service was so pressed by the night's political ceremonies that they couldn't free any men for the actual search.
Lucas unrolled oversized printouts from the county assessor's office, showing every building in downtown St. Paul. One of the assessor's men had gone over the maps and marked the buildings that had either rental apartments, or condos that somebody might rent out on their own.
"We didn't have time to write all this stuff on each individual map, so everybody take a contact sheet from Carol," Lucas said. Carol waved a stack of Xerox paper at them. "On it, you'll find the latest phone number we have for the condo association president or the apartment manager. Talk to them face-to-face."
They had too many buildings, but divided them up as well as they could, some of them getting a few large ones, some getting a bigger batch of smaller ones.
"Warn the president or the manager or the owner, or whoever you get, not to go nosing around on his own, or make any inquiries. We're pretty sure they're in there somewhere, and if we miss them, we'll either have to start over, or figure something else out. Carol is passing out updated photos of the suspects, changing hair color and other stuff according to what we've found out about them."
There were the usual questions, and reiterations, and some confusion about geography on the part of the out-of-towners who didn't know the downtown area, but they got everybody oriented and ready to go by dark.
"Listen, people," Lucas concluded. "Do not-DO NOT-TRY to take these guys. They've already killed four cops, one of them our own guy, another one who was helping us out over in Hudson. If you get a line on them-anything at all-I can pull our BCA SWAT guys off the street and go in and take them down. These guys have a reputation for hitting armored cars and other hard targets, and they have access to any kind of firearms that they want. These are tough guys and we could be talking heavy weapons. Let SWAT do their thing. We don't need any more dead heroes."
They all went out in pairs, except for Lucas, who stuck with Shrake and Jenkins. The three of them took the two largest condos.
Shrake said, "I bet they picked the biggest one they could get into. In a small one, somebody's always going to notice a stranger. Somebody'll try to make friends. In a big one, there are people coming and going all the time."
Lucas nodded: "I'll buy that."
"If that fuckin' Flowers was here, we could split up, two and two," Jenkins said.
"He's coming, but he was way the hell out in Bigelow," Lucas said.
"Where's that?"
"I don't know, but it's way the hell out."
The two condos were kitty-corner from each other in the same block, with a shopping area and offices in a mall between them. They parked underground and walked around the block to the larger of the two buildings. On the way, they ran into a walking train of people in formal wear, women with glittery icefalls of diamonds around their necks, down their breasts. They were heading up the skyways toward the convention hotels at the top of the hill.
Shrake: "She's got more money on her tits than I got on my house."
"Both our houses. Together," Jenkins said, looking after them.
Lucas's phone rang, and he looked at the screen. Del. Lucas punched him up and Del said, "It's a boy."
"You knew that," Lucas said, and "Congratulations. Jeez, whoever would have even believed it, Del." He passed the phone to the other two, who gave Del the raft of shit that he'd expect, and both congratulated him, and Lucas took the phone back and Del said, "I gotta get some sleep. I think I'm more beat up than my old lady."
"I doubt it," Lucas said.
"What're you doing?"
"House-to-house," Lucas said, deliberately discouraging him. "You wouldn't be interested."
"I'm going home," Del said.
At the apartment, another jeweled train went by, and they gawked, and Jenkins said, "These aren't even the rich ones. The rich ones are staying up there. These ones have to walk in."
Lucas called the association president, whose name was Dan Eller, and Eller buzzed them up to his apartment on the twenty-fourth floor and met them at the door. He was bald, mustachioed, genially overweight, and retired.
After Lucas explained, Eller said, "The problem is, we have rentals here, too, and those people are coming and going all the time."
"How about the people on the floors? Who knows who?"
"I can help you with the condo levels, but I don't know about the rentals," Eller said. "I mean, I know a couple people, maybe they could chain you up with more."
"You haven't seen anybody who looks like these guys?"
"No, and I'm around the building a lot," Eller said. "Pretty much on every condo floor every day. We've been having roof and drainage problems, and, it's gonna cost to fix, so I've been politicking."
"People have rented out their condos, though, right?"
"Yup. A few. People have cabins up north. They stay up there and make money down here on the convention."
Eller gave them a list of names-"most of them are older, they'll be home"-and also the name and phone number of his opposite number in the other apartment building. "That building's all rentals, but they set up an apartment association, and Ken runs it. More like a tenants' union than a condo association."
They decided to start at the top, and rode the elevator up, and when they got off, Jenkins stopped, and when Lucas and Shrake looked back, he said, "You know what? We look exactly like a bunch of flatfeet."
Lucas looked at them, and himself, and sighed and nodded. "All right. You two guys do this building. I'm gonna go talk to this Ken guy in the other building."
"This is feeling kind of weak," Shrake said, turning around to look at the empty hallways. "I got that empty-tank feeling."
"Maybe it'll go away when you do some actual work," Lucas said.
But it was the worst kind of police work, Lucas thought, as he took the elevator back down. The kind of stuff done as a last resort, talking to people who you had no reason to suspect knew anything at all. Or maybe, he thought, like church bingo; sort of dull and hopeless, but somebody was going to win. Just not you.
On the street level again, another two glittery couples brushed past, aiming up the hill. Four cops went down the street on horses; horses seemed to be everywhere. The cops looked him over, but the last cop lifted a hand and said, "Davenport," and Lucas waved back, and pushed into the lobby of the apartment building.
Ken Jacobsen, who lived on the eighteenth floor of the second tower, looked at the photographs and shook his head. He'd been cooking liver and onions, and the apartment was fragrant with the gravy. "Let me give you some names, people to talk to."
"Are you around the building much?"
"Off and on," Jacobsen said. "But we're not directly responsible for the buildings. We're not owners, so it's not quite like it is in Dan's condo."
As Lucas was going out the door, Jacobsen said, "Hey: let me make a call, here. I'll see if the Hassans are still in the building."
The Hassans were two cell-phone-equipped Ethiopian janitors: their English wasn't good, but was good enough that Lucas was sure that they hadn't seen Cohn or Diaz.
"Terrorists?" one of the Hassans asked.
Lucas nodded. "If you see them, call nine-one-one."
"Nine-one-one," said the second Hassan. "We will do."