"What about me?" Del asked. "I've spent a lot of time getting tight with these protesters. I'm doing the sheriff's office some good, and the St. Paul cops."
"Stay with it until we get something we can use-and then I may have to pull you off," Lucas said. "My feeling is, the big convention trouble is about over, after the arrests yesterday. Maybe more on Thursday, the big McCain day, but' if we need you, we need you."
Del nodded: "Okay."
Shrake: "The question is, where are they? After the trouble in Hudson, they know we're papering the motels. So where are they staying? Out-state? Or have they taken off?"
"Condos," Jenkins said. "There are probably six hundred condos around town with nobody in them and the developers have been renting them out to the Republicans, to the media, to anyone who wants one. If they knew about that'"
"They would," Lucas said. "They've got good intelligence."
"Then that may be the answer," Jenkins said to Lucas. "Your pal
Ralph Warren, you know, with all his connections everywhere ' maybe they went through him. He had a couple hundred empty condos."
"Yeah, well. He's dead," Lucas said. Warren hadn't been a pal, and though Lucas had tried to keep him alive, he'd failed.
"Even if he's dead, there's still gotta be a business manager somewhere," Jenkins said. "Somebody's got to be running the company."
Lucas jabbed a finger at him: "I'll buy your idea. You and Shrake start running down condo managers, the ones with vacancies."
"Maybe we should hold off on the woman's picture for a couple of days," Del said. "Maybe we can spot her without the TV. If we spook her, and she takes off ' it's one thing we've got that they don't know about."
Lucas thought about it, then said, "Okay. A day. If we come up with anything, we can stretch it out. After that, we're going with the TV. I'll get Carol to print up photos of Cohn and this woman for you guys to take around town."
He turned to Mitford: "At night' they've been hitting these guys at night, because it's easier to locate them, and it's easier to operate without letting their faces be seen. We need the names of the four or five biggest money dealers that you still see out there, and we'll put somebody in their rooms. See if we can ambush them."
"I don't know if they'll go for that," Mitford said.
"They'll have to do their deals somewhere else. Maybe they can rent two rooms. But that's what we need, Neil. We got four dead."
Mitford nodded: "I'll make some calls."
Letty had twenty dollars from Lucas when she walked in the door at Channel Three that morning. The receptionist buzzed her through the security gate and she walked back past the studios, where the Bob & Jane morning show was unwinding. She nodded to the weatherman, who walked by, on his way to do a thirty-second bit, shaking peanuts out of a cellophane bag, and said, "You've got something stuck to your cheek."
He said, "What is it?"
"Peanut skin?" She brushed it off. "Gone now."
"Thanks."
She went on her way, turned into the greenroom, where people waited for their turn on Bob & Jane, got two sweet rolls, and ate them on the way back to Jennifer Carey's office. She'd had breakfast, but not much-she and Lucas were both light eaters in the morning. She realized on the way over that since she planned to give the twenty dollars to Juliet, she'd better get a couple of sweet rolls when she could.
A coffee niche, for employees only, was located down the hall from Carey's office. She stopped there, looked around, stepped inside, and picked up the coffee donation can and peeled off the plastic lid. Three or four dollars. Not worth taking.
She needed eighty dollars more, although a hundred would be better, she thought-enough to convince Whitcomb that Juliet had been working.
Down the hall, she found Carey poking at her computer. Carey looked up and said, "Hi, good-lookin'," with just enough forced cheer that Letty instantly knew who'd ratted her out. It might have been Lois, but it had gone through Carey to Lucas.
"You ratted me out," she said.
Carey started to deny it, and then gave it up: "You're too young. You don't think so, but you are. When I was your age, I thought I was twenty-eight, too, but I wasn't."
"How old were you when you shot your first cop?" Letty asked.
"Letty that's not fair." Carey was a hockey mom, and sometimes acted like one.
"How old were you when you first drove your drunk mother home from the bar?" Letty asked.
"Letty…" Carey was getting flustered.
"How old were you when you first stole money to get something to eat?" Letty was all over her now.
"For Christ's sakes, I gotta do what I think is best," Carey said. "You're fourteen."
Letty leaned into it: "I know how old I am. When it comes to trouble, I am twenty-eight. Try not to forget that the next time you turn me in."
Carey rolled her eyes: "I don't want to fight with you."
"I'm done," Letty said. "But I need a ride to St. Paul and I need a camera in the park. I talked to some street kids-not prostitutes, just skaters from St. Paul-who are going to skate in one of the marches. It'll make a good snip of film."
"I'm going over in fifteen minutes," Carey said, eager to make peace. "The cameras are already over there, so ' we'll hook you up."
Letty smiled: "I'm not really mad at you. Everybody thinks they're doing the right thing. You're not, but I appreciate it anyway."
Carey had her personal reporting rules that she'd been passing along to Letty. Like, before you go out on a job, always pee first. Even if you don't feel like you have to. A woman can never find a comfortable place to pee when she needs one. Check your makeup and your hair; there's never a place to do that when you need one- a little too much hairspray is better than too little.
Letty went out in the newsroom to chat with some of the producers, keeping one eye on Carey's office. When Carey came out and looked around, Letty waved at her, and Carey called, "I'll be right back," and she headed down toward the bathrooms. Letty ambled over to her office as she watched her go, and when she was sure that Carey was in the bathroom, she stepped into the office and pulled Carey's purse out from under her desk.
Carey never had any idea how much money she had or what she'd spent it on. She was one of those people who believed that if she had checks, she must have money. She made a good salary, and her husband was rich, so money, at least the kind you spend during the day, meant almost nothing to her: Letty popped the purse and took a peek into Carey's billfold. Must be a thousand dollars in fifties, Letty thought. She took two of them, decided that the thickness of the currency seemed not at all diminished and took two more. She put the billfold back in the purse, put the purse back as she'd found it, and ambled back out of the office and over to the people she'd been talking with earlier.
When Carey came back from the bathroom, she called, "Let's do it," and Letty went to join her.
The skaters were gathering in Mears Park in St. Paul's Lower-town, an area of older brick warehouses converted to lofts and condos and small, marginal businesses. Letty pointed them out and Carey looked them over, from the front seat of her SUV and then said, "You know, you do have a natural eye for this. I told your dad that last night."
"Maybe I'll be an economist," Letty said. "TV is starting to seem so superficial."