Chapter 9

Lane got back. "I got a chart on Alie'eher folks, her brother."

"I saw her brother," Lucas said.

"Yeah, the preacher. He goes around and ministers to farm people out in the Red River Valley. He fixes farm equipment, sometimes he works part-time at a grain elevator. Won't take any contributions. Gives away everything he earns except what he needs to eat and buy clothes."

"Tell you this: He doesn't spend any money on clothes," Lucas said.

"So the people out there think he's either crazy or a saint, or both. That's what they said in the Fargo newspaper. There was an article."

"On the brother, not Alie'e."

Lane nodded. "Mostly on the brother. The angle was, you know, 'crazy saint related to Alie'e Maison.' "

"Where was he last night?"

Lane had asked that question. "In Fargo. He runs a free kitchen there. He was around the kitchen until eight o'clock or so. He was hack in the morning. He could have made a round trip in between."

"And he's got a temper," Lucas said. "What else you got?"

"I got all the shit on Alie'e. That was just a matter of going out on the Net-I got a file of printouts two inches thick. And you know what? There's a cult of Alie'e worshipers out there. And Alie'e haters. They fight on the Net."

"I heard."

"Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if one of those guys did her."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You know, some computer nerd rapist killer nutso builds a fantasy around her, crashes a party where she's supposed to be, she laughs him off, says she'd rather be fuckin' her girlfriends than a pimply little freak"

Lucas grinned at the runaway description. "Nerd rapist killer nutso?"

"It coulda happened that way," Lane said seriously.

"What else you got?"

"Igot something else," Lane said, "and it's interesting, but nothing like my previous conjecture about the nerd rapist killer. Nutso."

"And?"

"It's this other chick, Sandy Lansing. I talked to the manager at Browns Hotel, and it turns out Lansing wasn't exactly a big deal. She was more like a female bellhop. She'd take rich people up to theirrooms and show them around."

"Not an executive?" Lucas said.

"No. She was making maybe twenty-five thousand a year. Enough to starve on. But, man, I talked to the guys from Homicide who were down at her apartment. She's got the cool clothes, she's got a decent carPorsche Boxter? and she hung out with all these rich people. And held her end up financially. She's gotta have money coming in from somewhere, butI can't findit."

"It ain't coming from her old man," Lucas said. "I just saw him. He looked like he doesn't have two dimes to rub together."

"That's the impression I got," Lane said. "So I was thinking She works at this hotel, greeting people. Maybe she's on the corner?"

"Any busts?"

"Not a thing. But at that level, it's more by introduction," Lane said. "Some big sports guy comes through town, or big TV guy, and you go hang out. Then you go back to his hotel room and later you geta gift. Maybe the hotel knows, maybe not."

"So let's get her friends, and push a little. Find out where the money came from."

"I thought maybe you could do the hotel end," Lane said.

"Me? I'm a deputy chief of police."

"Yeah, but the hotel's assistant manager in charge of keeping things right is an old pal of yours."

"Who's that?" Lucas asked.

"Derrick Deal."

"You gotta be shitting me."

"I shit you not, Deputy Chief of Police."

On the way out of the building, Lucas passed Rose Marie Roux puffing down the hall. " 'Muff-Divers' Ball?' " she asked, hooking his arm.

"That's what the headline said," he answered, mildly flustered.

"How many euphemisms do men have for the female sexual organ?" she asked.

"That's not a place you wanna go," Lucas said.

"How long before we catch the guy?"

"Another place"

She nodded. "that I don't want to go."

Derrick Deal had once been an assistant county assessor, more or less. His actual position was bagman for a city council cabal that was selling cut-rate property assessments. The cabal ran into trouble when Deal tried to hit up a machine-shop owner, who happened to be the uncle of a vice cop. The cop did some cop shit and got a tape of Deal soliciting a payoff.

Then the cop made a mistake. He believed that if he simply nailed Deal, that Deal's brother assessors would, in turn, punish his uncle by running up his assessments, even as Deal went off to six weeks in jail. So instead of arresting him, the cop let Deal listen to the tape, and told him to lay off. Deal misinterpreted the threat and ran to his city council protectors. They went to the chiefthis was three chiefs agowho squashed the vice cop like a bug. The vice cop found himself working traffic management on construction sites.

Thenhe rang in his brother copsnotably Lucas. Lucas set up a sting operation and Deal went to jail for nine months. His city council employers managed to slide, and Deal's brother assessors did the expected numberon the machine-shop owner, whose taxes went up fifty percent.

When Deal got out of jail, he tried selling cars and then houses, but wasn't good at it. His skills lay in bureaucracy and blackmail, not sales. Lucas heard that he'd gone to California, and until Lane mentioned his name, assumed he was still there.

"Derrick Deal?" he asked himself as he walked across town.

Brown's Hotel was a brick building a block from the IDS tower. From the outside, it barely looked like a hotel; you had toknow it was there. Lucas nodded at the white-gloved doorman, who held the door for him, and turned right across the plush red carpet, around a circular seat with a spray of out-of-season gladiolas in the center, to the reception desk. A neat young woman stood behind the desk. She was black, with delicate bones in her face; she wore a conservative suit and a silver-and-turquoise necklace with small oval stones. "Yes, sir?"

"I need to see Mr. Deal? Derrick Deal?" Lucas said.

"Can I tell him who's calling?"

"No." Lucas smiled to soften the answer, slipped his ID from his pocket, and showed it to her. "This is sort of a surprise. If you could just show me where he is?'"

She reached for a phone. "I'll call the manager on duty."

Lucas stretched across the desk and put his hand on the phone. "Please don't do that. Just show me where Mr. Deal works."

"I'll get in trouble." Her lip trembled.

"No, you won't," Lucas said. "Believe me."

She looked both ways, saw no help, touched her lip with her tongue, and said, "He's in his office down the hall." She looked to her right, a long narrow hallway off the lobby.

"Show me the door."

She looked both ways again, as if the manager might spring out of the red carpet, and finally said, "This way." She came out from behind the desk and started down the hall, walking swiftly. When they were out of sight of the lobby, she slowed. "Is he in trouble?"

"I have a question for him."

"If he's not in trouble, he should be," she said.

"Really?" Lucas asked.

"He's a jerk."

"Wait a minute," Lucas said quietly. They stopped in the hallway. "What's a jerk?"

"He hassles people," she said.

"For money? Sex? Dope?"

"Not dope," she said.

"You've had to fight him off?" Lucas asked.

"Not exactly. I'm a little too dark for him. And I told him that if he hassled me, my brother would cut off his testicles."

"He believed you?"

"Yes. My brother came over and showed him the knife," she said.

"Ah."

"But we have all these little maids, a lot of them are Mexican, and maybe they don't have papers. It's this tight economy is the reason they hire them."

"He puts the bite on them?"

"Yes. Sometimes sexthere are usually a few empty rooms around. Mostly it's money. The guests leave tips for the maids, ten dollars or twenty dollars. He might take out fifty dollars a day, all told. The maids are afraid to turn him down. All he has to do is make an anonymous phone call. He lets them know it."