"No, no, I'm rich."

"Really? So am I, I guess. That's what they tell me. The bank. I'll be even richer when I inherit from Amny."

"You'll inherit?"

"Yup. Unless he changed his will when he got pissed at me. About Alie'e. I don't think he did."

"A lot?"

"A few million."

"Jeez. If you don't mind me asking where'd you get it?"

"From my mom and dad. When my dad was in college, a long time ago, he invented a new kind of ball for roll-on deodorant." Lucas thought she was joking, but she was solemn as ever. "No, really. The ball has to have some kind of surface thing that I don't know about, to pick up an even coat of deodorant. I mean, they had roll-ons, but they weren't very good. Everybody was looking for a better ball. The problem defeated the best minds of a generation, until Dad came along. Then he got rich, and gave everybody trust funds, and started smoking a lot of dope. When Mom died, Amny and I got her part of the divorce settlement, on top of our trusts."

And later: "How'd you get rich?"

"Computers," Lucas said.

"Ah," she said. "Like everybody."

She was not in a condition to talk much about her brother. Halfway back, she put her head down, the heels of her hands in her eye sockets, and began to sob. Lucas let her go, and drove; she stopped after a while, and wiped her eyes. "God. I can't believe it."

Lucas dropped her at her house. A man was sitting on the steps, fiddling with the wheel on a bicycle. "Don," she said. "A friend. He keeps hoping I'm going to sleep with him, but I'm not going to."

"It's a country song," Lucas said.

She looked at him quickly, and almost smiled. "You'll call me if anything happens. If they catch anybody."

"Yeah."

"Do you think this person I mean, if it's about Alie'e, do you think" Her voice trailed away, then her hand went to her mouth and she said, "Oh." She looked up and down the street.

"What?"

"There used to be a lot of crack around here," she said. "That's why all the houses have bars on the windows, and big doors."

"It's going away now," Lucas said. "Burned itself out."

"I know. But when there was a lot of crack, the crack kids would try to break in all the time. I'd hear them, and I'd go yell at them from a window, and they'd run away. But somebody tried to break in the night before last. I thought it might be crack, but I thought it was weird, too. The guy didn't look like a crack kid. He was too big, he was" She made a gesture.

"Porky?" Lucas asked.

"Well, I don't know if he was porky. I was gonna say he looked sort of rednecky sort of. Why?"

"White?"

"I think so, but I couldn't really see him. But his clothes looked white."

Lucas peered through the windshield at Don, the friend, who was now standing up, looking at them as they idled by the curb. "Can you trust this guy?"

"Don? He wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Do you have anybody you can trust, who would hurt a fly?" Lucas asked.

"Why? Tell me."

"A woman in your brothers building saw a man last night. She said he was porky. She saw him probably within a few minutes of the time your brother was killed."

"You think?"

"I think we shouldn't take any chances. The guy who killed your brother is a nut. Stick with Don. I'm gonna have a cop drop by and hang out with you."

"How'll I know it's really him? The cop."

"Not a him, it's a her. Ask for her ID. Her name's Marcy Sherrill." He looked at her. "I think you'll probably like each other."

Chapter 13

Lucas went to Rose Maries office. The secretary waved him through, and he found her talking to a slender man with a red beard and an expensive black suit. "This is Howard Bennett. He's a curator over at the Walker Art Center," Rose Marie said.

"I've been there a few times," Lucas said.

"Inside?" Rose Marie asked suspiciously, one eyebrow going up.

"Not actually inside," Lucas said. "When I was in uniform, the guards would get us over there to chase people who were trying to, you know"

"Fuck in the spoon," Bennett said.

"The exact words I was looking for," Lucas said. The Walker Center had a Claes Oldenberg sculpture of a spoon with a cherry. Fucking in the spoon was the Twin Cities equivalent of flying a Cessna 185 through the arch in St. Louis.

"Yeah, well, Howard is an expert in photography. He says Amnon Plain's murder is gonna be a bigger deal than Alie'e's."

"I didn't quite say that," Bennett said. "But it'll be bigger with a different crowd." He smiled a thin, marmotlike smile. "You'll get press synergy. A whole new, even more weasel-like element of the press will get on your case, demanding action."

"That's good," Rose Marie said. "We weren't getting enough attention." She looked at Lucas: "How bad was it?"

"Bad. I don't know what you're getting from St. Paul, but I think it's a different killer. Maybe somebody just taking the opportunity, hoping we'll think that whoever did Alie'e and Lansing also did Plainbut I don't think it was the same guy."

"So it might not be directly related."

"Maybe not. On the other hand, it could be. It's possible that a couple of people have seen the killer. They said he was 'porky' and 'big' and 'rednecky.' "

Rose Marie looked at Lucas for a second, then at Bennett. "Howard, I really appreciate your telling me about Plain. Can I call you?"

Bennett knew when he was being shuffled out. He smiled his marmot smile again and said, "Say hello to your friends in the legislature."

"You can count on it," Rose Marie said. She followed him into the outer office, shook hands, then stepped back inside and closed the door. "You think it was Tom Olson?" she asked Lucas.

"The thought crossed my mind," Lucas said. "He's heavyset. We know he's got a temper. We know he's distraught. We know that he might be a little bit of a nut."

"Or maybe a lot of a nut," she said.

"Maybe the photo spread set him off. I've never seen anything quite like it before."

"Not outside a men's magazine."

"Not even in men's magazines. It was a lot artier than that shit. And decadent. It had this weird end-of-time feel to it, that might have fed straight into his paranoia."

"So what're we going to do?"

"We're doing some research on him. And I'm going to put Sherrill with Jael Corbeausomebody tried to break into her house the night before last, and the guy was sorta porky."

"Okay. Sherrill for as long as she can stand it, but when she needs a break, I want somebody else with Corbeau. She doesn't get killed in Minneapolis. And we better get somebody with Catherine Kinsley, too."

"The problem is, nobody's looking for Trick," Lucas said.

"Don't worry about Trick."

"We've got to get Al-Balah out. There's gonna be a lawsuit, and we've got to at least keep our heads up on that," Lucas said.

"Sure. If you happen to stumble over Trick, that's fine. But the priority has got to be Alie'e, and keeping people alive. This thing in St. Paul is almost like a good break. We get some time to work without everybody breathing down our necks."

"They'll all be back here tomorrow morning."

"That's twenty-four hours."

Back in his own office, Lucas called Sherrill on her cell phone. She'd heard about Plain, and Lucas told her to get with Jael Corbeau: "A bodyguard job?" she complained. "Why can't you pull somebody in?"

"Look, it's a high-danger point right now. We don't have anybody to chase yet, but somebody killed Plain and somebody may be stalking Jael. I wantyou with her. Idon't want you looking like a cop. I want you to girl around with Corbeau a little. Her brother's dead, but if you could get her out in the open, making arrangements for the funeral"

"You mean, likebait?" Sherrill asked.