"Not a word I'd choose," Lucas said.

"Hmm." She was thinking about it. "That doesn't soundso bad, when you put it that way. Maybe pull this guy right in."

"Yeah. So get over there. She's expecting you."

When he sot off, he walked down to Homicide, found Frank Lester, and told him that the chief wanted somebody with Kinsley. "Might as well," Lester said, "since nobody's getting dog shit."

"Nothing at all?"

" Nothing."

Lucas called Del. "I called your office a couple of times," Del said. "I think I'm gonna need a couple of search warrants."

"What happened?"

"The other guy, Curtis Logan, is on vacation somewheremaybe Vegas. So I hung around James Bee last night, staying out of sight, and at one point he hooked up with Larry Outer. You remember Outer?"

"Vaguely. Wasn't he involved with that Chicago bunch?"

"Yeah. I thought he'd gone away, but I followed Bee down to this pie place on Grand Avenue, and who does he hook up with, but Outer. After a while, they go out to Outer's car, and they talk for a couple of minutes, and then Bee goes back to his own car. Outer's car has Illinois tags, which I got, and I tracked those, and they gave me an apartment in Evanston. I'm willing to bet that Outer is dealing with Bee, and if we stop him on some bullshit, we're gonna find some coke in his car. And if we find some coke in his car, even a little bit, then we can probably get a search warrant for his apartment, and if they findanything there, that'd be three felonies in Illinois. And Illinois is a three-strike state."

"You're such a clever fuck."

"Not only thatwhen I pulled Outer's sheet outa the NCIC, there's a misdemeanor warrant on him for skipping out on child support in Cleveland. He ditched some chick and her lad."

"A vicious criminal. A mad dog."

"No doubt. So we can take down Outer without having to go through any perjury bullshit on a search warrant. When we get him, we've got him in an armlock, unless he's willing to have somebody kick his door in Illinois. So he gives us Bee, and we use that to get a warrant, and we hit Bee's apartment and maybe his office, and get a list. And maybe that gets us back to Alie'e's." He rubbed his eyes. "Convoluted as hell, but it's what we got."

"And for Logan, we have to wait until he gets back from Vegas."

"Unless Outer can give us him along with Bee."

"So it all hangs on Outer," Lucas said.

"Yup."

"You have any idea where he is now?"

"In a motel in Plymouth. I'm standing outside a McDonald's looking at his car, freezing my ass off."

"You been there all night?"

"We've been everywhere all nightwe got here about ten minutes ago. Which brings me to the question What are you doing up at this time of day?"

"Amnon Plain," Lucas said.

"Uh-oh. What'd he do?"

"You haven't heard the radio? He was shot to death last night."

"Noshit?"

"Over in St. Paul. He's seriously dead."

After a moment of silence, Del said, "Goddamnit."

"Yeah."

"Though it does add a certain frisson to the case."

"A what?"

"Frisson. It's a French word. So get me some guys over here"

"There's nobody to get," Lucas said. "Everybody over here is already jumping through their ass."

"So what areyou doing?" Del asked.

Del was sitting in the front window of a McDonald's eating a Big Mac out of a bag and watching the motel across the street. "He's got the blue Olds," he said when Lucas slid into the booth across from him. "You get an okay on the warrant?"

Lucas nodded. "No problem. It's a little oldthe Cleveland cops didn't know what I was talking about, and it took about fifteen minutes to find it."

"If it's still good, it's still good," Del said. He was red-eyed, tired.

"You look a little ragged," Lucas said.

"I'm buzzed on caffeine. I'm so buzzed I talked to the counter girl for ten minutes at a hundred miles an hour. Scared the shit out of her."

"Hmm." The counter girl was keeping an eye on both of them. Lucas looked at the Olds parked across the street, nose-in to a motel door. Everything look so quiet, but fifty times a year, somewhere in the country, a cop would kick a door off a nice quiet parking lot and the guy inside the room would shoot him. "So you want to do it?"

"Yeah." Del wadded up the bag with half the burger still in it. "Let's go."

They left one at a time, and walked around behind the McDonald's so that if Outer happened to be looking out his window, he wouldn't see them crossing the street. At the hotel office, they showed the day manager the warrant and their badges. He wanted to call the chain headquarters in Rococco, Florida, for instructions, but they got the key to Outer's room and Lucas told the manager to stay out of sight, no matter what they said in Rococco.

"I'll kick it, if you do the key," Del told Lucas on the way down. "I got so much caffeine, I might miss the keyhole."

"All right."

They stopped at the door, listened, A television was on; that was goodit'd cover the noise of the key. Lucas held the key up, and Del stepped into kicking range. When they were ready, Lucas hovered the key a quarter inch outside the lock. The idea was to slip the key quickly into the lock and turn it, and push the door. When the door hit the chain, if it did, Del would kick it. They wouldn't try to sneak the key into the lock for the simple reason that it was almost impossible: The slightest vibration would wake the dead, if the dead was a nervous dope dealer. With the quick open-and-kick, you were usually inside before the target had time to react, whether he heard it or not.

Del nodded. Lucas got right, then jammed the key and turned the knob, and Del kicked the door and exploded into the room, Lucas two feet behind him, Del screaming, "Police, police. Freeze!"

Outer was sitting on the toilet, a wad of toilet paper in his hands, his slacks down around his ankles. The bathroom door was openhe'd been watching ESPN. When Del landed on the carpet opposite the bed, his pistol pointing, Lucas backing him, Outer sat up, raised his hands, and then, in a deafening silence, said, "Ah, man. Can I wipe?"

Before they had him cuffed, Outer said, "I ain't sayin' shit. I want an attorney."

"Sit on the bed," Del said.

Outer sat, and Lucas started pulling apart Outers duffle bag. Halfway into it, he ran into a T-shirt built like an I-beam. He shook it out, and found a Smith amp; Wesson 649. "Gun," he said to Del.

"Jeez, that's too bad," Del said. "Him being a convicted felon and all."

"Attorney," Outer said.

No dope. Lucas looked around the room. He checked the bathroom, but the toilet was the pressure kind, with no tank. He came back into the main room, and Del said, "He wouldn't leave it in the car."

Outer relaxed and leaned back on the bed. "All I have is the gun, which was for self-protection and isn't even mine."

"Get off the bed," Lucas said.

"What?" Outer put on a perplexed look.

"Get off the fuckin' bed."

Del took him by the arm, and Outer said, "Fuckin' cops," and Lucas walked around to the door side of the bed, crouched, grabbed the mattress, and flipped it off the box spring. In the center of the box spring, four Ziploc bags of cocaine nestled in a line.

"That ain't mine. You put it there," Outer said.

"Probably has our fingerprints all over the plastic, then," Lucas said. "And when we get a blood test, we'll probably test for cocaine."

"Attorney," Outer said.

"Sit in the chair," Lucas said.

Del pushed Outer down on an overstuffed chair, and Lucas sat on the box spring.

"I'm gonna make you an offer. I can't make it after you talk to an attorney, I can only make it before. We can fix it so you take a minimum plea on the dope and the gunthree years. That's what we can do."

"Attorney."