But, Lucas thought, time passes.

Time passes. He closed his eyes in the dark. And saw the scarred face and teasing eyes of Jael Corbeau; the slightly plump, intense face of Catrin; the shoulders, the too-big nose, thefeel of Weather.

Time passes, but sometimes it beats the shit out of you as it goes.

Chapter 20

Wednesday. The fifth day of Alie'e Maison.

Lucas checked on Marcy. Black was slumped in a visitors chair, and when he saw Lucas, got up. He was a little shaky, unshaven. "Nothing happening, but she started to wake up. She went back down, but they say she was close to the surface. She should wake up today."

Lucas looked in. Marcy had always been the most active person in the office, always had something rolling, something moving. She didn't look right, propped in the bed. She looked thinner, gaunt, wasted. He patted Black on the shoulder and said, "Take it easy."

The main offices of the Atheneum State Bank were off University Avenue three blocks from the state capitol building in St. Paul, in a redbrick building with four white wooden pillars out front. The neighborhood started trending up when the porno movies moved out and the hookers had been pushed farther west, away from the state legislators. The upward trend had stalled, and now the whole strip had a shabby, going-nowhere ambiance, like a squashed paper cup outside a convenience store.

The taps on four of Rodriguez's phonesone home, two business, and a cellwere in place, along with taps on the home and cell phones used by Bill Spooner, an assistant vice president in the commercial loans department.

Lucas and Del drove to the bank in a beat-up city car, trailed by an assistant county attorney named Tim Long. From the parking lot, Lucas called Rose Marie. Rose Marie, who had been waiting for the call, phoned the bank president and asked him to make time for a quick talk with Lucas. She got back to Lucas and said, "He's waiting. Be a little careful: He's one of those hail-fellow types who's always ready to help a member of the legislature, and never forgets when he has."

Lucas said to Del, "See if you can find Spooner's car."

Del nodded. "Crunch him," he said.

Lucas and Long went inside, spoke to the bank president's secretary. She went back into his office and popped out a minute later, followed by the president himself. "Already? I just talked to Rose Marie a couple of minutes ago."

"Traffic was light," Lucas said.

The bank presidents name was Reed. He was a genial man, overweight, a patriotic panoply: red face, white hair, blue eyes; red tie, white shirt, blue suit; an American flag in the corner, with a plastic eagle atop the staff, in gold.

When Lucas outlined the general nature of their questions, Reed leaned back in his leather executive chair and said, "I've known Bill since we were lads. He was six years behind me at Cretin. His parents, God bless 'emthey're both dead nowused to play canasta with my parents. There's never been anything wrong with any of his accounts; he's one of our best loan officers. I was godfather for his oldest son."

"I'm sure there's nothing wrong now," Lucas said. "We just want to talk with him about Mr. Rodriguez. Their personal relationship. Anything he might be able to tell us that could help us in our investigation."

"I don't know that we could help much. Our financial records are confidential"

Long interrupted. "Mr. Reed, we know about your confidentiality requirements, and we're just trying to handle this whole matter as discreetly as possible. If you wish, we can get a subpoena for your loan records, and we can call a squad car and transport Mr. Spooner to Minneapolis for questioning. We thought this would be better. Chief Roux thought it would be better."

"I appreciate that. Senator Roux was a good friend," Reed said. After a moment of silence and a thoughtful inspection of Lucas, he said, "Let's go talk to Billy and see what he has to say."

Billy was a Minnesota WASP, fair-haired, once slight, but now carrying a few too many pounds. He was wearing a gray off-the-rack suit and black lace-up shoes. And he was guilty of something, Lucas thought: His eyes went flat at the introductions, and when they settled into their chairs and Lucas explained what they wanted, he said, "As far as I know, Richard Rodriguez is entirely legitimate. He has a perfect payment record."

"That's ourproblem," Lucas said. "It's a little too perfect. From our review, it appears that he needs a one-hundred-percent residency rate to make his payments. We're wondering why you would give somebody a loan under those conditions."

"A lot of small reasons, and one big one," Spooner said. "The big one was, he helped our minority loan level. In our neighborhood, we have to be sensitive to redlining issues, and as a responsible, hardworking, intelligent minority person, we decided we could go with him as long as the risk wasn't too great. The first building he was interested in was for sale at such a good price that we could have loaned him almost all of the money even if he hadn't had a down payment. But he did have a down payment. Not much, but it was all of his savings, and guaranteed that he'd stay right on top of the business. And he had the minority status, of course. That swung it. After that, with a lot of hard work, he kept his record perfect, and we were always ready to help when he wanted to expand his horizons."

"So he got a great price on the original building," Long said. "What are the chances that he delivered part of the original purchase price to the seller, under the table, to drive down the apparent price?"

"I wouldn't know about that," Spooner said stiffly.

"What are the chances that he uses dope-dealing money to make up shortfalls in tenant rents?" Lucas asked.

"Dope? Richard Rodriguez? I don't think so."

Lucas leaned into Spooner's desk. "If we got a subpoena for your loan records and asked a state examiner to look them over, you think he'd say they met state loan standards?"

"Absolutely. The minority status alone would bring applause from the state banking department." Spooner leaned back and relaxed a hair, the way a fence relaxes when he realizes that a cop doesn't really have anything on him.

Lucas looked at Long and shrugged. Long dipped into his brief-case, found a paper, and handed it to Reed. "It's a subpoena for your loan records."

Reed's face turned a little redder. "I thought we were handling this on a friendly basis."

"We wanted to," Lucas said. "But Bill here is bullshitting us, so we're gonna have to see all the records."

"I'mnot bullshitting you," Spooner said.

"You're bullshitting us, Billy, yes, you are," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what. This case is part of the Alie'e Maison murder investigation. If Rodriguez turns out to be involved, because of his drug dealing, and you're helping him cover up well, then, you're involved. That's called murder one on the TV shows. Murder one in Minnesota is a minimum of thirty years in a cell the size of your desk. You look like you might be young enough to do the whole thirty."

"Wait, wait, wait," Spooner said. "I have absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I want a lawyer. Right now."

"Those are the magic words," Long said to Lucas. "No more questions, and read him his rights."

When they were done with the reading of the rights, Reed agreed to print out the loan records and Long walked out to the parking lot with Lucas. "It's the reading of the rights that scares the shit out of them," he said.

Lucas nodded. "The question is, will Spooner make a call?"

He made the call.

Long went back into the bank and Lucas climbed in the passenger side of the city car. "He's driving the Lexus in the corner," Del said.