"Are you handling a real estate deal for Richard Rodriguez?"

Smalley swung back and forth in his chair, thinking about the question, and then said, "Can you tell me why you want to know?"

"I can tell you some things if you're handling a real estate deal."

"Is this confidential?"

"If we need your official testimony, we'll subpoena youyou'd have no choice about talking, if you see what I mean."

"What, Richard Rodriguez is in the Mafia?" Smalley grinned at Lucas.

"It's serious," Lucas said.

Now Smalley sat forward. "You've got to keep it confidential, unless you subpoena me."

"Sure." That didn't sound like enough. "We will," Lucas added.

Smalley shrugged. "He called me today, Richard did, and asked me how hard it would be to sell off his real estate holdings. He wanted to know how long, and how much. I told him how much depends a little on how long, but if he was in a hurry, we could lay them off on a real estate investment trust in a couple of weeks. But unless we were lucky, he'd take a hit."

"How big a hit?" Lucas asked.

"Can't tell. Could be two hundred thousand dollars. Right now, after his mortgages are paid off, Richard could take out a couple of million. If you take two hundred off the top of that, he's down to a million eight. Then you've got to take capital gains and state taxes out, plus our commission. He'd wind up with something like a million three, walk-away."

"Lot of money," Lucas said.

"Sure. But that two hundred thousand is purely thrown awaya little bit would go to taxes and commission and so on, but he's basically taking a fifteen percent hit by trying to sell it quick. Two hundred thousand, in the context of a million three, is a big chunk."

"What'd he say?" Lucas asked.

Smalley came back with his own question. "Why're you investigating him?"

"There's a possibility that he's using large amounts of drug money to make up the difference between actual rents, on one side, and his mortgage and maintenance payments on the other," Lucas said.

Smalley considered that for a moment, then said, "You mean he cooked the books? But he cooked themup? I never heard of that."

"That's what we think. It's a form of money laundering," Lucas said. "The investigation is in the context of the overall investigation of the Alie'e Maison murder."

"Holy shit." Smalley was impressed. And he was a smart guy. "You think he did it? Strangled Alie'e?"

"I can't tell you thatwe're conducting an investigation," Lucas said. "So answer my question. What'd he say when you told him about the hit?"

"He said, 'Sell it.' I said, 'Listen, Richard'he doesn't like to be called DickI said 'Listen, Richard, if you could give us two months,' and he just cut me off and said, 'Dump 'em.' "

Then it was Lucas's turn to think. After a moment, he asked, "If you'd heard about this investigation unofficially, what would you do?"

"Do? I'd drop the deal like a hot rock," Smalley said. "We don't need to mess around with Alie'e Maison and all of that. We sure as hell don't need to peddle a couple million bucks' worth of real estate to a REIT"he said "reet"and then have them come back and tell us that we sold them a bunch of cooked books. That's not the kind of reputation you want to build."

"So do what you want," Lucas said.

"Drop him? You want us to drop him?"

"I don't care what you do," Lucas said. "Drop him, if that's best for your company. This is an official callyou'll be subpoenaed in the next day or two. But if you were to call him and drop him, we wouldn't object, certainly."

Smalley scratched his chin, looked at the telephone, then back at Lucas. "You're using me to fuck with him."

"I'm just trying to uphold the law, Mr. Smalley."

"Right. I almost forgot." They sat together for a few seconds, contemplating the law, and then Smalley said, "I'll call him tomorrow morning."

Lucas took Dale Street down to I-94 and got on the interstate heading west. He was inching toward his own exit at Cretin, then, at the last second, moved back left and continued across the Mississippi River bridge, into Minneapolis, and down south to Jael Corbeau's studio. Lucas rang the bell and a voice fifteen feet away said, "Go on in, Chief."

Lucas jumped. "Jesus, I thought you were a bush."

"I feel like a fuckin' bush." Then, sotto voce, on a radio: "It's Davenport." As Lucas pushed through the door, he said, "Tell dickweed it's his turn out here."

Two more bored cops were sitting in the studio, watching a portable TV that was set up on the floor, plugged into a DVD. When Lucas walked in, one of the cops paused the picture; they were watchingThe Mummy.

"Whichever one of you is the dickweed, I'm supposed to tell you it's your turn out there."

One of the cops looked at his watch. "Bullshit. I got fifteen minutes yet. You looking for Jael?"

"Yeah."

"She's upstairs, reading."

"Is she decent?"

"Aw, man, don't ask me that. It gives me a hard-on."

"Let me put you down for sensitivity training. We have it every Saturday morning at six."

"I'll be there. Count on it." The cop restartedThe Mummy halfway through a street riot; it resembled the media scrum outside City Hall.

Lucas went halfway up the stairs, called, "Jael?"

She came to the top of the stairs and said, "HeyDavenport. What's going on?"

"What're you doing?" Lucas asked.

"I'm down to reading a book calledNatural Ash Glazes. What'd you have in mind?"

"I don't know. I thought I'd check you out, we could roll around town for a while," he said.

Her face brightened. "That's the best offer I've had in weeks. If I have to sit around here anymore, I'll scream."

Lucas told the other cops that they'd be gone for a while. One of them said, "Hang on," and pulled on a pair of camo coveralls. "I'm going to sneak out through the garage. Give me two minutes. Give us a chance to see if anything moves after you leave."

So they sat watchingThe Mummy for a couple of minutes, and then Lucas said, "Let's go." Outside the door, Jael took his arm, and the bush said, "Wish I could go." Jael jumped. Lucas laughed and said, "Got me coming in."

Down the sidewalk, she asked, "See anybody?"

"No. Don't look around."

"What if the guy follows us?" she asked.

"Thenwe followhim."

"But what if he's watching from further away, and we don't see him, but he follows us anyway."

Lucas loaded her into the Porsche. "Not possible," he said.

They pulled away from the curb, Lucas watching ahead and in the rearview mirror, Jael craning left and right, looking for headlights. "Lots of cars, but I didn't see any headlights come on," she said.

"So he's probably not around."

"But what if"

"Reach behind your seat there, there's like a black plastic bag"

She got the bag, opened it, took out the little bubble light, and looked at it.

"Gimme it," Lucas said. He look the light, licked the suction cup, and stuck it on the dash; the cord plugged into the cigarette lighter. A minute later, they rolled down the ramp on I-35W and Lucas dropped the hammer.

The Porsche took off, running through moderate traffic, and a half-mile down, he flipped the switch on the flasher and Jael laughed and the speed went up and Jael braced herself against the dashboard and said, "Now you're showing off," as they went past the 100 mark. They flew along along the interstate, cars ahead of them scattering like chickens. At an open spot, Lucas killed the flasher and said, "No point in advertising," and backed off the speed a notch, bringing it down to ninety-five.

A minute later, they burned past a highway patrol car that had been hidden behind a Ryder truck.

"Aw, shit," Lucas said.

"Highway patrol," she said.

"Yeah, I know. Stop or go?"

"Go," she said.