"I'm just not supposed to talk to you."

"So tell your attorney we're here, and want to set up a meeting. The loan papers we subpoenaed are being reviewed by a bank examiner and an accountant right now, and we need to talk about it," Sloan said.

"And tell your attorney that we're making the case against Rodriguezfor dope dealing and murderand the more we look at him, the more we find," Lucas said. "That the case on Rodriguez is a hell of a lot more serious than a little fudging around with loans, and that you're going to buy a piece of his prison sentence if we don't start seeing some cooperation."

Spooner had his hands in his pockets, and he flapped his coat panels like wings. "Jeez, jeez, you guys, I don't want this. But you come on like I'm going to jail, what can I do but call my lawyer? So why don't you call him and talk to him? I'll come in. I'll tell you everything I know about Richard, but I've got to have some legal protection."

"When?" Lucas asked. "When will you come in?"

"Anytime. Jeez When do you want me to come? This afternoon? When? But I want my lawyer there."

The blond woman was standing in the window with her arms crossed, peering out at them. "Is this your wife?" Sloan asked.

Spooner looked, then said, "Yes, she's really freaking out. My God, my job"

Lucas was thinking: Lane had just gone to see the examiner, and they would want that opinion before they talked to Spooner. "So come in tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. Call your attorney, make an appointment with the chief's secretary. I'll be available anytime you are."

"Okay." Spooner shuffled uncertainly, opened the screen door as if to go back in the house, then said, just as Lucas and Sloan were turning away, "You know, I wasn't lying the other day. I still don't think Richard is involved with any of this."

"You're wrong."

"You're watching him. You know he's done this?"

"We're all over him," Lucas said, "and there's not a lot of doubt. The question is, how much do you know? If you know enough"

"I'll tell you everything, but there's just not much that I know. I mean, his loans, they were a little risky, but his record Thinking that he's a dope dealer, I" His mouth opened and closed a few times, as though he were flabbergasted. "I mean, I don't believe it. He's a nice guy."

"Tell me something nice that he's done," Lucas said.

"Well" Spooner seemed to grope for something, then said, "I can't think of anything specific, but he's been to ourhouse, and he's nice to my wife, and he's nice to other people I mean, he's just a nice guy to sit around and have a drink with."

"Well," Lucas said. "It's something to think about."

In the car, Sloan said, "A nice guy."

"Man, he's dealing dope. People who deal dope know about himthey pick him out of blind photo spreads," Lucas said. "And if you look at those loans the guy's a goddamn hustler."

"Even if he is nice," Sloan said.

"You remember Dan Marks?" Lucas said.

"Now, there was anice guy," Sloan said.

"Everybody agreed, until the trouble started and they took apart his garbage disposal," Lucas said.

"I didn't know fingernails would do that," Sloan said. They thought about fingernails, and headed back into St. Paul.

Rodriguez was at his office. Another patrol cop had been stuffed into a sport coat and left to keep an eye on him. They found him shifting from foot to foot in the Skyway, eating popcorn out of an oversized box. "Hey, guys," he said when Lucas and Sloan stepped into the Skyway. He looked at the popcorn box in his hand and said, "Gift from the St. Paul guys. Their precinct is right inside."

"What's he doing?" Lucas asked.

"Working on his computer. He went away for a while, and I lost him, but he came back."

"In his car?"

"No, he walked back into the building somewhere. You see the building entrance his office opens off that hallway. When he put on his coat, I ran down, but he was already out the door into the hallway. He was out of sight when I got there, so I went back to the parking garage and waited to see if he was coming out He never came out, and when I checked again, he was back in the office."

"So he went someplace inside."

"Yeah, but it's all hooked into the Skyway through there, so he could have gone anywhere. He was gone for maybe twenty minutes."

"Put on his coat."

"Yeah."

They thought about that for a minute, but nothing occurred to them except that he probably hadn't been on his way to the can.

"Maybe we need a couple more guys," Lucas said.

"If we're serious about him," the cop agreed. "As it is, I've got my car parked down on the street, but if he comes out the ramp and turns the wrong way, I'm gonna be pretty obvious doing a U-turn fifteen feet behind him."

Lucas looked at Sloan and said, "More guys."

"And soonmy feet are killing me," the cop said.

Rodriguez was not what Lucas expected. He was not Latino: He didn't look Latino, or sound Latino. He didn't sound like a drug dealer, either. Most drug dealers had a streak of macho in them, or if not that, then a bit of backslapper bullshit.

Rodriguez looked and sounded like a white middle-class businessman who'd crawled up out of the working class, sweating the details of whatever kind of business he was in. He was a large guy, thick-necked, thick-waisted, round-shouldered. Maybe he drank too much, and if so, it'd be beer, or if not beer, something seriousvodka martinis with a pearl onion. Lucas had seen the same guy in car salesmen, machine-shop owners, bartenders, union officials. He saw it sometimes in lawyers who came from a working-class background.

And Rodriguez was mad: "What the fuck are you doing, what the fuck do you think you're doing, bustin' my reputation and my bidness dealings? I'll tell you what: I'm getting my lawyer down here right now"he snatched up a telephone"and we're gonna add this little patch of harassment to the lawsuit. I don't need no goddamn apartment buildings, because I'm gonna get rich suing the city of Minneapolis for about a billion bucks, and this ain't the first time you Minneapolis cops got nailed doing this kind of harassment bullshit and"

"You're dealing drugs, Richard," Lucas said. "We can prove that. We can prove you ran Sandy Lansing: We've got people who will stand up in court and say so. We can prove you got a bunch of bullshit loans that you supported with dope money, and the IRS is gonna come afteryour ass. We've got all that. The questionis, can we getyou for killing Alie'e? We know you did it, we just gotta fit the suit to you."

"Bullshit. I never touched that bitch." He'd been punching numbers into his phone set, and now he spoke into the phone. "Let me talk to Sam. The cops are here, hassling me. Davenport and some other guy." He listened for a moment, then thrust the phone at Lucas. "Talk to him."

"No. We're leaving," Lucas said. "I just wanted to get a look at your ass. We're coming for you, Richard."

"Fuck you," Rodriguez said, and into the phone, "He won't talk to you. They're leaving Yeah, yeah."

As Lucas and Sloan went through the office door into the hallway, they heard the phone clattering on the desk, and a minute later Rodriguez was in the hall behind them. "Let me tell you assholes something," he said. "Let me tell you something. You and me. My goddamn mother was no better'n a whore in Detroit. I don't even know who my daddy is. Even my name is some kind of joke. My old man was probably a Polack or a Litvak or some other fuckin' Eastern European." He was building steam as the words rattled out of his face. "I got outa Detroit by my fingernails, and I busted my ass every day of my life to get where I am. Now some two-bit fuckin' cops are saying I killed somebody I'll tell you what, I never killed anybody I never killedanybody. I never even slapped anybody in the face. I just wanted to get out of that fuckin' Detroit and be somebody, and now I am, and you assholes"