"I oughta kill the bitch for free, after that," Cappy said.

"What?"

Cappy looked at him and realized that Joe was dead drunk. "Pull over," he said. "Let me drive." CAPPY DROVE back to his room, in an old house in St. Paul Park, and Joe said he was fine, took the keys and headed back to Cherries. Lyle was waiting in the back.

"No go," Joe Mack said. He told Cappy's story, then shook his head. "I think we made a mistake bringing Cappy into it. If this chick talks to the cops, they'll be looking at bikers. Before, they weren't looking at bikers. If they start showing her pictures, I might turn up."

Lyle Mack said, "I didn't think of that."

Joe Mack said, "You know, maybe we're not smart enough to pull this off. Maybe we oughta run on down to Mexico for a couple years."

Lyle Mack looked around at the bar: "But what'd we do with Cherries?"

Joe Mack said, "I don't know. Once, you said, we maybe should sell it to Honey Bee. On paper. You know, to keep our names out of it. Maybe-"

"Aw, man. We gotta do better'n that." Lyle cocked an ear to the front room, where "Long Haired Country Boy" was booming out of the jukebox. "How could we leave this?" A SNOW FLURRY had just crossed the Mississippi when Virgil showed up. He got out of his truck and a squad car pulled to the side of the street and two cops rolled out, and Lucas stuck his head through the front door and yelled, "He's good."

The cops waved and moved on. Virgil, watching them go, said, "Heavy."

Virgil was a tall man, nearly as tall as Lucas, but wiry, with shoulder-length blond hair like a surfer's. Lucas, on the other hand, was heavy through the shoulders, and dark.

Virgil lifted a duffel bag out of the truck and came up, and Lucas stepped out on the porch. "They sent a guy after her on a Yamaha sport bike," he said. "St. Paul found it ditched off Snelling Avenue. He picked her up right at the hospital, so they must have a spotter inside. He had a handgun that fires.410 shells. The idea was to pull up beside her and put the barrel one inch from the window and blow her out the other side of the car."

"Who's the owner of the bike?"

"A guy… Dick Morris. St. Paul checked him out. He says the bike was stolen from his garage while he was at work, and the St. Paul guys believe him. He's pretty straight, a business guy-he seemed pretty scared when he found out what was going on. He rides with a couple clubs, lots of people knew about his bike."

"The shooter who came after Weather would have to be a good rider," Virgil said. "Good rider with a good bike gun, who knew what he was doing."

Lucas said, "I think so."

"You had some trouble with the Seed," Virgil said. "Weather was involved."

"A long time ago," Lucas said. "And this gun came out of California."

"Still."

Lucas thought about it, and then said, "It's the robbery. I doubt they even know who she is. Still, could be a Seed guy with the gun. They've got some kind of deal with the Angels, they've been coming across the river."

The Bad Seed was a Wisconsin club, originally out of Green Bay and Milwaukee; the Angels dominated the Twin Cities.

"All those guys are getting old, they're merging," Virgil said. "I've seen Banditos over on the West Side, riding with their colors."

"Hmm. Don't think we need to bother Weather about it," Lucas said. And, "You got your gun?"

Virgil smiled. "I knew you were going to ask." He patted his side. "Right here, boss. And I got a twelve-gauge in the truck. I'll get it later."

As they went back inside, Lucas asked, "You know what she did? After she saw the gun?"

"What?"

"Tried to run his ass down," Lucas said.

"Semper fi," Virgil said. INSIDE, LUCAS introduced Virgil to Marcy Sherrill, who'd stopped to talk about the attempt on Weather. "She's a deputy chief over in Minneapolis," Lucas said.

They shook hands and Virgil said, "Yeah, we met a few years ago-the Yellow Peril thing," Virgil said. "Don't know if you remember. I was working with Jim Locke, before he retired."

"I remember," Marcy said. "Jeez, that must have been six or eight years ago."

Lucas said, "I don't remember-"

"I think that was after you got kicked off the force, and before you came back," Marcy said. "Some asshole…"

"Louis Barney," Virgil said.

"Yeah-Louis X. Barney… He stole a bunch of five-gallon cans of methanol from some race-car guy's garage. He told the judge that he just thought it was alcohol. And he figures what the heck, the winos wouldn't know any different. He blended it with pineapple juice and started selling it on the street. We had four people go blind, and two people die, before we caught him."

Virgil: "Wonder if he's out yet?"

"He got twenty years… but I think that was under the old two-thirds rule… so not yet, but he's getting close."

"Pretty stiff, for a semi-accident," Lucas said.

"The judge didn't believe him," Marcy said. "Barney was a drunk himself, but he didn't drink any of it." WEATHER CAME IN, carrying a coffeepot, followed by the housekeeper with a tray full of cookies, and Weather kissed Virgil on the forehead and messed up his hair, and said, "Your nose looks fine." And to Marcy: "The last time I saw him, he had this big aluminum thing on his nose. From a fight."

"I read about it," Marcy said. "The buried car thing."

"How you doin'?" Virgil asked Weather.

"I've been thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it," Weather said. "You know what? I can't think about it. I've got too much to think about already, with this operation. So I'm not going to pay any attention to it. I'm going to let you guys take care of me."

"Good plan," Marcy said. "If they come again, we'll get one. Could break it for us."

"They spotted her in the hospital. Somebody in the hospital set it up," Lucas said.

"I think so," Marcy said. "We're putting hammerlocks on everybody. We're pushing it-we've pulled people off about everything else."

"So there's no reason for me to jump in," Lucas said.

She smiled at him. "Nope. No reason at all." As THEY were shutting down for the night, with the kids asleep and the housekeeper in her apartment, Weather already gone back to the bedroom, Virgil was jacking triple-ought shells into his twelve-gauge and he said to Lucas, "There is a good reason for you to jump in. You're the second smartest cop in Minnesota. They can always use more of that."

"I'm always a little sensitive around Marcy," Lucas said. "She used to work for me, you know."

Virgil snorted. He knew about their history.

"Hey…"

"The point remains," Virgil said. "Never hurts to have a little more IQ on the job. Fortunately, you got me." IN THE WINTER, Weather slept in a variety of ankle-length flannel nightgowns, and on really cold nights, she wore socks, even though it was no colder in the bedroom on really cold nights than on halfway-cold nights. When Lucas got back to the bedroom, she was wearing a man's wife-beater undershirt that clung to her body and was low-cut enough to show the rim of her nipples at the top; and white bikini underpants.

Lucas said, "Oh, God. I'm so tired, too."

"Poor baby," she said. "Let me help you with your shirt."

Another thing that Lucas liked about Weather, right from the start, was that when it came to sex, she knew what she wanted, and how to get it, and one thing she didn't want was excuses. So they rolled across the bed, talking and sometimes laughing, stroking this, pulling on that, and Weather wound up on top, straddling his hips, and said, like she might say to an overanxious horse, "Steady, boy," and "Whoa, slow down," and "Easy, there," and she rode up and down and up and down, chewing her lower lip, still wearing the shirt, but now rolled up above her breasts, moving like she wanted to, until she got to the orgasm part, and then she made a sound like a tiny steam whistle from a miniature paddle-wheel boat, urgently signaling a need for more firewood, Ooo, Ooo, Ooo, Ooooooo…