17

VIRGIL TOLD LUCAS, "I got tired of wandering around doing nothing, so finally I started asking everybody I met if they knew any Arabs with French accents, or accents that might be French, who've been acting flaky. Or Frenchmen who look like Arabs."

They were sitting at the dining table, with coffee. Weather was holding her head in her hands, and every once in a while said something like "Oh my God."

Lucas asked, "What happened?"

"Nothing yet," Virgil said. "The question hasn't had time to metastasize. I figure the politically correct wolverines will be onto it pretty quick. They'll blab it all over the hospital, and I should have about six formal complaints and three answers by noon tomorrow."

Weather said, "Oh my God."

Lucas patted her on the leg and said, "Don't worry. If it works, we're golden. If it doesn't work, and there are too many complaints, we'll reprimand him and tell everybody he'll be required to go to sensitivity training. He's going to the Bahamas in two weeks, anyway, so he'll be out of sight."

"Oh my God."

Lucas asked Virgil, "Run into any good-looking doctors over there?"

"A couple," Virgil said.

"I heard radiologists are hot. And dermatologists. They're more intellectual than, like, surgeons," Lucas said.

"I'll keep that in mind," Virgil said.

Weather said, "Sometimes, the two of you think you're being funny, but you're not that funny. I've got to work with a lot of… of…"

Lucas said to Virgil, "She's trying to find a softer word for 'Arab.' Like, 'Persons of Middle Eastern heritage.'"

"Fuck you," Weather said.

"See?" Lucas said. "A dermatologist never would have said that. They're more classy." LUCAS CAME to bed at one o'clock, moving quietly, and Weather said, "I'm awake."

"You should be asleep. Are you okay?"

"We're going to do it," she said.

"Yes. I hope that thing with Virgil isn't keeping you awake."

"No. I know how to prioritize," Weather said. "I even understand what he's doing, but you'll never get me to approve of it. You know, officially."

"Gods of correctness," Lucas said.

"Mmm."

"Thinking about the babies?" Lucas slipped under the blankets.

"They're just like us, but they don't understand," Weather said. "They're alive, they have emotions, they have intellectual processes, they are learning, they know some words… they're physically underdeveloped because they haven't been able to walk or crawl, but they're like us. They're lying there, maybe in some pain, wondering what's happening, and tomorrow, by this time, one or both of them might be dead, because of what we're doing."

"Weather-"

"I know. I wouldn't want to do anything else, or be anywhere else, but: it's a load."

"Did you take a pill?"

"No. I'll be fine. Maybe if we could just do a spoon for a few minutes," she said.

"Listen," Lucas said. "It's gonna work out. That's the karma here… it's going to work."

"You don't believe in karma."

"Snuggle up," he said. "Close your eyes. It's gonna work." WEATHER LEFT at six, got to the hospital fifteen minutes later, bodyguards fore and aft. Maret was gathering the team together for a pep talk: "This time we must keep going. We are close, but still several hours away. Everybody must resolve to work quickly. If we can save five minutes here or there, it's worth doing. We're in a race. We are not sloppy, but we are quick."

Weather went down to the separation lounge and found the Rayneses talking to a stress counselor. "You okay?" she asked them.

"Gabriel says that one way or another, we'll finish today," Lucy Raynes said.

Weather nodded. "We will. The babies look better, but they can't take much more. We'll finish."

"God willing," Larry Raynes said.

She left them, went to the women's locker room, changed into scrubs; when she came out, the babies were being rolled into the operating room. LUCAS STAYED UP just long enough to see her off with Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake, then went back to bed, looking for another hour or two of sleep. It came hard: his mind wouldn't stop churning, looking for strings that might lead to the doctor. He finally rolled out of bed at eight, cleaned up and headed down to his office. He was just turning into the parking lot when he got a call from Virgil.

"Your pal Marcy's all over me," Virgil said.

"Because of the Arab thing?"

"That's ten percent of it," Virgil said. "The other ninety percent is, an Arab doctor from Lebanon was murdered down in south Minneapolis last night. He used to live in Paris. They're taking some unusual drugs out of his apartment, and some wrappers for more drugs they haven't found. Like, a lot of drugs."

"You're serious."

"She should be calling you in about two minutes," Virgil said. "I probably got in first because you're on my speed dial."

"Where's this at? The murder? You got an address?"

"No, but like I said, she'll be calling. Jenkins and Shrake are still here. I'm gonna run down there and take a look." LUCAS'S CELL PHONE booped, and he said, "There she is. Talk to you later." He pressed the flash button, and Marcy came up. "You know what your guy Virgil did yesterday?"

Lucas asked, "So what's the address? You there yet? What kind of drugs…?" THE MINNEAPOLIS cops were all over the scene, Marcy standing in the hall talking to the lieutenant in charge of the homicide unit. She saw Lucas and walked down toward him and said, "That fuckin' Flowers. They were talking all over the hospital yesterday about how he was looking for an Arab, and see what happens?"

"The dead guy is an Arab?"

"Yes. Adnan Shaheen, from Lebanon," she said. "Decent rep, far as we can tell, but we've got some dope containers and other stuff, and it looks like it might have come out of the hospital pharmacy."

"This didn't happen because of Virgil," Lucas said. "He didn't kill anyone. We've got a stone killer who's cleaning up the mess left from the hospital holdup."

"Pretty goddamn far-out there, though…"

"Don't get on his case. He's coming by in a few minutes," Lucas said.

"Already been here and gone. And I did get on his case. He is the most uncooperative, insubordinate-"

"What'd you want him to do? Say he was looking for a swarthy doctor?" Lucas asked.

"Shut up," she said.

"So we got the doc…"

"And another problem," Marcy said.

Lucas nodded: "Who killed the doc?"

She said, "It's pretty clear to me that it's a gang thing. Somebody else in the Seed got wind of the robbery and hijacked it."

Lucas nodded and said, "Let me take a look." NOT MUCH TO SEE-a dead man with a broken head and a small puddle of blood beneath it, lying on his back, arms beside his body, palms up, in what Yoga people called "the corpse pose," for good enough reason. Lucas watched the processing for a few minutes, then asked, "Who found him?"

"Neighbor. Another guy who works downtown, they carpool into work. He knocked a couple times, and Shaheen didn't answer, and Shaheen's car was still in the parking lot. He peeked in at a corner of the blinds, and he could see him on the floor. Like we did with Lyle Mack."

"Gives me an ice cream headache," Lucas said. "Listen, I'm gonna go put a damp cloth on my eyeballs."

"You do that," she said. "If you think of anything, let me know."

"I already thought of one thing. The doc was friendly enough with the killer that he let the guy hit him from behind." LUCAS WENT OUT and sat in his truck for a while, then put it in gear and headed over to University Hospitals.

Virgil was lounging in the cafeteria, again, waiting. "Am I gonna get some shit?" he asked.

"Nah," Lucas said. "We were looking for an Arab. So what? Turned out we were right." LUCAS GOT a doughnut and a Diet Coke and came back to Virgil's table and said, "When I think about a gang holding up the pharmacy, I think of a tight group of people: Joe Mack, who was seen by Weather, and Chapman and Haines, with Haines confirmed through DNA. Lyle Mack was involved, probably as the brains behind the operation. Ike Mack was probably in charge of selling the drugs downstream. And the doc, who probably set up the robbery, including the theft of a key."