"We got no choice, Joe. That old fart scratched Mikey," Lyle Mack said. "That means the cops got DNA on him. You remember when Mikey f.u.c.ked that high school chick over in Edina and the cops came and made him brush his gums? That was DNA. About two minutes from now, they're going to come looking for him, and they'll give us up bigger'n s.h.i.t."

Joe Mack thought about that for a few seconds, then a frown slowly crawled over his face. "If you're talking about killing them, I mean, f.u.c.k you. I'm not killing anybody," Joe Mack said. "I mean, I couldn't do it. I'd mess it up."

Lyle Mack was nodding. "Me and you both, Joe Mack. We gotta get hold of Cappy."

"Ah, man." Joe thought about Cappy for a minute, and then thought about getting a drink.

"Got no choice," Lyle Mack said. He listened toward the front of the bar for a minute, then said, "Don't tell Honey Bee about this. She likes those boys, and she'd get upset."

"What if Cappy ... I mean, Shooter and Mikey is his pals."

"I don't think anybody is Cappy's pals," Lyle Mack said. "Cappy is his own pal."

OUT IN THE Trans Am, Haines said, "Hope Honey Bee's got Home Box Office."

"Gotta stop at the house first," Shooter said.

"Lyle said--"

"It's Lyle that worries me," Chapman said. "I could see him thinkin'. He's worried about us."

"About us?" Haines didn't understand.

"About us givin' him up. I could see his beady little eyes thinkin' it over. So he sends us out to Honey Bee's, which is so far out in the country a G.o.dd.a.m.n John Deere salesman couldn't find us. Why is that? Maybe he wants to get us alone and do us."

"But he said we can't be seen," seen," Haines whined. "He said we're going to Eddie's." Haines whined. "He said we're going to Eddie's."

"Well, he's sorta right about not bein' seen, but we gotta take the chance," Chapman said. "We gotta run by the house, grab the guns, and then we can take off. Turn the furnace down. If we was going to Eddie's for a month, we'd at least turn the furnace down. Take the s.h.i.t out of the refrigerator. Take us two minutes."

The chrome yellow Trans Am fishtailed around the corner; a great car, in the summer, but with its low-profile, high-performance rubber, a pig on ice.

LUCAS FINISHED DRESSING, checked himself in the mirror: charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie that vibrated with his eyes. Weather said, "And now, something occurred to me this very minute. When I was going in the parking ramp, a van was coming out really fast. We almost ran into each other."

"You weren't driving too fast, were you?" Of course she was; he'd given her a three-day race-driving course at a track in Vegas, as a birthday present, and she'd kicked everybody's a.s.s.

Weather ignored him. "The man in the pa.s.senger seat looked like a lumberjack or something. One of those tan canvas coats that lumberjacks wear. Long hair, brown-blond, down on his shoulders, and a beard. He looked like a Harley guy. Big nose. That was just about ..." She rubbed her forehead, working it out, and said, "That must have been just about the time of the robbery." She looked up: "Jeez, what if that was the guys? The driver looked the same way. I didn't see him so well, but he had a beard ..."

Lucas held up a finger, picked up his cell phone, sat on the bed, and punched up a number. A moment later, said, "Yup, it's me, but I can't talk because my wife is standing about a foot away."

"Hey, Marcy," Weather called. Marcy Sherrill was a deputy chief with the Minneapolis cops: t.i.tsy.

Lucas said, "What we need to know is, what time exactly did this whole thing happen? What time did it start, and when did it end?"

Marcy: "I don't think this is for the BCA."

"Listen, just shut up and tell me, and then I'll tell you why I want to know," Lucas said.

He listened for a moment, turned to Weather and said, "Between five-thirty and five-forty, right in there."

Weather said, "Lucas, that was ... I mean, that was exactly exactly the time I got there." the time I got there."

Lucas went back to the phone: "You know Weather is on the surgical team that's separating the twins? Yeah? So she pulled into the parking ramp right then, and saw a van coming out, and the face of a guy in the pa.s.senger seat. Said he looked like a lumberjack, blond or brown hair, down on his shoulders. Beard. Yeah, saw him pretty clearly. Saw the driver, too, not so well, but he had a beard. They were moving fast, and a little recklessly. Said the pa.s.senger was wearing like a yellow lumberjack coat."

"Tan canvas," Weather said.

"Tan canvas coat," Lucas repeated. He listened, then put the phone down and asked, "You get any impression of size?"

Weather closed her eyes for a minute, then said, "Yes. He was a big guy. Bigger than you. Taller, I think, and heavier."

Lucas pa.s.sed it on, listened again, and said, "All right. How about ... ten o'clock? Is ten good?"

When he hung up he said, "The robbers were three guys, wearing blue orderly scrubs, but the woman in the pharmacy doesn't think they were orderlies. They were apparently wearing the scrubs over street clothes. They were wearing heavy boots and ski masks, but the woman thought that at least a couple of them had beards. One of them was a really big guy. We need to talk to Marcy. Probably do a computer sketch, see if they can figure out who the guy was."

"Probably nothing, though," Weather said, as though she regretted telling him about it.

"Maybe not," he said. "But h.e.l.l, you've got the day off. The kids are out of the house--let's go hang out. Talk to Marcy, do lunch. Hit a boutique. I could use a new suit or two for spring."

She nodded, quickly, and repeated, "It's probably nothing."

LYLE MACK SAT in his tiny loading-dock office and thought about it for a minute, then got on the cold phone and called Barakat. He said, "We gotta talk."

"Why should I talk to you? My hands are clean," Barakat said. "You and that bunch of idiots are in trouble. I'm walking away. I know nothing. Why are you calling me? You know the police can follow phone calls--"

"I ain't stupid, we all got cold phones. You gotta get one, too."

"What?"

Lyle Mack was patient: "Go down someplace and buy a phone and a card and give them a fake name, if you gotta give them a name," Lyle Mack said. "You can get them at the grocery store. Some grocery stores. You can go to Best Buy."

"I'm telling you, I am out of all this--"

"Man, you were there. there. You can't walk. And I got your goods," Lyle Mack said. You can't walk. And I got your goods," Lyle Mack said.

"I'll get them some other time," Barakat said.

"Look. When the guys were going out the ramp, some chick was coming in. Black Audi convertible. Blond. She saw one of the guys, and we want to know who she is, just in case. They think she was probably a nurse."

"How am I going to find out? I'm not a mind reader," Barakat growled. "What am I supposed to do, walk around asking people who saw the killers the killers coming out of the ramp? How am I supposed to know that? That somebody saw somebody?" coming out of the ramp? How am I supposed to know that? That somebody saw somebody?"

"Just listen listen," Mack said patiently. "People will talk about this for weeks--just listen. You don't have to f.u.c.kin' investigate." investigate."

Long silence. Then, "If she's a nurse, she was working the day shift," Barakat said. "There are probably a hundred Audis out in the ramp right now. So, I can keep an eye out tomorrow. If she's a shift worker, she should be coming in about the same time. That's all I can do."

"And listen around," Lyle Mack said. As an added attraction: "The goods we got for you. It's the best I've ever seen. It's like a hundred percent gold."

ALAIN BARAKAT hung up and wandered into the kitchen. Glanced at his watch; had to get back.

He was tired: he'd just worked the overnight shift, and was continuing straight through the day, with only the hour-long lunch break. He'd already used half of that, and had come home hoping to find a package inside the push-through mailbox.

Hoping against hope.

The box was empty. Lyle Mack still had the goods. The knowledge of that would drive him crazy, he thought: and sooner or later, he would be over there begging for it.

Barakat lived in a modest brick house in St. Paul's Highland Park, a street of tidy houses and neatly shoveled sidewalks and kids and yellow school buses coming and going. His father had bought the house for him, but carefully kept the t.i.tle for himself, part of the family's move out of Lebanon. They were investing in real estate--houses and farmland--socking away gold coins, buying American educations for the kids.

The price of American houses had never gone down, his father had told him. A year later, when prices started going down, the old man had t.i.tle to at least thirty houses in the hot markets of California and Florida. He was losing his shirt and he'd cut Barakat's allowance to five thousand a month. He said, "You're a grown man now and a doctor. You can be rich if you work."

"I don't want to be a doctor," Barakat had said. "I don't want to be in St. Paul. This is not Lebanon, Pops, this is like the North Pole. It was minus twenty here the other day."

"Men have to work. That's what men do. Finish the residency, then go where you like. Move to Los Angeles. What I know, is, I'm cutting back. You live on five thousand a month, or you go hungry."

But Barakat couldn't live on five thousand; couldn't feed the habit for five thousand. The financial problem had led to his involvement with the Macks, a solution he'd suggested himself. The whole thing had seemed so simple.

Now this.

And the blond woman.

If the blond woman was the same one he'd seen in the elevator--and he'd have bet she was, she had to have been coming down from the parking ramp, and the timing was right--then he had a problem, too. He had no reason to be back there at that time of day--the emergency room was at the far end of the hospital, and nothing at the back end was even open. If she'd picked out one of Lyle Mack's guys, and was asked if she'd seen anyone else ...

HE DROPPED in an armchair and propped his head up with his hand. Thought about the blonde, and about the goods: Lyle Mack said he had the goods. Fire in the blood; needed the goods, despite what he'd said. Why had he said he'd get them some other time? He needed them now ...

Think about the blonde.

Arriving at that time of the morning, she had to be staff, and medical staff, not administrative. If she'd been an emergency case, she would have gone down the street, instead of up the ramp. If she was a nurse, she had a rich husband--nurses didn't drive Audis.

A doc? Maybe. There were lots of women docs.

His brain switched tracks again. Mack had had the goods. All he had to do was pick them up. They were right the goods. All he had to do was pick them up. They were right there. there. Like a fat man thinking about a doughnut, he thought about the heft and feel of a big bag full of powder cocaine. Like a fat man thinking about a doughnut, he thought about the heft and feel of a big bag full of powder cocaine.

The keys to the kingdom of glory. He'd been sober for three days, and he didn't like it. Though he'd read that there was no real physical dependency--he wasn't shaking or seeing snakes--the psychological dependency was just as real. Without the c.o.ke, without money for the c.o.ke, he was living a drab, colorless existence, a life of shades and tints. The c.o.ke brought life, intelligence, wit, excitement, clarity: primary colors.

He looked in his wallet. Nine dollars, and he hadn't eaten in a day. Had to eat. Had to get the goods.

THE MINNEAPOLIS police department is in the city hall, which is an ungainly, liver-colored building that squats in the Minneapolis gla.s.s-and-steel loop like an unseemly wart. Marcy Sherrill was slumped in her office chair, door closed to a crack. Lucas poked his nose in, called, "h.e.l.lo?" He got what sounded like a feminine snore, so he knocked and tried again, louder this time. "h.e.l.lo?"

Marcy twitched, sat upright, and turned and yawned, disoriented.

"Ah, jeez ... come on in. I dozed off." She half-stood, then dropped back in her chair, dug in her desk drawer for a roll of breath mints, popped one.

Marcy was a tidy, athletic woman, forty or so, who'd never had a problem jumping into a fight. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, she and Lucas had once, pre-Weather, spent some time together--or as Marcy said, forty days and forty nights. She'd later had a lengthy, contentious affair with a local artist, then married a medium big shot at General Mills.

And quickly produced James.

James was just back to preschool after a bout with the flu, she said, as Lucas and Weather settled into visitors' chairs. "I've been getting about two hours of sleep a night," she said. "As soon as he got better, he started running again. He never stops. He starts when he gets up, he runs until he drops, he sleeps like a log, then he starts running again."

"Same with Sam," Weather said. "Sam is starting to learn his letters now ..."

They one-upped each other for a minute or two, on their respective kids' looks, intelligence, vigor, and overall cuteness. When they were done, Lucas scored it as a tie, though, of course, Weather was correct. Sam was the superior kid.

"SO WHAT do you think about this Don Peterson guy?" Lucas asked. "What'd you get?"

"The killing was pretty straightforward," Marcy said. "The killer probably didn't mean to do it. Kicked the guy a few times. According to Baker--"

"Baker's the nurse," Weather said.

"Yeah. Dorothy Baker. She was doing inventory on the drugs. She couldn't see anything, or say anything, because they taped her up, but she could hear everything. Peterson got a hand free, somehow, tried to slip his cell phone out and call nine-one-one-Baker heard the robbers talking about it--but he fumbled it and got caught. One of the guys kicked him a few times, in the back, and in the chest. That broke him up. He bled to death, internal bleeding around his kidneys. They got him to the emergency room before he died, but he only lasted a few more minutes. He was on Coumadin; there was no way to stop the bleeding."

"So this Baker--"

Marcy held up a hand, cutting him off. "You know what Peterson did? Took some b.a.l.l.s, but he did it on purpose. When the guy started kicking him, he grabbed him, probably on his leg, and scratched him. He told Baker what he'd done, and on the way down to the ER, he came to and told one of the docs. That he scratched this guy. He had blood on his hands, skin under his nails."

"DNA," Lucas said. He'd never met Peterson, but he was suddenly proud of the guy. "That's terrific ... if we can find the guy who did it."

"Yeah: we find him, we've got him," Marcy said.

"She hear anything else? Baker?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. Interesting stuff. These guys were talking as they cleaned the place out, and she said they sounded kind of dumb--like street guys," Marcy said.

"Black, white?"