“Yes, Fortune?”
“Sorry to call so late, Myers. I’m at Regency Hospital, I’m standing outside the mortuary.”
Marco Dante,she thought.He’s dead.
“An ambulance brought in a body from the Rialto a few hours after we were there. They didn’t contact us because they didn’t see anything suspicious about the death. It isn’t the first time an overweight man past fifty has died of a heart attack or whatever while watching a dirty movie. But then they took a preliminary toxso…er, toxsilogical…”
“Toxicology test,” said Kay.
“Yeah. And they found traces of…hang on, I wrote it down here. Tetrodotoxin. It’s supposed to be the same kind of poison you get when you eat those Japanese fish that haven’t been cooked properly.”
“Fugu.”
“Eh?”
“Japanese puffer fish.”
“Yeah. So I asked did they think the guy had been eating fish while he was at the movies. But even though those things mean certain death, it apparently works slowly, so the guy could have gotten the poison in him several hours before he noticed anything. And being as how this isn’t exactly the kind of fish you cook in your kitchen at home I figured that here is one restaurant that is going to be in deep shit. But now I’ve checked the guy out and when I saw his record I called you straight off.”
“I get it. So who is he?”
“Wes Villefort. Male, fifty-eight years, black.”
She groaned. “You gonna give me his height too?”
“I’m saying black because he was the only black there.”
The pimp,she thought. “Okay. So, the record?”
“Narcotics.”
Kay thought about this. She saw no immediate connection between narcotics and Dante, Karlstad and Patterson. The death might just be accidental. Or it might not.
“Thanks for telling me,” she said. “I’ll take a look at it in the morning.”
—
Olav Hanson headed down toward the river with his fishing rod in his hand.
He needed to calm down and think things over before tomorrow. And he and Violet had argued after Sean’s visit the previous night. It ended with her leaving to spend the weekend at her parents’ place. She would calm down, so that was okay by him, it meant he could fish the whole night through if he wanted.
The steep path was muddy. It always was, no matter how long it had been since the last rain. The moon dipped in and out behind the clouds, and in the dark it wasn’t easy to see where to put your foot without slipping. Having a bad knee on a trickyslope didn’t help and several times he had to reach out and hold on to tree trunks for support. A sound. He stopped. Something moving in the trees. Too big for a squirrel. He peered but saw nothing. Either it was the same dog as last time or his ragged nerves playing a trick on him again. He kept going unsteadily down the path. Events over the last few days had cost him, but with a bit of luck it might all be over by tomorrow. If Lobo really did make an attempt on the life of the mayor then, statistically speaking, the most likely outcome was that the problem would solve itself. Olav had learned this during a meeting that afternoon at which Springer said that the majority of so-called lone-wolf terrorists ended up being killed, whether or not they succeeded. Olav couldn’t care less about Mayor Patterson; with that statistical fact in mind, he just hoped Lobo would turn up at the U.S. Bank Stadium tomorrow armed with a rifle.
As he reached the river’s edge Olav saw that another fisherman hadn’t gone home yet. That was fine. It meant he wouldn’t be standing there alone on a dark night like this.
“Catch anything?” asked Olav as he pulled the cover off his rod and got ready to cast.
“Not yet,” the man said without taking his eyes off his line. Olav thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn’t immediately put a face to it. There were quite a few regulars who fished down there.
“Perch bites better at night,” said Olav. He heard a twig snap behind him and peered up into the trees.
“Oh, I was hoping for something a little bigger.”
“Oh yeah?” said Olav. He heard a single bark from the trees. So it was the dog. Olav could tell his pulse was high now because he could feel it slowing down again. “Yellow pike, you mean?” said Olav as he stuffed the rod cover into his jacket pocket. He was looking forward to the fishing now. Showing how far he could cast. “You need luck for that, man.”
“Not yellow pike,” said the other. “I’m after the Milkman.”
At first Olav Hanson thought he hadn’t heard right, that his nerves were playing a trick on him. Then, slowly, the fisherman turned. The peak of his cap shadowed his face, but once he had turned around completely and raised his head, Olav saw who it was.
