“If you write to the President, maybe he’ll give it back,” Lucas said. “Besides, you still got the bottles.”
Katz gave him the finger.
McLeod: “You’re both under arrest for aiding and abetting federal fugitives.”
“Oh, fuck this,” said the second woman, whose name they didn’t know. She was looking at McLeod and had her back to Lucas as he came up, but when he got close, she spun and unexpectedly punched him in the mouth. She was fat, but had fast hands.
Lucas lurched back, then squared off with her, said, “I’m notembarrassed about hitting women, and I will,” and showed her a fist, and she said, “Ah, screw it,” and gave up.
They cuffed the women and McLeod took them out. Weed said, “She got your lip.”
“Yeah. Cut it on my teeth.”
McLeod, over her shoulder: “You zigged again.”
—
They made thearrests a few minutes after noon. Lucas did some perfunctory paperwork—the ATF was running the operation—and at three, he was in his Porsche Cayenne, headed north. He had blue ice in a cooler and took out a bag every once in a while and held it on his lip as he drove; in between icings, he could taste the salt in barely oozing blood. Marshalltown was almost due south of St. Paul, four hours away on I-35.
He called his wife, Weather, on the way, said, “Brace yourself, sweetheart, I’m on the way home.”
“Big talk. We’ll see if you can back it up.”
—
All the wayto St. Paul, he nibbled and tongued his cut lip, making it worse, but he couldn’t stop. At home, he didn’t kiss Weather, a plastic surgeon, who told him that his lip wouldn’t need surgery and gave him another blue ice. They were eating dinner with the kids, when he took a call from Elmer Henderson, junior U.S. senator from Minnesota.
“Senator,” he said.
“Lucas. I got a job. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look.”
“I just got home from Iowa,” Lucas said. “Is the job boring?”
“C’mon, man. And no, I don’t think it will be. Necessarily.”
Weather called across the table: “Some fat cat in trouble, Elmer?”
“Hi, Weather. No, not exactly…Well, sort of,” Henderson said.
—
A change oflocation:
As Lucas was driving north on I-35, BCA agent Virgil Flowers was standing on the tee at the dogleg fifteenth hole at the Mankato Golf Club, wondering if a seven wood was the right club, when his cell phone rang. His golfing partner, a ruddy farmer named Aaberg, who played in bib overalls and carried an 8 handicap, said, “I told you turn that thing off, you silly shit.”
“I’m working,” Virgil said. “I can’t.”
“Working on another snap hook, is what you’re doing,” Aaberg said.
The call was from Virgil’s boss at the BCA. Virgil took it, listened, said, “Yeah, I can make it, but why? Why can’t you tell me now? Who’s going to be there? How did Lucas get involved? I thought he was in Iowa. Henderson? Really?”
Clusterfuck. He could feel it coming.
“Don’t let the phone call affect your swing,” Aaberg said, when Virgil had rung off. “I mean, that fairway is about as wide as my dick is long. You’ll be lucky to find your ball with a chain saw.”
Virgil drove the ball a hundred and eighty yards straight down the fairway, to the middle of the dogleg turn, watched it bounce and stop, and said, “I’m so pretty. I couldn’t have done that better if I’d walked the ball out there and dropped it.”
“You’re still two down with four to play, my porcine friend,” Aaberg said. “Let me up there.”
