• • •
The highway patrolmanwas going out the door as Forte hung up and Sherwood came over and said, “The state patrol guy says there’s a small town along that route south…and somebody might have noticed a Jeep going by. He’s headed out there to knock on doors.”
“If I’ve steered you wrong, I apologize in advance,” Lucas said.
“You’re the only guy who steered me at all. The feds over there…” He nodded at the two FBI agents, who were listening to a call on one of their phones. “They’re mostly worried about fucking something up. I don’t blame them: a high-profile kidnapping and they’ve got nothing. Now: tell me what else I can do.”
“The only thing I can think of, and the 9-1-1 center may already have it working, is the Jeep. The first two cars, the Jeep we shot up and the Subaru, were both rentals from two different agencies. If this new Jeep is a rental, most rental cars have LoJacks, or something like it. We should check and see if anyone…”
“That’s something the FBI can do right now,” Sherwood said. “That’s the kind of stuff they’re good at.”
He hurried off to the feds, who paused the phone call, listened to him, looked at Lucas, and went back to the phone. Sherwood listened for a moment, then came back to Lucas: “Okay. They were talking to the AIC so they’ll see about the Jeep.”
“If it is a Jeep,” Lucas said. “Let me tell you how we decided it was a Jeep.”
He told the story of the oil spot on the boat ramp, and, if not for the leak, how it might be fifty-fifty a Bronco.
Sherwood shook his head and said, “Rental agencies don’t rent Broncos. I spend half my days in rentals, it’s something I know about. Let’s go outside and look for oil spots.”
The driveway to the emergency room had been scraped clean after the last snowstorm, but just about where the kidnap car might have parked, they found an oil spot that was still sticky, despite the cold. “Could be,” Lucas said.
Sherwood looked at the black oil stains on his fingertips. “God bless leaky Jeeps.”
• • •
Then they waited.Talked with the feds and the locals and the nurses and the hospital director and his wife, who’d been out to a barbeque joint when the trouble started. Lucas called Shelly White, told her everything that had happened, and that he’d keep her posted.
They were standing around, not doing much, and Sherwood said, “I like your overcoat. And your shoes. Though I didn’t think those brown high-top boots you were wearing this afternoon really went with the suit.”
“We don’t speak of such things in Minnesota,” Lucas said. “What happens in winter, stays in winter.”
Sherwood: “So the suit. Figueroa and Prince? N Street?”
“How’d you know?”
Sherwood opened the front of his overcoat to show Lucas the label: Figueroa and Prince, a tailor shop on N Street in Washington. “I could see Pat’s AMF stitching on the lapels, keeps the edges from rolling. I like that.”
Lucas reached out and rubbed the fabric on Sherwood’s overcoat: “Is that vicuna? I don’t think I could afford one of those.”
“We’ve got about six guys researching you. You could afford it.”
“Why are you—”
“Because of the problem. We’re researching everybody who was around that house today. And you’re a very odd duck.”
“That was always my ambition, to be recognized as a duck,” Lucas said. “How much did you pay for the coat? Couldn’t have been less than ten.”
“It was less, and I got a deal on top of the regular price.”
“Huh. I didn’t know Figgy gave deals. So…how important are you, anyway? Calling up people, they’re jumping to do whatever you say? Giving you deals on coats?”
Sherwood shrugged and said, “I dunno. I was involved with the Sokolovs from the start, recruiting him. That was a serious win, so I had the sun shining out of my ass for a while. The deputy ops director calls me John and I call him Frank, but I throw in a ‘sir’ every once in a while. But you…you have interesting connections in Washington. Some of them, even Frank would call ‘sir.’ ”
“Ah…I know some people,” Lucas admitted.
• • •
They drank coffee,which was awful and Lucas didn’t like coffee even when it was good, and they talked about menswear—they were equally interested in fashion—and Lucas enjoyed the exchange. The mayor came over to Lucas and said, “Aren’t you the guy who used to hang with Bill Norton? On that drug thing?”
