“I’ve got two Russians,” Capslock said, as he shook hands with Sherwood. “They stay up later than I do, so they should both be home. Until noon, anyway.”
“Where are they?” Lucas asked.
“One is here in Saint Paul, the other’s in Bloomington.”
“Saint Paul first?”
“Let me change coats and get a different hat,” Capslock said. “I’ll tell you about them on the way over. I got something a little extra going on.”
They followed Capslock inside, said hello to his wife, who was sitting at the kitchen table writing bills; the kitchen smelled of onions and other plants. She said, “Del tells me he’s going to get you all in trouble this morning.”
“Hasn’t mentioned any trouble,” Lucas said.
“Because he thinks it’s funny. I don’t think it’s funny, I think Internal Affairs is going to get you all fired. I’d like to see him make it to full retirement.”
“Ah, no. What’s he done?”
“I’ll let him explain it. I mean, he’s so proud of himself.”
Capslock came back dressed in jeans with a blue sport coat over a black shirt. His hair was combed and held down by something greasy. He wasn’t large, but had the crooked face of a boxer, with sharp eyes and a well-bent nose. He limped, having been shot by old people who were smuggling altered, full-auto AR-15s to Mexico.
“You’re all dressed up,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, we’re gonna go see a guy.”
“What for?”
“Pick up a search warrant for the first Russian,” Capslock said.
“I don’t think we have enough—”
“All taken care of,” Capslock said.
On the way out to the car, Lucas asked, “How did it get taken care of?” To Sherwood, he said, “We don’t have any evidence for a search warrant.”
Capslock said, “We’re gonna go see Rob Barbier.”
“I thought he was—”
“Rob Junior got over his head with some cocaine a couple of months ago, at Briscoe’s. His heart got wonky and I dragged his ass over to Regions. Daddy told me to come see him if I needed something someday. I called him this morning and he said, ‘Happy to do it. Those Russians sound like scum anyway. ’ ”
Lucas said to Sherwood, “Briscoe’s is a dive bar. Barbier is a district court judge. Now I see how we could get in trouble, if anyone finds out about the free search-warrant deal.”
“God, I love this,” Sherwood said. “I’m starting to wish I had a badge.”
Capslock said, “You could probably get one. Somebody would have to break your nose, to get you looking right.”
“You’ve both had your noses broken?”
“More than once,” Capslock said. He touched his nose. “Even better, we both got our noses broken in the same fight. The guy was an orangutan.”
“But you won the fight, right?”
“Only because I managed to get hold of his barbeque grill, and beat him with it until he quit,” Capslock said. “Lucas was under him, holding him down.”
“I was under him getting the shit beaten out of me,” Lucas said. “While I was holding him down.”
“Marvelous,” Sherwood said. Made Lucas laugh.
