They all sat, on a brown leather couch and two leather club chairs, and Thompson asked, “Marshals Service?”
“We’re checking with local, uh, Russian nationals with connections,” Capslock said. “We got your name from people familiar with your business interests.”
“We’re perfectly legitimate,” Thompson started.
Lucas broke in: “We’re not interested in your legitimacy. Or the girls you’re running. We’re trying to track down a Russian hit team that killed a Russian woman a couple of days ago and shot her husband. We know you guys are shipping a lot of cash back to the motherland and you couldn’t do that without government contacts. We expect you’ve been tracking all this through the news, and we thought you might have additional information from back home. Something that could give us a lead to the hit team.”
Thompson listened to it all without moving, until he began to slowly shake his head with the smallest of smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Running girls. I’m not running any girls; I manage a dating service. That’s all there is to it. I don’t ship money back to the motherland, and I don’t need any contacts in the Old Country, because it’s the Old Country. I’m living in the New Country.”
“I didn’t explain myself clearly enough,” Lucas said. “We need a lead to this hit team. We know local Russians have been helping them out by supplying them with cars. We think you could probably find out who that might be. We’re counting on you to do that. If—”
Thompson threw his hands up. “I don’t know anybody—”
Lucas rode over him: “If you continue to say that you have no idea, then, well, we’ve got a search warrant for this house. We’ll tear the ass off it, looking for your connections around town. You’ll probably get your computers back next year. Given the guys your high-end girls are banging, I expect we’ll find some interesting names and phone numbers.”
“Maybe some even going back to the Old Country,” Sherwood suggested.
“What the fuck? Search warrant? I haven’t done nothing but run a dating service.” Thompson’s pale face had gone pink, and he was losing his grammar.
“Give us a break,” Sherwood said. “You’re running a string of whore—”
“Who the fuck are you? You look like you jumped out of a Cracker Jack’s box,” Thompson said to Sherwood. “You ain’t a cop.”
“That should worry you,” Lucas said.
“Let’s not everybody get all upset,” Capslock said. “But I gotta tell you, Rick—can I call you Rick? Or Oly?—we will wreck this place if we don’t get some help.”
“If it turns out you’re the guy supplying these cars, then we’re talking accessory to first-degree murder,” Lucas said. “So: where are we at?”
“I need to talk to my lawyer,” Thompson said.
“I need to serve you the warrant,” Capslock said. “I didn’t want to do it…”
• • •
A redheaded womancame down the stairs carrying a brown leather shoulder bag, with a hand in the purse. Capslock pushed back his sport coat and Lucas crossed his hands in his lap.
Thompson picked up on that and said, “Wait, wait, wait…Sally doesn’t have a gun.”
“Then tell her to take her hand out of her purse, without a gun in it,” Capslock said. To Sherwood: “I hate shooting women. Instead of moaning, they scream. Or cry.”
The woman said, “What?” and snatched an empty hand out of the purse. “Who are you? Are you with Larry?”
“They’re investors, they’re not with Larry,” Thompson said.
“That’s interesting,” she said. She was nice-looking, but not crazy pretty, or sexy; she looked, as Capslock had said, like she’d just driven in from Wayzata in the BMW convertible that Daddy had given her. Low heels. Pearl earrings. Gold bracelet. Short brown-wool coat that looked expensive and subtly chimed with the bracelet.
Lucas: “Would you like to join us?”
“I have to get my hair done,” she said, her voice crisp and suburban.
“Have a good time,” Capslock said. “Though I gotta say, your hair looks perfect.”
“Just a blow job,” she said, with a smile. She crossed from the bottom of the stairs to the door in two long strides and was gone.
Sherwood said, “Wow.”
• • •
