“Of course, but I have not told the other two what I am doing, so you should find their businesses…mmm, how do you say, intriguing? I will complain about what you took from me. I will leave laptops for you to find. If you do this, I will continue listening.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Lucas said.
“Must be soon. Tomorrow. Whoever is doing this, helping this hit team, these are not good people.”
“And you are?” Lucas asked.
“I hurt nobody. I run a clean business. No drugs.”
“We’ll have to disagree about that,” Lucas said. “Give me the names, I’ll call a guy.”
• • •
When they finishedtalking, Lucas called Capslock, who told him that his judge was unlikely to sign a batch of search warrants. “We’re both already on a tightrope.” He didn’t doubt that warrants could be gotten from another judge, with a proper application.
“The other guy’s a Jesus and family freak. He’ll sign up. I have to put together the applications, talk to some cops in Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Bloomington, get them to back me up. I’ll talk to Jon Duncan, get him to okay the raids.”
“Tomorrow, if possible. Bell said we’d find the other two places intriguing.”
“Talk to you in the morning. Not too early,” Capslock said.
“Great. I’ve been getting up too early every goddamn day. I’m gonna sleep in myself.”
• • •
Weather, fully dressed,poked him at six o’clock the next morning. “Get up, sleepyhead.”
“What? What time is it?”
“Your phone says it’s three minutes after six. John’s been calling.” She handed Lucas the cell phone. “He’s called three times so far, starting at four o’clock, so leaving the phone in your bathroom drawer worked until I got up. Must be important.”
“The fuckin’ Russians hit the hospital,” Lucas groaned. “My God, I hope it wasn’t a massacre.”
He took the phone, propped himself up with a pillow, and calledSherwood. Sherwood picked up on the first ring and Lucas blurted, “Who got shot?”
“Nobody. But somebody might have gotten to Leonid.”
“How? There were…what happened?”
“We don’t know. He started convulsing during the night. None of his medication should have caused that, but you know, a blood clot to the brain could do it. One of the docs here, a woman, thinks he might have been poisoned, but the other docs are telling her to shut up. She wants to pump him full of atropine and diazepam, but…they’re waiting for a better diagnosis.”
“Sounds like what they did to that other Russian guy, the freedom fighter guy…”
“Alexei Navalny. Exactly. Speaking of ‘exactly,’ I have exactly no idea what to do. What do we do?”
Lucas didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “Well, since I don’t have any antidotes on me, and if it’s a blood clot, I don’t know much about brain surgery…I guess I’ll go back to bed. I’ll try to think something up.”
“C’mon, Lucas, the FBI is running around like their asses are on fire, but nothing is getting done. Come up with something. I’ll call you at nine. We’ll go to breakfast.”
• • •
Lucas did goback to sleep, but not soundly. Sometime between seven and eight o’clock, things changed.
With a thought. Or possibly a dream.
He’d been flashing back on the three separate shootings he’d been involved in, over the space of three days. He’d been badly woundedin another gunfight a couple of years earlier, another place with hard-crusted snow and a machine gun…and he flashed on that night as well, something he hadn’t done for a while.
He got up for a drink of water, thought about stopping to pee, but he really didn’t have to. He got back in bed, lay on his back with his hands behind his head.
