“No idea. If he believes we found his phone, that would mean that he also knows we shook down his room. So, he could hide it someplace he’s sure has already been searched…Or, he might have it on him,” Lucas said. “The key thing is, if he’s going clubbing tonight, the team could knock over your surveillance guys and Bernie’s escorts like a bunch of ten pins. They’re sure to do some heavy scouting before they’d try to get him.”
“Or they could try to hit Bernie’s ride to the club, or back from the club,” St. Vincent said. “They’ve got those automatic weapons and if Bernie told them that the escorts are in the front seats, and Bernie’s in the back…hit them at a stoplight.”
“Your guys can figure out the possibilities. I’m not even sure Bernie got a new phone. But: I want back in, if only for this club thing. Sherwood and I want to go up to the club, pry loose some videos, see if we can actually spot a contact.”
“Do it soon.”
“Yeah, real soon, this morning. Before there are employees around to talk about cops looking at videos. I got a guy who probably knows the owner and can get him over to the club this morning.”
“All right. Go. I’ll get my people together. When this is done, we gotta talk.”
• • •
Lucas called DelCapslock, who agreed to meet at the Nightshade’s front door in an hour. “Who’s the owner?” Lucas asked.
“Bunch of jocks around town, couple Vikings, couple Timberwolves. It’s managed by Jerry Don James, who used to run the Gamecock over on West Seventh.”
“The one that burned down?”
“Yeah. Fire so hot it melted the pots and pans, in ten minutes,” Capslock said. “The fire marshal says it was arson, but he can’t prove it, and neither could the insurance company. They paid off two-point-one million, though I understand the bank got most of that.”
“So Jerry Don James is a dirtball.”
“He prefers to think of himself as an innovative businessman.”
Lucas: “If Jerry Don doesn’t want to cooperate, ask him how interested he’d be in a charge of multiple first-degree murder and maybe treason.”
“I’ll speak to him,” Capslock said.
“See you in an hour.”
Lucas called Sherwood, who would meet them at the Nightshade.
• • •
Capslock was sittingin a rust-challenged beige Camry, reading a free paper. Lucas parked, walked down the street toward the club; Capslock saw him coming and got out. A car slowed and gave them a quick honk as it passed, and Sherwood went down the street and pulled into a parking space a half block away.
When they were all assembled outside the club’s front door, Capslock leaned on a call button, and a minute later the door openedan inch and a thin, young, dark-bearded man who might have been a sixties folksinger peered out and asked, “You the cops?”
“No, we’re Lady Gaga’s backup band,” Capslock said. “Where’s Jerry Don?”
The man stepped back and opened the door. “He’s waiting. He’s at the bar.”
The Nightshade was painted black: floor, walls, ceiling, and tables. The seating surfaces, booths and chairs, were white, and tiny, star-like LED lights sparkled from the ceiling. To one side, a raised triangular bandstand, with just enough room for a drum kit and a couple of guitars, bordered on a slightly paler shade of black that delineated a dance floor.
Jerry Don James, a pudgy man with a paper-pale face wearing an Icelandic turtleneck sweater, was sitting at the bar with a Starbucks Venti.
He asked Del, “What the fuck?”
Capslock said, “You still smell like smoke.”
James laughed and he said, “You’re a class act, Capslock. Remind me to put you on the banned list.”
Sherwood, who had been looking around, said, “You’ve got a banned list? Who’d even want to come here?”
“Who the fuck are you?” James asked. “I know who Davenport is, but…”
“He’s a fed,” Lucas said. “Now the question is, how many Russians you got coming here?”
