Buried Prey Part 15

"They hang out here?"

"They'll come in for a drink. You know. Kenny doesn't allow any hustling, or anything. But, they knew him," the man said.

"I get the feeling that he's from right around here," Lucas said. "Sees the girls across the street, hangs out here."

"Doesn't hang here much," a man said. "He only came in, the first time, maybe a month ago." The others nodded in agreement. "Then he was here pretty often. I haven't seen him for a few days, though."

"He was talking about seeing this transient-" Lucas began.

"The Sc.r.a.pe guy," the woman said.

"Yeah. What'd he say about Sc.r.a.pe? Any of you guys hear about that?"

"He said Sc.r.a.pe had some sort of s.e.x record," one of the men said. "Is that true? You guys oughta know. . . ."

"He's been arrested about a hundred times, but we haven't found anything about s.e.x so far," Lucas said. "It's mostly just, you know, loitering, or sleeping outside, pot, that sort of thing."

"He's one weird-lookin' dude," one of the men said. "And weird-actin'."

"So's John Fell," the woman said.

Del pounced on it: "Why?" he asked her. "Why do you say that?"

"He just makes me . . . nervous," she said. "I don't like to sit around with him. You have the feeling he's always sneaking looks at you. And then, he goes across the street. And that, you know . . . that's kinda freaky."

THERE WAS a little more, but nothing that would nail Fell down. Del said to Lucas, "So let's go talk to the girls again."

On the way out the door, a guy with a waxed mustache and muttonchops held up a finger and said, "Hey, you know about Dr. Fell?"

Del: "What?"

The guy said, "It's a nursery rhyme: 'I do not like thee, Dr. Fell / The reason why I cannot tell / but this I know, and know full well / I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.'"

Lucas said, "Uh, thanks."

The guy shrugged. "I thought you should know about it. It was written about a guy named John Fell."

Dell frowned. "But it was like a . . . nursery rhyme?"

"Yeah. About a professor. Way back, hundreds of years ago. In England. Dr. Fell."

Lucas said, "Huh," and, "How'd you know about it?"

"I'm an English teacher."

"Okay. You ever talk to John Fell? This John Fell?"

The teacher shook his head. "No, I never did."

"All right." He nodded at the guy, and they went out. He asked Del, "What do you think?"

"You say there is no John Fell-that it's a phony name. A guy who sets up a phony name is a criminal. So he picked a name for himself . . . and who'd know about a Dr. Fell?"

"Maybe he likes nursery rhymes . . . or maybe he was a teacher."

"That's what I'm thinking," Del said. They jaywalked across the street to the ma.s.sage parlor, and he added, "Maybe . . . I don't know. There wasn't much in that nursery rhyme, the way the guy said it. So maybe it's a coincidence."

"Hate coincidences," Lucas said.

"So do I. One interesting thing: that chick who didn't like to sit next to Fell. Women have a feel for freaks. Makes him more interesting."

On the way across the street, Del burped, said, "Excuse me."

"What do you expect? You ate about fifteen of my twenty-one shrimp, and all of yours, and most of two orders of fries."

"I'm still growing," he said.

Lucas said, "I don't want to sound like an a.s.shole, but you know what fries are? They're a stick of starch, which is basically sugar, designed to get grease to your mouth. Those shrimp are mostly breading, which is starch, also designed to get grease to your mouth. And, of course, shrimp are an excellent source of cholesterol."

"You sound like an a.s.shole," Del said.

"Ask me about cigarettes sometime," Lucas said.

"Mmm, Marlboros," Del said.

THERE WERE FOUR WOMEN working at the ma.s.sage parlor: three waiting for customers, one with a customer. Lucas went back and knocked on the door where the fourth woman was with the customer, and called, "Police-we need to talk. No big hurry, though. Take your time."

Back in the front room, Del said, "Very funny," in a grumpy voice, but then he started a low rolling laugh, almost like a cough, and the three women giggled along with him. One of the women was Dorcas Ryan, whom Lucas had already interviewed; the other one, Lucy Landry, was off.

Ryan said, "I've been thinking about him, ever since we talked to you. I can tell you, I think he works with his hands, because they're rough, and his fingernails need cleaning. Not like he doesn't clean them, but like, they get dirty again every day."

"Never said what he does, though."

"Not that I remember," Ryan said.

"Does he spook you guys?" Del asked. "If you were here alone, and he showed up, would you let him in?"

Ryan said, "Not me." Another one of the girls said, "I've only seen him a couple of times, but he has . . . a cruel lip. You know, his top lip: it's really tight and cruel-looking. I wouldn't let him in."

"But he's never done anything? Anything rough?" Lucas asked.

Ryan shook her head: "He gets his rub and goes on his way."

The fourth woman came out of the back and said, "Okay, that was mean. You scared the poor guy half to death."

"He's gone?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, I let him out the back." She was a thin woman, with an overtanned face already going to wrinkles, though she couldn't have been more than twenty-five, and an out-of-style Farrah Fawcett hairdo. She looked at Lucas, then at Del: "So what's up with the cops? You need a little s.h.i.+ne?"

"We're looking for John Fell," Lucas said.

"I heard that," she said. "I think he works at Letter Man."

"What's Letterman?" Del asked.

"A silkscreen place, up off I-35 by Stacy. I used to go by there, on my way to school. He came in wearing a Letter Man s.h.i.+rt, and I mentioned I used to live up there, and I like the s.h.i.+rt, and he said he could get as many as I wanted. He never did get me any, though."

"When was this?" Lucas asked.

"A month ago, maybe . . . No wait, longer than that. Maybe . . . May. I remember thinking it was still a little cool for T-s.h.i.+rts. But he's one of those stout guys, who doesn't feel the cold."

"Letterman is one word? Or two words?" Del asked.

"Two," the woman said. "Letter Man. Like a man who has letters. You know, they do advertising T-s.h.i.+rts and hats and s.h.i.+t."

"He ever get rough with you?" Lucas asked.

"No, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he did," she said. "He seemed like he might . . . like to, but was holding back. I think he could be a mean b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

THEY USED THE PHONE in the ma.s.sage parlor to call Letter Man, but it was apparently closed for the evening, and the woman who knew about the place didn't know who ran it.

When the conversation ran down, Del looked at Lucas and said, "So let's go see if Anderson got anything." He gave the women his business card: "Don't mess with this guy. If he comes in, call me. I won't give you away, I'll catch him later, on the street. But call. We're thinking, he could be dangerous."

Outside, Lucas said, "Dangerous," and, "I gotta get some business cards."

"I am getting a bad vibe from the guy," Del said. "I'd just like to see him. Have a few words. I think you might be on to something."

"We ought to go up to Stacy right now," Lucas said. "We could be there in a half-hour, forty minutes. If we knock on enough doors, we'll find the guy who runs the Letter Man place. We'll be talking to him in an hour."

"Anderson-"

"Anderson's stuff will be there when we get back," Lucas said. "Let's go."

"Checking Anderson will take five minutes, and we can have the comm center run down the Stacy cops for us-find out who we can talk to."

"You think they got cops?"

"That's why you check before you go," Del said.

ANDERSON'S FILE SHOWED seventy-two charges to the Visa account over its lifetime, the last a month before, at the ma.s.sage parlor. They scanned down the list of charges; a dozen or so were local, at what Del said were three different ma.s.sage parlors. The others were apparently mail-order places scattered around the country.

"A bunch of them in Van Nuys, California, different places . . . you know what? I bet it's p.o.r.nography," Del said. "I bet he's using the card for s.e.x stuff that he doesn't want attached to his name."

"Because why? He drives around in a van, he's not some big shot," Lucas said.

"I don't know why, maybe he's just embarra.s.sed," Del said. "But if it is p.o.r.n, it's another thing to throw in the pot. p.o.r.n addiction, goes to hookers . . . and you said Sc.r.a.pe denied that the p.o.r.n you found was his."

Lucas nodded. "Fell doesn't know we're checking on him," Lucas said. "We talk to the post office guys, watch the box when he picks up the next bill."

"Two weeks away," Del said.

"But we know he's up to something crooked."

"Not good enough. I know two hundred people who are up to something crooked, but I can't prove it," Del said.

"All right. But if we know who he is, then we got something to work with," Lucas said.

"Good point. You always want to know the players. Even if you can't prove anything against them." Del looked at his watch. "Let's talk to the commo guys. Get up to Stacy."

STACY DIDN'T HAVE COPS: the city was patrolled by the Chicago County sheriff's office. The comm center got in touch with the night duty officer at the sheriff's department, and between them they arranged to have a patrol officer meet Del and Lucas at County Highway 19, just off the I-35 exit.

They took a city car, and left Del's truck parked: the tranny needed work, he said, and he didn't trust it for the ninety-mile round-trip. The drive north took forty-five minutes, and just before they got there, the comm center radioed to say that the cop they were supposed to meet had to take a call, and he'd be a few minutes late. They turned off the highway and drove around town, looking for the Letter Man office; Stacy was a small place, a few blocks of houses this way and that, mostly new, ten or fifteen years old.

"People getting out of the Cities," Del said.

"Long commute."

"But pretty fast . . ."

They saw a guy walking a dog, stopped, and he told them that the Letter Man was a small storefront back on County 19. They drove back, found it. Dark, n.o.body around.

"This isn't that much like the movies," Lucas said, as they leaned back against the trunk of the car. "I'm thinking, 'law school.'"

"Man . . ."

The sheriff's deputy showed up five minutes later, introduced himself as Ron Howard, said he had no idea of who ran Letter Man, but knew who would: a local city councilman who knew everybody. They followed him to an older house, with a porch light on, where he knocked; a gray-haired man came to the door, saw Howard, smiled, and said, "Hey, Ron, what's up?"

"Dave . . . these guys are with the Minneapolis PD. They need to talk to whoever runs Letter Man."