Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,120
again and Wright went into the kitchen to call her boss at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. When she’d finished, she came back through the living room, put on her coat, and gathered up her briefcase. On the way out, she touched Lucas’s arm and said, quietly, “We’re very pleased. And by the way, that’s a great suit, but your tie’s a little crooked.” She straightened his tie, said, “There,” patted him on the chest, and went out the door.
Devlin said, “Wow.”
Lucas: “Happens all the time.”
The old man said, “You’re fulla shit,” but then he cackled and shook his head. “Fuckin’ women.”
* * *
As they waited for the transport vans, Carol Bruno asked, “How come you were in such a big hurry? We shoulda been able to talk to a lawyer before we decided what to do.”
Lucas said, “This . . . investigation . . . has a lot of moving parts. The FBI’s organized crime guys told us if we let you talk to one of your regular lawyers, that guy would run outside and call up Sansone and everybody else he could think of, and warn them off.”
Paul Curry asked, “Didn’t you say you’d arrested Kent Pruitt?”
“Yeah. He’s already over in Manhattan.”
“Did you let him make a call to Sansone?”
Lucas felt a chill of apprehension: “No. Should we have?”
“I want credit if I tell you about this.”
“You’ll get it,” Lucas said.
“Well, if Kent didn’t make a call . . . then Sansone knows. We all call in, we all have our times. When I’m working, when I’m moving a big load, I call between five and six. I even got an alarm set on my phone. If I get picked up by the cops, I don’t make a call and a bunch of shit starts happening. For one thing, nobody knows me until it all gets straightened out. Until somebody talks to me, to see why I didn’t call. A lawyer starts looking for me. If Kent didn’t make a call, you’re fucked: Sansone knows.”
Lucas looked at his watch. Ten minutes to six. Virgil was certainly on the boat, maybe already in the water. If Sansone was looking for Pruitt, if he realized that one of his top salesmen had gone missing and if he had called Behan in Miami Beach . . . then Virgil and Rae could be in trouble.
Lucas turned to Devlin: “We want Curry on the phone to Sansone, right now. Everything is okay, everything is perfect.” He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Devlin called.
“Gotta make a car insurance call . . .”
Lucas jogged out to the van, got his pack, retrieved the burner phone, and punched in the number for Rae’s phone, feeling the sweat start on the back of his neck.
But Rae answered on the third ring.
Lucas put a big smile on his face, because a big fake smile turns your voice into a salesman’s, and said, “We’re calling to alert you to an opportunity to insure your car against . . .”
At the word insure, Rae said, “Fuck you,” and hung up.
Lucas sat back. She was on the boat, she was with Cattaneo and the other hoods, and couldn’t talk.
And she was alive.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Virgil and Rae helped carry the scuba gear down to the boat. The water was dead quiet, dark and smooth as oil; a man in a sleeveless white shirt went by in a rowing shell, the only one they’d seen on the Intracoastal.
When the last of the gear was stowed, Virgil and Rae went to the bow of the boat while Cattaneo was doing an engine check, and Rae slipped an arm around Virgil’s waist and muttered, “Are you okay with this? We could be pushing our luck.”
They’d talked earlier with Lucas and knew that an arrest had been made but without a deal and another one was imminent. Sooner or later, the word would get out.
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about until I get back on the boat,” Virgil said. “They want the shit too bad. The danger point will be when I’m in the water and they’ve got a hold on the lift bag. If they want to get rid of me, that’s the time.”
“I’ll be ready for that,” Rae said.
Cattaneo called, “We’re set. Marc, you want to cast us off?”
* * *
The night was cloudy but windless, and warm enough, in the sixties. There were lights already showing in the marina, and Virgil could hear somebody playing Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale