Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,21

car unless he knows the buyer personally, or somebody he trusts vouches for the buyer.”

“But he’ll have something? Weed, coke, meth?” Lucas asked. “Any amount will work.”

“He’ll have weed,” Weeks said. “He gives it away to guys inside the bar, priming the pump. He won’t ditch it because he won’t know for sure you’re there for him, and it’ll be less than twenty grams. He knows he won’t be prosecuted for that.”

Bob smiled: “Not by you, anyway. Don’t arrest him. We’ll do it.”

“If you can worry Axel, you’ll be doing a public service. At least move his ass across the line to Broward County. I hate him shifting that smack around my territory.”

“We’ll worry him,” Lucas said.

Bob added, “I don’t want to freak you out, because I’m actually a puppy dog in real life, but I’m gonna do my bad-guy act with Morris. I’m gonna come on hard. Mean.”

“Let’s get it on,” Weeks said with a grin. “Puppy dog . . .”

* * *

Bandit’s was a cuboid, plain and simple, a three-dimensional concrete block rectangle painted clitoral pink, set squarely in a potholed parking lot, with fluorescing purple paint around the blacked-out front doors and the rain gutter. To the right of the door was the fluorescing image of a mostly naked, winking woman with a top hat on her head, her back turned to the parking lot. Across her bare legs was the club’s name, bandit’s.

“Ass bandits,” Bob said, as they got out of the car.

“I got it,” Lucas said. “We’re dealing with people with good taste.”

There were thirty cars and pickups in the lot, many of the cars newer, undented and unscratched compacts, probably rentals, men down for the boat show.

“The bouncer’s gonna see the guns,” Bob said, as they walked up to the door. “Might even have a metal detector on the door.”

“We’re the heat,” Lucas said. “We get to carry guns. Even into a shithole like this one.”

“I’m just hoping he doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later,” Bob said. “You want to step in ahead of me?” They looked at the front door, which was as crappy as the rest of the exterior, a black sheet of steel that might even be bulletproof.

Lucas said, “Hey, it could be nice inside.”

* * *

No.

When Lucas and Bob stepped inside, the unidentifiable rock music was so deafening that real conversation would be impossible. The bar vibrated with red and blue LED laser lights; it smelled like a car deodorizer tree, as if it had to be hosed down every night, and maybe it did, with overtones of beer and whiskey and cigarettes and a whiff of weed.

The customers were all male, as far as they could see, defensively boisterous, jammed into red vinyl booths along the walls and on a motley bunch of barstools. A couple of naked tattooed women gamboled around a small stage with a brass pole. The waitresses wore some clothes, but were also young and tattooed.

A back-bar mirror was covered with so many bumper stickers—it’s not cheating if my husband watches, free the boobs, i love lipstick on my dipstick, bandit’s t-shirts $10—that only slivers of the mirror were visible. The ceiling above the bar was plastered with one-dollar bills, for no obvious reason.

The bartender was a large man whose nose pushed out over a heavily waxed handlebar mustache. He had an inch-wide steel ring in his left ear. The bouncer was shouting at four guys in a booth halfway down the floor, friendly shouting. He was an even bigger man with a gallon-sized head and steroid muscles in his arms, shown off by a sleeveless sweatshirt.

When he saw movement at the door, he turned and did an eye-check on Bob and Lucas, as Weeks had said he would. He walked toward them, glancing at the bartender and calling, “Rick,” as he did. The bartender looked over at Bob and Lucas and the bouncer jabbed a finger at the door and shouted over the noise, “We need to talk. Outside.” They all went outside and the bouncer asked, “Are you . . .”

“Let’s go,” Lucas said. He and Bob broke away from the bouncer, leaving him standing by the door, and walked around the building toward the back. There, they found Weeks talking with Axel Morris. Morris was standing at the back door, crutches under his arms, a black medical boot on his left foot.

When they came up, Lucas asked, “He holding?”

Weeks held up a baggie of weed. “Yeah. Gave it up without a