Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,42

kitchen,” he said. He lifted the .45 out of drawer, popped the magazine, jacked the slide and a round flipped out, onto the ragged blue carpet. Lucas bent over, picked up the .45 round, shucked all the others out of the magazine and dropped them in the drawer and pushed it shut.

Elliot, backing toward the kitchen, watched him working with the gun. Bob pointed Elliot at one stool, and sat beside him, with Lucas sitting across the breakfast bar, the .45 still in his hand. He took a few seconds to disassemble the gun, then reached back and placed the pieces on the stove.

That done, he said, “Now. Bob and I have been running around town stepping on toes.”

“I hadn’t heard that,” Elliot said.

“Well, we have been. We’ve been specifically looking for guys like you, out on parole, or guys we can get for three-strikes offenses. For example, if we were to pull your house apart here, and find a joint . . . well, a joint is a federal offense, even if they don’t believe it here in Miami-Dade.”

“I know that, which is why you wouldn’t find a joint in here,” Elliot said.

“Okay. But you know, the damnedest things turn up with a thorough search, stuff that you might not even think is illegal, but it is,” Lucas said. “I mean, that .45, in the hands of a convicted felon out on parole . . . But we don’t want to go there. Instead, we want to bribe you. Don’t ever tell anyone I said that.”

“What do you got to bribe me with?”

“We’ll get to that. We want the name of the guys who shot three members of the Coast Guard this summer up in Fort Lauderdale.”

Elliot looked from Lucas to Bob, his unnaturally pale brow wrinkled, and he asked, “Why would I know that?”

“We heard you dope importer guys down here cut a deal with some Jersey goombahs not to fuck with them when they dropped a load of heroin off the beach,” Lucas said. “A deal got cut, the dope was dropped, and that led to the shooting. That’s why.”

“I’m not . . . uh . . . Man, why would I even talk with you?”

Bob said, “Because you’re on parole. We weren’t even in the house for five seconds before we found that .45. Your parole officer would send you back to prison for that. Find a joint or a bag of heroin, same thing. Drunk driving, drug paraphernalia, domestic abuse . . . almost anything and you go back inside. No trial, no problem, you’re gone.”

“I needed the gun for self-protection but there ain’t any drugs. Does it look like there’s a woman in here that I’d be abusin’?” It didn’t; there was one La-Z-Boy chair pointed at an oversized television in the living room. “If I was gonna . . .”

Lucas interrupted: “What we’re offering is a deal that would terminate your parole. You’d be done with it. If you got caught with a little dope, you couldn’t automatically be sent back to prison. The government would have to go through the whole bail bond, trial, and conviction route to put you back inside. How much would that be worth to you?”

Elliot stared at Lucas with watery blue eyes too small for his face, his heavy head bobbing a bit, and then he muttered, “Something.”

Bob: “Something?”

Elliot walked out of the kitchen and in a circle around the living room; as he was doing that, a gray tiger-striped cat came out of the back of the house and meowed at him. He picked up the cat and draped it across his shoulders, where it settled in and looked at Lucas with yellow eyes.

Elliot said, “Look. I might be able to help out here. I’m not sure; I’d have to make some calls. But I think so. I won’t give you shit until I talk to somebody who could help on the parole.”

“You got a cell phone number?” Lucas asked.

Of course he did, several of them, he was a drug dealer; but he didn’t say that. He said, “I guess.”

“Give me the number and I’ll set you up with one of the top assistants at the U.S. Attorney’s Office here in Miami. She makes the offer and you either believe her or you don’t.”

Elliot stared at Lucas for a moment, and then said, “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Elliot pulled at his heavy bottom lip, peeled the cat off, took it to the front door, let it out, came back,