“Easy, man, I got this,” Lucas said.
Lucas got his briefcase and he and Letty headed out of the building. Crossing the parking lot, Letty said, “Del’s a good friend.”
“Yes, he is. So are Flowers and Jenkins and Shrake and Elle and Catrin and a half dozen other people. Some of them aren’t really friends, but they’re okay, like Shaffer—I didn’t like him, but he did a good job, and he didn’t like me, but he knew I held my end up, so we were fine with each other. Other people, like Sands, they’re a drag on the system. They’re our biggest problem: there are too many bureaucrats and all they worry about is sucking on the neck of whoever’s paying them. Just the way it goes.”
Two minutes later, they were out on Maryland Avenue, headed for I-35, neither one of them saying much, comfortable with not talking.
Letty was driving.
? ? ?
PILATE SAID, “There they are.”
He was parked on Phalen Boulevard, looking slightly down into the BCA parking lot.
Kristen whimpered, “Let’s get out of here. Pilate, they’ll kill us.”
“Shut up. They’re not gonna kill us. We’ll get them away from here, out in the open, and BOOM!”
“Yeah, BOOM!”
Davenport and his daughter had gotten out of the slick-looking Porsche, and, leaving the top down, went inside the building.
“He said on TV he was just going to make a statement. Couldn’t take long. You’re driving, I got the gun,” Pilate said. “If we get down a quiet street where we could pull up beside them . . . All we need is five seconds to get away from the scene, and we’re gone.”
“This is so fuckin’ crazy. They’re going to kill us.”
“You think I’m a fuckin’ coward? You think I’m a fuckin’ coward, don’t you?”
It went on like that, back and forth, with growing silences between outbursts, and they waited, and waited some more, and it was almost two hours before Davenport and his kid came out of the building and got back in the Porsche, the girl in the driver’s seat.
“We look for a quiet block,” Pilate said. “They’ll be moving slow on the city streets, right out in the open in that little car.”
? ? ?
LETTY TOOK THEM out to I-35 and back toward home, easing onto I-94, then speeding up, slashing through the traffic. Lucas said nothing, because she’d learned from him, and he was enjoying the ride. They got off at Cretin and she took the left at the top of the ramp, got caught by a red light at Marshall.
Letty asked, “Do you think I’m paranoid?”
“You mean, like you’re starting to think I might cut off your Amex?”
She looked at him with cool, serious eyes. “No. Would you believe me if I said I think we’re being followed, by two people in an old car?”
Lucas smiled and said, “Yeah, I’d believe you.” He looked straight ahead, then glanced into the right wing mirror. “Which one is it?”
“That old red car, like a station wagon. It’s about six cars back in the left lane. I kind of noticed it when we were coming out of the parking lot. I thought I saw somebody inside, but they like ducked. When we were going down Maryland, I saw them turning behind us. Then we got to I-35, and they got behind us there, too, but stayed back, and they followed us to I-94. When I sped up, they did, too—but they still stayed back. Now they’re still behind us.”
“Goddamnit, it could be them,” Lucas said. “I’ve been shooting off my mouth on TV about what assholes they are, and they’re crazy. I even told them where we’d be today, when I talked to Jennifer and Annie last night. They couldn’t get out of the UP going south, so if they did get out, going west . . . they could be here.”
“Now what?” Letty asked.
“Let me think,” Lucas said.
? ? ?
A MINUTE LATER, he said, “Okay, here’s the deal. Don’t let them catch us. Keep going straight south, all the way to Ford Parkway, then hook over to Cleveland, go all the way down to Highway 5, then over to the Mall of America.”
“Why the mall?”
“Because it’s full of cops,” Lucas said. “And the Bloomington chief is a friend of mine and he can have things set up by the time we get there. And it’s a logical destination.”
? ? ?
LUCAS GOT THROUGH to the chief on the chief’s personal cell phone, explained the situation. “Here’s what I want to do. You know when you get off 494 onto Cedar, then you slide over and go up and then down that ramp that curves over in front of Nordstrom’s?”
“Yeah. Lindau Lane.”
“That’s it. With all those roads going through there, Lindau is like a concrete chute. If there’s shooting, it shouldn’t be a problem. We won’t kill any bystanders. If you have a couple cars down around the bend, where it turns by Nordstrom’s, he won’t be able to see them until he’s right at the roadblock. And there’s no way out of the chute.”
“I get the concept,” the chief said. “We’ll put a couple of unmarked cars north of 494, and they’ll fall in behind them, so when he comes around the corner, we’ll have him boxed.”
“Gonna need some guys who are willing to shoot,” Lucas said. “If these assholes think they’re gonna die, they’ll try to take us with them.”
“Keep your phone open: I’ll be calling you,” the chief said.
Letty said to Lucas, “Still back four or five cars.”
“Try not to clip a light and leave them behind.”
? ? ?
“WHERE IN THE HELL are they going?” Pilate asked.
“Don’t know. I almost lost her on the freeway. She drives like she’s in L.A., and this piece of shit drives likes it’s still back in Michigan,” Kristen said.
They got down to Highway 5, followed Lucas and Letty past the airport where it merged with I-494, and then Pilate saw a sign for the mall. “They’re going to that Mall of America. Man, that’s great. We follow them right to their parking space, slow down, I nail the guy, and we go. So many cars out there, so many people, so much noise, we’ll be lost in five seconds.”