He said to Lucas, over margaritas, “I’ve seen a couple of FBI spooks. I went up the elevator with two of them. They had those plastic cards around their necks, you know the kind? It’s not like they’re hiding. I said hello and one of them was tempted to nod at me, but he didn’t.”
“Sounds about right,” Lucas said. A good-looking waitress came over to make sure the drinks were okay, complimented Bob on his shoulders, and leaned in as she refreshed their glasses of water. When she left, Lucas looked back to Bob and asked, “How’s Rae doing?”
“She was in town yesterday to get more clothes. Her mom’s starting chemo right away. Gonna lose her hair. Rae wants her to shave her head before it starts coming out.”
“Ah, boy . . . Is Rae still pissed at me?” Lucas had shot to death a man on a case the three had worked together.
“She was never pissed. She just would have given that guy a chance,” Bob said. “She thinks you went there intending to kill him and that’s what you did. Her brain doesn’t work like that. Neither does mine, come to think of it.”
“Even though you saw the dead kid in the schoolyard?”
“Even though. I’m a lawman,” Bob said. “You’re looking for justice. Those are two different things. We know that, me’n Rae, and we’re willing to live with it.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“I’ll still kiss you on the lips if you want,” Bob said.
“Not necessary.”
* * *
They spent the meal talking about this and that, a one-man band in the corner playing vintage soft rock over the conversation, the rumble from I-95 providing the thumping bass notes. When they were ambling back to the hotel through the dark, Lucas said, “This is boat show week. It’s over by the ocean. We need to start there tomorrow morning.”
“What’s there?”
“The Coast Guardsman who killed that dope runner. He’s out of the Coast Guard now, he’s going to college down here, and he’s working the boat show for extra cash. We need to talk to him. Before that, there’s an eight o’clock status meeting with the task force in one of the hotel meeting rooms. That should be done by nine.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Bob said, and he yawned.
“Wear shorts,” Lucas said. “Gonna be hot.”
“All right.”
“And maybe you should bring your gear bag with you. Leave it partly unzipped with your M4 on top.”
Bob brightened. “That wouldn’t have occurred to me, but I can already see it in my mind’s eye.”
* * *
The hotel had a breakfast spread in the morning, twelve dollars. Bob ate some of everything in sight, Lucas focused on pancakes, with a bottle of Diet Coke from the gift shop. Four men who looked like FBI agents were there, clustered in a quiet group bent over their food, all in suits but none wearing neckties; there must have been a special tropical dispensation, Lucas thought.
They glanced at Bob and Lucas from time to time, but made no move to talk to them. The daytime temps were supposed to reach 84 and Lucas and Bob were going to a boat show, so they were wearing guayabera shirts loose over their guns, khaki cargo shorts, and athletic shoes. Bob added a blue baseball cap that said nimbus on the front.
“What’s a Nimbus?” Lucas had asked.
“A rain cloud. Or, could be a halo, but in this case, I think a rain cloud, since we’re gonna rain on the FBI’s parade,” Bob said.
“Good-looking hat.”
“Thank you. I got it for free from some guy who had a box full of them in the lobby,” Bob said. “I think it’s the name of a boat he’s trying to sell. Guy looked like a country singer, but I can’t remember which one.”
On the way to the elevators, Lucas, trailing Bob, realized that their shirts and shoes almost matched, and their shorts did match. In the elevator, he asked, “The way we’re dressed . . . you think we look like aging gay guys?”
“I’m not aging,” Bob said.
* * *
The meeting room was a long rectangle meant to look like a corporate boardroom, pale plastic wall coverings and a table that resembled wood. The room had a row of windows, but the shades had been drawn; a box of donuts and a tank of coffee sat on a side table with packs of sugar and creamer. Weaver was hovering over a stack of files and computer printouts on the boardroom table when Lucas and Bob arrived, five minutes early, and he nodded at them.
Eight other men and one woman were chatting or finding chairs, opening laptops. They were all in their twenties or thirties, dressed in either suits or sport coats with coordinated slacks. Neckties had reappeared: some wore ties knotted at the throat, others had slung their ties over their shoulders, like ribbons, to be tied when they went public. They stopped chatting to check out the guayabera shirts and shorts on the marshals.
One of the agents looked at Bob’s knees, and then Lucas’s, and said, “You’re the marshals.”
Bob said, cheerfully, “Yup,” and pulled out a chair, sat down. He didn’t have his gear bag, but he winced and said, “Ouch, goddamnit.” He reached under his shirt, pulled out his .40-caliber Glock and dropped it on the table with a clunk. “Hate it when it pokes me in the gut, know what I mean?”
Lucas bit his lip and sat down himself, turned toward Weaver, and said, “We’re heading to the boat show right after the briefing. We thought shorts would be the way to go.”
“What’s over there?” one of the agents asked.
“Boats,” Bob said. “And the Coast Guard guy who shot the smuggler. We wanted to start at the beginning.”
Weaver nodded and said, “If you want, go ahead. If you read our interviews with him . . .”
“We both have,” Lucas said. “Good interviews, but I want to hear him talk.”
Weaver finished with the stack of papers he’d been sorting and said, “Let’s everybody sit down.” When everybody was seated, Weaver poked a pencil at Lucas and said, “The dark-haired gentleman is Lucas Davenport, the bruiser over here is Bob Matees. I have bios for both of them, if anyone is interested. Don’t let the stupid shirts and shorts fool you: Davenport closed out eighty murders over twenty-five years with the Minneapolis Police Department, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the Marshals Service. In September, he killed the 1919 sniper. Matees is assigned to the Service’s SOG and he’s the guy who took down the New Orleans cannibal in that firefight in Nevada last summer. Davenport was there for that one, too.”