Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(52)

“What is this?” Stapler demanded.

“We need to talk to you about an ongoing investigation,” Lucas told him. “It would be best if we did it in the back, you know, for privacy reasons.”

Two of the men sitting at a table to one side stood up and one said, “We’re leaving, if that’s okay.”

Rae said, “Sure,” and they left.

“You’re messing up my business,” Stapler said. He was getting red in the face.

“Let’s go talk, no reason there should be a problem,” Rae said.

“Who’s going to watch the counter?”

“You’ve got two guys here from your group, they could keep an eye on it for a few minutes,” Lucas said. “They can call you if somebody comes in.”

Stapler looked at the other two men standing by the bar, and said to the man with the gun, “Ron, could you watch it? We’ll go in the back. I’ll make it quick as I can.”



* * *



—

A LONG NARROW ROOM full of coffee-making supplies, a desk, and file cabinets sat behind the café’s main room; Stapler led them through a second door into his living quarters, a two-room apartment with a couple of decrepit couches and a monster TV in the main room, with an unmade bed visible to the side. The walls held several antique guns, flintlocks and caplocks, mounted on pegs. The mounted head of a deer looked down from over the bathroom door.

Stapler didn’t sit down. He stood, with fists on his hips, facing Bob, Rae, and Lucas, and said, “So tell me.”

Lucas: “What do you know about a group called 1919?”

“Nothing. Well, nothing but what I seen on Fox. That redheaded chick talking it up.”

“You haven’t heard anything about it from your organization’s members? No speculation about who might be behind it?”

“Nope. Not a thing,” he said. “Just a minute.”

He went back to the door that led to the café, opened it, and called, “Ron? Come here a minute, will you? Jason, could you watch the counter?”

The man with the gun stepped through the door and said to Stapler, “Nobody coming in right now.” He was a bulky man, something not right about his left eye, which was watery and a bit inflamed.

Stapler nodded: “Okay. The marshals want to know if the members have heard about 1919. I told them I seen it on Fox.”

Before he could reply, Bob asked the bulky man, “What’s your last name?”

“Linstad.” To Stapler, he said, “A couple guys were talking about it last night, after that Fox show. Nobody ever heard of them before. They had pictures of kids belonging to politicians . . . like some kind of threat, I guess.”

Stapler said to Lucas, “That’s what I heard, too. You done some research on us, I’d guess, so you know what we’re about. You would think we would have heard something . . . but we haven’t heard anything.”

“How come you come to us?” Linstad asked.

“Because you’re somewhat . . . out there . . . in your politics, and you seem to like guns.”

“We do like guns, for self-defense,” Stapler said. “Nothing illegal about that.”

“How about that whole rape thing?” Rae asked. “About how, sometimes it might be a reasonable activity?”

“That’s all theory,” Stapler said, flapping one hand dismissively. To Linstad, he said, “Go back out front, watch the register and send Jason back here. Let’s see what he has to say.”

Linstad went, and a moment later, Jason came through the door. “What’s up?”

Rae explained, and Jason said, “Doesn’t have anything to do with us. I saw that girl on TV, that’s about it.”

Lucas pressed them: they didn’t move. They knew nothing about 1919.

Stapler said, “You know who you oughta talk to, is that Stacy chick on TV.”

Lucas: “That Stacy . . .”

Stapler waved again. “Whatever her real name is. She’s been all over the media. You guys are running around trying to find 1919 and you wanna know what? The only one making anything off the whole 1919 thing is her. I’m in the coffee shop all day with that TV going on the wall and she’s all over it.”

“She does this thing with her mouth,” Jason said, running his tongue around his upper and lower lips. “Like she’s dying to give us all blow jobs. Course, she won’t be giving them to the likes of us.”

“Easy,” Rae said. “She’s a teenager.”

“Name only,” Stapler said. “She’s coming on like she’s hot to trot and then she’s all, ‘I’m a victim fighting back,’ and she gets those teary eyes. Bullshit. I bet she’s pulling down more money than I’ll make in ten years running this place.”

Another man came through from the front, a hulk, a lard-can head, shoulders a yard wide in a plaid shirt, all of it set above hips barely a foot across, with spindly legs dangling below. He had a voice like a bass guitar: “What the hell? Ron told me you was back here.”

Stapler said, “Hey, Darrell . . . U.S. Marshals asking about 1919.”

“What? The year?”

“The group, the website.”

Darrell, who was wearing a photographer’s vest, said, “Never heard of it. Are they like us?”