Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(12)

Lucas, Bob, and Rae followed Tremanty out at eight o’clock, seven miles to a low, rambling concrete-block bar called Remy’s. The bar was decorated with beer signs, and, on the door, a black-and-white poster that showed a man’s fist holding a revolver, with the words “We Don’t Call 911.”

A twenty-foot-square dance floor sat at one end of the building, with an elevated platform against the wall that might have accommodated a five-piece band. Everything inside was old wood, fake wood, or concrete blocks, including a digital jukebox that was a bit of all three; a Brooks & Dunn song, “Neon Moon,” was burbling out into the dim interior.

The bar was populated by wary locals, most in working clothes—jeans and T-shirts—who were gathered at the dance floor end; by a few reporters, who were jammed into the middle; and by cops and technicians from the Deese crime scene, who dominated the other end. Everybody seemed to be eating deep-fried shrimp or deep-fried catfish or deep-fried potatoes, string beans, or cauliflower buds.

As they walked past the reporters, a photographer lifted a hand-sized camera and took a picture of Lucas. Annoying, but perfectly legal, and the photographer nodded at him. Tremanty led the way to the last booth, the only one that was empty. Lucas got the impression that it was reserved for him, and a waitress hustled over as soon as the four of them slid into it.


THEY ORDERED DRINKS, and when the waitress had gone Tremanty looked at Lucas and asked, “What do you think?”

“I won’t be any help for you at the crime scene. Neither will Bob or Rae, except maybe as tour guides. We need to go after Deese,” Lucas said. “Starting now.”

“How would you do that?” Tremanty asked.

“I’ve had some complicated dealings with the FBI,” Lucas said. “In my experience, the FBI doesn’t always want to know how the sausage gets made.”

“I don’t want to hear about anything overtly criminal, but if it’s arguable I do want to hear about it,” Tremanty said.

The waitress arrived with the drinks—beers for Bob and Rae, a lemonade for Tremanty, and a Diet Coke for Lucas—and they shut up for the minute she was there, and, when she was gone, Lucas said, “I want to interview Roger Smith. I want to ask him where he thinks Deese went.”

“Good luck with that,” Tremanty said. “There’s no way he’ll tell you a thing. If Deese flipped on him, he could be looking at the needle himself.”

“This would not be a formal recorded interview,” Lucas said. “I’ll ask him to take a walk. I might lie to him a little.”

Tremanty gazed at him for a moment, then said, “Huh.” And, a moment later, “Now that the cannibalism thing is out, the pressure is going to get intense.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Lucas said.

Rae was sitting next to Tremanty and pushed an elbow into his arm. “We wouldn’t want to use the word ‘blackmail’ about a Smith interview. That would be wrong.”

“Why would the word even come up?” Tremanty asked.

“We’ve worked with Lucas before,” Rae said.

“Ah. If you did use the word, what would scare him enough that he might cooperate?” Tremanty asked. “He’s got a lot of reasons not to.”

“That might be something that you don’t want to discuss,” Lucas said.

“Let’s try not to wreck my career,” Tremanty said. “But if you were to do this, when would you do it?”

“Tomorrow morning, early. If you have an address for Smith? And a phone number?”

“Oh, yeah. We’ve got all of that. He’s out late every night and sleeps in. Usually starts stirring around about ten o’clock,” Tremanty said. “He has live-in help. A housekeeper, plus a driver who carries a legal gun.”

“You’ve done surveillance on him,” Lucas said.

“Sure. He’s got links to every organized crime outfit in the city. Actually, more disorganized crime than anything else, but you know what I mean. Ratshit gangs trying to peel money off anything they can. A lot of dope goes through here; that’s where the money is. There’s some gambling and so on, but not like it used to be. Smith knows the players, and his law firm does a lot of work for them.”

“Was he a competent lawyer?”

“He was okay, when he was practicing,” Tremanty said. “He doesn’t practice anymore. He has a dozen or so associates to do the trial work. He’s the CEO; he mostly coordinates. He’s the biggest loan shark in town. We’ve heard . . . no, we knowthat he’s got a million or more on the street at any one time. He charges ten percent per week, that’s around five hundred percent per year. It comes back all cash.”

“Ten percent isn’t bad, for a shark,” Lucas said. “New York, Chicago, they get fifteen or twenty percent.”

“That’s why he’s the biggest in town. He’s driven most of the others out of business,” Tremanty said. “He’s smart. Takes a smaller bite that still brings in five mil a year, donates money to widows and orphans at Christmas, only gets mean when he really has to. Like with our boy Howell Paine.”

They talked through a second round of drinks, and when they were done Lucas said, “I’ll roll this out tomorrow. Right now, I need to know where there’s a Walmart.”