Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(63)

Lucas looked at the two of them, and said, “Okay. Dead end, then. But I’ll tell you guys, this isn’t the end of it. You tried to kill a U.S. senator, and you murdered two people—”

“No! No! Did not!” Claxson said, slapping his desk. “I absolutely reject any such notion. You say one word about it in public, we will sue everybody in sight. Our livelihood depends on our reputation, and if you begin slandering us with that . . . We did not have anything to do with any of that.”

Lucas said, “We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll tell you that we haven’t made any ‘ridiculous accusations’ against Ritter—those were the words you used. I will tell you that we have substantial evidence that he was involved in the assassination attempt. We believe we know why; we believe we know the others involved. We have a bit of lab evidence we’re waiting to get back and then we’ll be here with an arrest warrant.”

“Fuck you,” Claxson said.



* * *



—

LUCAS, RAE, AND BOB stood up to go. Bob nodded at the pistols on the desk, and asked Claxson, “Are those weapons loaded?”

Claxson snarled at him: “Of course they are. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be weapons, they’d be paperweights.”

They took the elevator down, and Rae said to Lucas, “That was embarrassing. They did everything but kick us in the ass. But you don’t look all that unhappy.”

“I’m not. All we’ve got is evidence against Ritter and he’s not the guy we want,” Lucas said. “We want to go up from there, and now we’ve put a skunk in with the chickens. One way or another, they’ll react. Oh—we need to put a hold on their passports, in case one of them decides to run for it.”

“Your man Forte should be able to handle that,” Bob said.

“We wait for lab results? What do we do while we’re waiting?” Rae asked, as they got out of the elevator. “Play pinochle?”

Lucas said, “Bob’s a camera freak, and you like art, so Bob can go take pictures, and you can go over to the National Gallery and look at art. But keep your phone handy.”

“We did most of that while you were gone,” Rae said. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got a fitting with my tailor,” Lucas said.

Bob and Rae both stopped walking to peer at him, and Rae said, “You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not. We’ve got some downtime, so it seems like a reasonable thing to do,” Lucas said.

Bob: “If one of these assholes kills you, you’ll have a new suit to get buried in.”

“There’s that,” Lucas said.



* * *



—

THEY WENT BACK to the hotel, where Rae took the rented Tahoe and headed for the National Gallery. Bob got his camera but asked Lucas if he could tag along to the tailor shop, and that was fine with Lucas. Parking was rare around the shop, so they took a cab.

At Figueroa & Prince, Lucas was met by Ted, who smiled, reached out to shake hands, and said, “Lucas, happy to see you back. We have a preliminary cut . . . There were some interesting discussions here about how to accommodate the pistol . . .”

Lucas introduced Bob, who took a chair to watch the fitting and, after a few minutes, got up to wander around the shop, checking out the suits on display, the accessory racks, and finally the fabrics themselves. Lucas was trying on the first cut of a wool winter suit when he noticed Bob talking to another one of the salesmen.

When Lucas was finished with his fitting, he found Bob draped in a pale blue crepelike material and looking squint-eyed into a mirror. Ted walked over, and said, “Mmm, I think we can do better.”

“What does that mean?” Bob asked Lucas.

“It means that color makes you look like a fuckin’ boxcar,” Lucas said. “You ought to have them embroider Burlington Northern on your back.”

“I might not have put it quite that way,” Ted said. To Bob: “We should spend a while talking about your goals.”

“My goal is to have a good-fitting suit that I can wear in southern Louisiana, because I’ve never had one of those in my life.”

Ted considered that, and said to the other salesman, “Not one suit—I think two . . .”

They wound up spending three hours in the store, and when they left, Lucas, looking both ways before letting the door close behind him, said, “Well, that was a quick way to blow six grand. I’m proud of you.”

Bob shrugged. “I’ve got a good job, I don’t care about cars, don’t gamble, don’t chase too many women or use drugs . . . I’ve got a few extra bucks, and I’ve never had a suit that fit right, so why not?”

Lucas clapped him on the back. “Like I said, I’m proud of you—I’m serious. You, my friend, are gonna look terrific. You’ll be able to hold your head up, even in New Orleans.”

“I like that part about working around the gun . . . I never knew any of that shit. I’ll tell you, though, I ain’t spending four grand for a pair of wingtips.”

Lucas said, “You’re standing on a slippery slope, Bob. I predict there are wingtips in your future, but not for . . . three years. Once you go over, you’ll never go back.”