Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(12)

“Happy to hear it. But I need to know what Davenport’s doing,” Grant said. “He is intelligent and he is dangerous. When I say dangerous, I mean a killer. You think your superspies can handle that?”

Parrish didn’t like the sarcasm, but he said, “Sure. I’ll need some money.”

“We have a family office in Minneapolis,” Grant said. “There’s a man there named Frank Reese. I will send him a message, telling him to expect you or one of your associates. He will give you whatever amount you need, in cash, but I expect it to be accounted for. I’m not cheap, but I won’t tolerate being chumped.”

“I understand,” Parrish said. “When you say send a message . . .”

“Thoroughly encrypted, to a site that only Reese and I know about,” Grant said.

“Good. I’m impressed,” Parrish said. “Look, if this gets complicated, would it be better to ask Reese for a big chunk all at once or better to go back to him several times?”

“How much do you need?” she asked.

“I don’t know. If every time we go back, it could be tied to a particular . . . event . . . that could be a problem. We may need several events over the next couple of years.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell Reese to give you a half,” she said. “How soon can you look at Davenport?”

“Half of what?”

“Half a million,” she said. “Is that going to cover it?”

Impressed again, though Parrish didn’t say so. “I’ll fly out to Minneapolis this afternoon. I’ll want to handle Reese myself. Keep the loop tight,” Parrish said. “I’ll have somebody on Davenport right away, figure out where he’s staying.”

“He probably doesn’t have a hotel yet. I’ve been told he won’t actually get here until tomorrow or the next day.”

“Where are you getting this information?” Parrish asked.

“I have a friend in the Smalls organization.”

“Huh.” Impressed again. “If Davenport’s flying commercial, we can pick out his flight and spot him at the airport when he gets here.”

“Do that.” She waved him toward the door. “Stay in touch.”

On the way out, Parrish paused, then turned. “You want to know everything, so I have a proposition that you might be interested in. Or, you can kill it.”

“What?”

“If this Davenport guy wasn’t investigating the incident, who would be?”

She thought about it, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe nobody. Davenport has a personal problem with me. He thinks I had something to do with the murders around my election. He wants to get me. Nobody else, that I can think of, has the same incentive, except maybe Smalls himself.”

“Still, he’s a small-town cop, right?”

“Jesus, Parrish, it’s not a small town,” Grant said. “There are three million people in the Twin Cities metro area. Davenport was an agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They’ve got the technical abilities of the FBI.”

“Still . . .”

“Still, bullshit. I know a lot about Davenport. He dropped out of law enforcement for a couple of years, invented a computer software company, and sold out for something between twenty and thirty million dollars, and he’s now worth maybe forty million. He built that company and sold it in two years, starting with nothing. If you underestimate him, he’ll eat you alive.”

“All right, I get it. If we had a guy who wasn’t as smart and didn’t have the incentive, that would be better for us, right? What if Davenport got mugged and hurt? Not killed, but hurt bad enough to take him out of it. Take him out long enough that the Smalls accident is old news. Antique news.”

Grant leaned back in the office chair, pursed her lips. After a while, she said, “That has some appeal. For one thing, I’d like to see him get hurt. He does have a history as a shooter, though. It’d be dangerous.”

“My guys could pull it off. Abort at the last second, if something doesn’t smell right. They’d rob him, so it’d look just like a mugging.”

She considered for another moment, and said, “Let’s take a look at him first. See what he’s up to, whether it’ll go anywhere. Then we can consider taking him down.”

Parrish nodded. “I’ll have somebody look at his hotel room. Tell your man in Minneapolis I’m on my way.”



* * *



—

WHEN PARRISH HAD GONE, Grant closed down the SCIF, found the housekeeper, told her to bring a fried-egg sandwich with ketchup and onions and a glass of Chablis into the breakfast room.

She had homework to do, constituency stuff, boring but necessary. She read through notes from her chief of staff and her issues team, but when the sandwich came, she put the paper aside and ate, peering out into the backyard garden. Three huge oaks, three smaller hard maples, a Japanese maple specimen that would turn flaming red in September, a ginkgo tree, all surrounded by a rose garden.

She thought about Davenport. She’d told Parrish that she was crazy; and she’d heard that Parrish was a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal himself.

In her mind, there were all kinds of crazy, including a couple of kinds that could be useful if they didn’t take you too far out. A touch of OCD helped you focus obsessively, when you needed to do that. A bit of the sociopath was always helpful in business: you took care of yourself because nobody else would.