F
rom Ames to Atlantic was a two-hour drive—a skim across the north side of the Des Moines metro area, then west on I-80, cutting the edges of a succession of small towns, with more endless acres of dark green corn and beans sprawling across the rolling prairie. Lucas stopped once, to buy gas and fill the cooler with Diet Cokes. He was at the gas station, scraping bugs off the windshield, when Mitford called.
“You’re good to talk to Norm Clay this afternoon. Best to do it in Burlington, because after that you’d have to chase them up to Davenport. You don’t want to get stuck on that boat ride.” He gave Lucas a phone number and said, “Good luck.”
—
ATLANTIC WAS
ten or twelve minutes south of I-80, a neatly kept town of a few thousand people, Lucas supposed, a service satellite for the surrounding farm country. He did a quick run through the business district to get a sense of the place—it looked like a lot of small towns in the Midwestern countryside, harkening back to the
late nineteenth to middle twentieth century, brick, concrete block, low and sprawling—and then punched Leonard’s address into his nav system. The nav took him to a trailer park east of the business district. Leonard lived in a dilapidated beige single-wide, with a dusty Jeep Patriot sitting in front of the stoop.
Lucas got out of the Benz, looked around, saw no one, climbed the stoop, heard a television playing, and knocked on the screen door. A moment later a heavyset, sleepy-eyed woman in a quilted housecoat opened the inside door, looked at him through the screen, and asked, “You the police?”
“No. Should I be?” The odor of toast and eggs filtered through the screen, and reminded Lucas that he was hungry.
She said, “I dunno. If you’re the police, you gotta say so.”
“I’m not the police. I work for Governor Henderson. I want to talk politics with Mr. Leonard. You know, the Prairie Storm thing,” Lucas said.
She blinked, then looked past him at the Benz. “I guess you’re not the cops, unless the cops inherited a lot of money. Not much going on with Prairie Storm, not anymore. Anyway, Dave’s not here. He’s usually down at Winn’s this time of day.”
“What’s Winn’s?” Lucas asked.
“Bar. Roadhouse out 83, ’bout a mile past the Mormon church.”
—
LUCAS THANKED HER,
prompted her for better directions to the bar—“Go straight out to 83 and hook a left, it’s three or four miles out there, look for the eyesore.”
He checked the car clock: not yet eleven in the morning. Five
minutes later, he was looking at Winn’s, a low rambling place that was a few asbestos shingles short of a full set of siding, that might once have been a motel, and maybe still rented out a few rooms. A yellow plastic roller-sign in the gravel parking lot said “Happy Hour, 4–6” and in smaller letters, “Free First D ink For Ladies.”
A dive, Lucas thought. Not a dive-themed bar, but the real thing, and as the woman had said, a genuine eyesore. He took a moment to hope that “D ink” was simply “Drink” with a missing letter.
He got out of the truck and went inside.
—
THE PLACE WAS DARK
and smelled like spilled beer and microwaved cheese and beans and was smaller than it had seemed from the outside. A bartender was watching a rerun of a Cubs game on a TV hung in a corner, next to a stuffed deer head, and a dozen guys were scattered around the interior in booths, one, two, and three at a booth. A few were drinking coffee and eating microwave tacos, the rest were looking at beers. A coin-op pool table sat at the back, but nobody was playing. The customers all wore work clothes, T-shirts and jeans and boots and baseball caps. The bartender took in Lucas’s suit as he walked up to the bar and asked, “You lost?”
“Not if this is Winn’s,” Lucas said.
“Then you’re not lost,” the bartender said. “What can I do you for?”
“I was told that Dave Leonard might be here,” Lucas said.
“Why you looking for Dave?”
“I’m doing some campaign research for Governor Henderson and I was hoping Mr. Leonard could help me out,” Lucas said.
A man in a booth said, “I’m Dave Leonard.”
—
LEONARD WAS A THICK,
dark-haired man, Lucas’s height but heavier, both in the arms and the gut. He was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and yellow work boots. The scars around his pale, suspicious eyes and a withered nose made him into a brawler.
He was sitting in a booth across from two other men, one tall and thin in matching gray work shirt and pants, with a clump of brown hair on top of his head, while the sides were shaved bare; and the other shorter and fat, wearing an orange sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves that said, on the chest, “Party Patrol.” A mostly empty pitcher of beer sat in the middle of the table.
“Who told you I was here?” Leonard asked. He slurred some of the words, and Lucas realized he’d been drinking for a while.
“Guy in town,” Lucas said. None of the men had gray eyes. “I’d like to talk to you privately, if I could.”
“About what?”
“Prairie Storm . . . and some people who might belong to it,” Lucas said.
“You smell like a cop,” Leonard said. “Not a campaign aide.”
“Used to be a cop, but I quit,” Lucas said. “You got a minute?”
Leonard looked at the other two men, then said, “These guys are my friends. We can talk right here.”
“Okay.” Lucas dragged a chair over from a nearby table, sat
down at the end of the booth, and looked at Leonard. “Governor Henderson has gotten letters from anonymous people down here in Iowa that seem to threaten Mrs. Bowden. We’re taking them seriously. We’re looking for an older woman and a younger guy, who might be a family, mother and son. The only thing I can tell you is that the son has pretty distinctive gray eyes. I have a photo . . .”
Lucas began fishing his cell phone out of his pocket, but Leonard broke in to say, “You’re not a cop anymore, but you’re doing cop work. Investigating.”
“Well, I’m checking on these people, to see if they’re serious and we need to be worried, or if they’re bullshitters and we don’t need to worry,” Lucas said.
“What does that have to do with me?” Leonard asked.
“The letters use certain kinds of language and talk about certain kinds of political positions that are like the ones in Prairie Storm literature. We’re not suggesting that you have anything to do with it, but we thought you might know these people,” Lucas said. He scanned the few pictures he had saved in his cell phone, found the one taken by Alice Green, and turned it to Leonard. “This is one of the guys . . . not too good a picture.”
Leonard glanced at it, for no more than a fraction of a second, and said, “Never seen him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Lucas peered at him for a moment, then said, “Look, you’ve got to take this seriously, man. If anything were to happen to one of
the candidates and it turned out the shooter was a member of Prairie Storm . . . you could find yourself in big trouble, even if you had nothing to do with it.”
“That sounds like a threat,” Leonard drawled.
“Not a threat, it’s the reality of a bad situation,” Lucas said.
“We don’t much take to threats,” Leonard said.
He’d included his two friends with the “We,” but neither the thin man nor the fat man looked like they were much interested in a fight.
“Look, I don’t want a hassle, I’m just trying to track down these two—”
“For what? For saying what they think?” Leonard asked.
“I don’t care what they
think
, but I’d like to find out what they mean when they talk about, you know, ‘What if something
happened
to Mrs. Bowden.’ If it’s nothing but thinking and talking, they’re welcome to it.”
“Yeah, you’re shuttin’ them up, is what you’re doing. Shuttin’ them up, that’s what you’re all about.”
Lucas pushed away from the table. “All right, you don’t want to talk. You don’t have to. You may regret it later.”
“Tell you what,” Leonard said. “What if I kicked your ass? Cops have given me years and years of shit and you’re an ex-cop, so I kick your ass, it makes me feel good, and nothing you can do about it, ’cause you’re an ex.”
“Nothing I can do except fight back,” Lucas said. “I promise you, you don’t want that.”
“You that tough?” Leonard started to slide out of the booth.
“I’m tough and you’re drunk,” Lucas said. He shoved the chair over to block Leonard’s way out of the booth. “And I’m working with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. You take a swing at me, they’ll be around to talk to you.”
“If they can find me,” Leonard said. He tried to kick the chair aside.
“Oh, they’ll find you,” Lucas said. “Not that hard to find the local hospital, which is where you’ll be.”
Leonard smiled at that, took it as regular prefight posturing, kicked at the chair again. Lucas pushed it back and said, “I don’t want to fight you, Dave. I’m going now. But—you think about what I said. If you change your mind about any of it, you send an e-mail to Governor Henderson’s campaign—”
“Fuck you. I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Leonard tried to clamber over the chair as Lucas stepped away and turned toward the door. The chair tipped and Leonard fell down, tangled up in the chair legs. Somebody in the bar laughed, the laughter suddenly cut off as Leonard got back to his feet and looked around. The bartender called, “You boys take it outside.”
Leonard was coming for him, Lucas realized, and he said to the bartender, “You want to call the sheriff? This guy’s about to assault me in your place.”
“Not my problem,” the bartender said.
“Will be when I file a lawsuit against you,” Lucas said.
Leonard said, “Fuck a lawsuit . . .”
The bartender had a sudden change of heart: “Dave, don’t do it, goddamnit. I’m calling the sheriff . . .”
“Yeah, and fuck you, Jim,” Leonard said.
Lucas was backing toward the door when Leonard rushed him, fists held high. Lucas let him come. The common belief among brawlers was that you didn’t let anyone come down on you from the top, which was why they held their fists high. But real boxers didn’t.
Lucas was two feet from the door when Leonard got to him. Lucas did a very quick side step and moved slightly forward, when Leonard was expecting him to go back. That took Leonard’s left fist out of the fight, and Lucas blocked Leonard’s awkward right-hand punch with his own right, and hooked a hard left into Leonard’s rib cage, leading with his knuckles, and felt Leonard shudder from the blow and simultaneously make a dog-like
yip
.
The other two men had gotten out of Leonard’s booth, and Lucas backed toward them and said, “Stay out of it or I’ll break your legs,” and they stayed out of it while Leonard, his face red as a ripe apple, came after him again. Lucas sidestepped again, this time to his right, partially blocked Leonard’s left arm with his own left, took a skimming shot to his left cheekbone, and hooked a hard right into the other side of Leonard’s rib cage. Leonard yipped again, took several steps backward, crashed into a table, then dropped into a chair.
“Busted my ribs,” he groaned. He bent over, head on his knees, holding his sides with his hands.
“Tough shit.” Lucas touched his cheekbone, came away with spots of blood on his fingertips. The bartender said, “I called the deputies,” and Lucas nodded and walked around behind the bar and checked his face in the mirror. He’d have a bad bruise where
he’d been hit, and Leonard’s knuckles had scraped a couple of shallow cuts across the bone.
Lucas walked back around the bar and said to the bartender, “Gimme a Coke,” and to Leonard, “You sit right there until the cops get here.”
“I need to get to a doctor,” Leonard moaned.
“You get out of that chair, you’ll need two doctors,” Lucas said.
—
LUCAS SAT ON A STOOL
and drank the Coke while Leonard groaned every time he took a breath. Five minutes later, a deputy walked in, looked around, and asked, “What happened?”
“He beat me up,” Leonard said, jabbing a finger at Lucas.
The deputy turned to Lucas and Lucas said, “I’m a former Minnesota cop working for Elmer Henderson’s presidential campaign. We’ve gotten some threatening letters . . .”
He told the story and another deputy arrived, and the first one looked at Leonard and asked, “You have anything to do with those letters, Dave?”
“Don’t know anything about any fuckin’ letters,” Leonard said. He had his arms pressing his ribs together, his fingers linked over his stomach.
“Then why’d you jump me?” Lucas asked. “There was no reason for a fight, unless you were trying to intimidate me, trying to keep me from asking questions.”
“’Cause I don’t fuckin’ like cops, that’s why. I don’t like guys in suits, either.”
“That’s all true,” said the second deputy. He’d heard what sounded like a confession and asked Lucas, “What do you want to do about this? Looks like you took a hit, you’re bleeding.”
“Up to you,” Lucas said. “You want me to file a complaint, I will, but I’m okay with calling it even, if Mr. Leonard will give me one honest answer.”
The first deputy asked Leonard, “What do you think, Dave?”
“What’s the question?” Leonard asked.
“Did you know the man in the photo I showed you? Do you know a middle-aged lady with a son who has distinctive gray eyes?”
“No. That’s nobody in Prairie Storm,” Leonard said. “I know them all, them’s that’s left.”
—
LEONARD’S FRIENDS
said they’d take him to the hospital to get his ribs checked, and on the way out, Leonard said to Lucas, “I’d kick your ass if I wasn’t drunk.”
Lucas said, “Of course you would.”
The deputies hung around while Leonard was helped out to a friend’s pickup, and then as Lucas got the first aid kit out of his truck and smeared some Neosporin on his facial cuts.
“What do you think about Leonard?” Lucas asked them, as he peered at his cheek in the truck’s wing mirror. “You think this Prairie Storm’s got people we should look at?”
“Hell, as far as I know, there’re only about three members left and not one of them could organize a decent goat fuck,” said the older of the two deputies.