The paramedics brought Whitcomb up out of the trees, strapped to the board, and hauled him to the ambulance and raced away toward the hospital. He moved not at all, though he appeared to be semiconscious.

The second cop watched them go, then turned to Lucas and said, "He's fucked. His neck is not right."

Lucas was about to comment when Ranch, who'd been standing, silently, a few feet away, fell over, unconscious. Because his hands were cuffed, he landed directly on his face. Lucas and the cop both flinched and glanced around, listening for a gunshot, then the cop crouched over Ranch and said, "He's breathing."

"Better call another meat wagon," Lucas said. He looked toward the house, where the first cop had taken Briar. He could hear Briar weeping again. "These people are messed up."

Lucas left the St. Paul cops to straighten it all out, called Shrake and was told that nothing was happening at the apartment; and that the armored car companies were being monitored. "They might be gone."

"Maybe," Lucas said. "But they lingered. Why did they linger?"

"What about the SWAT?"

Lucas looked at his watch: "Leave them for a while. I'm coming back, but I've got to talk to Letty first. Something weird is going on."

When he got back to the house, he was determined to stay calm. He did, somewhat to his own surprise, because Letty was apparently as confused about events as he was.

"You arrested her at a motel? What for? How did you know her?" Letty asked. "Did you arrest Randy?"

"I didn't even know she was involved with Randy," Lucas said. "How do you know Randy?"

"I only saw Randy once, when I was in a McDonald's with John and Jeff, the day they picked me up at the Capitol, when you gave me the twenty. I don't know what Randy wanted-I just thought Juliet would make a story."

"But you knew I'd been involved with Randy?"

"Yeah, later. I figured he might be coming after me to get back at you, but he was such a dummy, I decided that he really wasn't much of a threat."

"You were wrong about that," Lucas said. "He was a threat. People like that are always a threat, because they're nuts. But then ' you kept going back, didn't you?"

"Only to Juliet," Letty said. "I didn't mess with Randy. Did Jennifer tell you about the perverted mailman? That whole thing?"

"What perverted mailman?" Lucas asked. He looked at Weather, who was draped over a couch, looking at both of them with great skepticism. "Do you know about a mailman?"

"First I've heard about a perverted mailman," Weather said.

"But what about the motel?" Letty asked. "You arrested a possible assassin who Juliet was supposed to ' you know?"

"Let's go back to the mailman," Lucas said.

When they worked through it all, none of it seemed to make too much sense. Lucas finally said, "All right, this is all done, okay? Randy's hurt, and it's pretty bad-he's broken his neck, maybe. But you're all done with Randy and Juliet and I want a no-shit promise from you. I'm not pressuring you, I'm asking you: on our relationship, I'm asking you."

Letty stuck out a fist for a bump: "If I ever have one more thing to do with either of them, no matter how small, I'll tell you first," she said. She meant it this time: the Randy problem was gone.

They bumped fists and were done with it.

"Now," Lucas said, "if we could only find that fuckin' Cohn."

"You gotta watch your language a little more," Weather said to Lucas.

"Maybe they're holding up the Republican Party," Letty said.

"You can't hold up a party," Lucas said. "You gotta hold up a thing. There's gotta be one place, there's gotta be some money moving, we're watching all the armored car warehouses, they're all scrambling their routes ' I can't get it."

"Sleep on it," Weather said.

By the time they were all done, it was after midnight.

Weather and Letty went to bed, and Lucas checked again with Shrake, who said that nothing had changed. "I'm going to bag out on my couch for a while," Lucas said. "Maybe you and Jenkins should trade off. We need somebody there to keep an eye on the place until we're sure they're gone; but there's no point in both of you being there."

"What time will you be back?"

Lucas looked at his watch: "I'll set my alarm for three, see you about three-thirty. If you want to send Jenkins home, tell him to come back around seven to relieve me."

"Sounds like a deal," Shrake said. "What about the SWAT?"

"When were they due to quit?"

"Anytime."

"Ah… tell them to hang on until three o'clock. It's all overtime, anyway. But if it ain't happened by three, it probably won't-nobody working after that."

"See you at three-thirty," Shrake said.

Lucas got a pillow and an alarm clock from the bedroom- Weather was cutting in the morning, as she was most mornings, and he didn't want to disturb her in the middle of the night-kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the couch.

As he dozed off, he wondered what he had heard that night, pinging in the back of his head, that worried him so much.

They'd been stuck in the van so long that they were all a little groggy. Toward the end of the wait, Cohn looked at his watch every three minutes and finally said, "Fuck it: let's do it."

Cruz: "Twenty minutes yet. It's all right to be late, but it's not all right to be early."

"I'm going nuts in here," Cohn said.

"Then let's go for a walk," Cruz said. "There's nobody around right now, we can get out of here, down the stairs, take a hike around the block. And we'll feel better."

Lane said, "I could use a walk. I'm tired and I'm scared."

They piled out of the van, walked down the stairs. A nurse was just crossing the street from the hospital and she nodded at them and went into the parking structure. Lane said, "This way," and they followed him down the street, away from the lights of downtown. Around the corner, it was even darker, but they weren't worried, since they were the ones who were supposed to be lurking in the dark '

They turned another corner and suddenly there were lights on the street, and, in the distance, people-not many, but a few, outside the Xcel Center where John McCain had been nominated for the presidency.

"Still a little traffic," Lane said.

"This is why I had Shafer ready to go," Cruz said. "I was going to call the cops, tell them I'd seen him on a roof. Like he was hiding out in one of these old buildings, waiting for McCain to come in. Every cop in town would have been over here."

"Woulda worked," Cohn said. He windmilled his arms for a few steps, looked at his watch again. "Why'd you pick three-fifteen?"

"Because most of the overnight hotel employees get off at three," Cruz said. "There'll be a short-order cook and a busboy in the kitchen, but they stay down there-it's in the basement-because they're cleaning up. The rest of the people ' You figure most people who get off at three might linger a few minutes, but not long. There's nothing to do. So, give them fifteen or twenty minutes to clear out. Then the day cooks and the rest of the kitchen staff start coming in at five o'clock. They never come in early-they're getting up on alarm clocks. Add it all up and the best time to get in will be around three-fifteen or three-thirty. That'll give us an hour without interference."