"Yeah."

Lucas pulled a folded pad of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, sorted through the composites, and found the one of Mail with dark hair.

"Is this the dude?" Lucas turned the flashlight on the paper.

Ricky was slipping away again, but the light brought him back and he focused on the paper. "Yeah. That's the dude."

"Where is he?"

"He was gonna wait in the parking ramp." He flopped an arm out. The ramp was out of sight, on the far side of the building. Lucas got back on the radio. "Janet, goddamnit, this is the real thing, he's here, somewhere. Keep them coming."

"They oughta be there, Lucas. They're already out on the perimeter with the dogs."

And then Lucas heard the sirens: fifteen or twenty of them, coming from every direction. More would be arriving later. The patrol people had decided to use the sirens in an effort to pin Mail down, to frighten him. "Tell them to look in the information packets they got tonight, and look at composite C as in Cat. That's our guy."

"C as in Cat."

Lucas bent over Ricky again. "The guy's name is John Mail, right?"

"Oh, man, my fuckin' leg."

"John Mail?"

"Yeah, man. John. I see him around. You know. I see him around and I say, 'Hey, John.' And he says 'Hey, Ricky.' And that's all. Said there was some toot over here. He seen it. My fuckin' leg, man, you got something? You got any, like, Percodan?"

"You know where he lives?"

"Oh, man, I don't even know the dude, you know, I used to see him when we were inside, he'd just be, 'Hi, Ricky.' That's all." Ricky groaned. "How about the Percodan, man?"

"Sent in a decoy, to see what we'd do," Lucas said to Sloan. Then: "You stay here. They're gonna want a statement and your gun."

To Haywood: "C'mon. You got those glasses?"

"Yeah."

And to Sloan, "You okay?"

Sloan swallowed and nodded. "First time," he said. "I don't think I like it."

"Just get him in the ambulance and don't worry about it." Lucas grinned at him and slapped him on the back. "I can't believe you shot low, you dumb shit," he said. "If you'd missed him, he'd of sunk that rerod about six inches into your skull."

"Yeah, yeah." Sloan swallowed. "Actually, I was aiming at the middle of his chest."

Lucas grinned and said, "I know how that goes. C'mon, Hay."

Lucas and Haywood ran around to the front of the building, Lucas glancing back once. Sloan was standing over Ricky, and Lucas thought he might be apologizing. He'd have to watch his friend: Sloan seemed unbalanced by the shooting. And that was in character, Lucas thought. Sloan liked the relationships that came out with cop work, the tussle. He even enjoyed an occasional fight. But he never really wanted to hurt anybody.

Then Lucas turned back toward the parking ramp and he and Haywood ran up the sidewalk together, weapons out. Far up University, they could see the roadblocks going in, and everywhere, in every direction, the red flashing lights.

"Looks like a fuckin' light-rack convention," Haywood panted,

Lucas heard him but had no time to answer: they'd rounded the office building on University and were coming up on the ramp. Lucas said, "Let's go up. Ready?"

"Outa fuckin' shape," Haywood said. "Let's go."

Lucas took the first set of steps: there were a half-dozen cars parked in the first floor, and they checked them quickly. Then up the next set of steps, and Lucas, looking over the low, concrete deck wall, saw taillights flicker to the north, headed toward the railroad tracks.

"Did you see that?"

"What?"

The lights flickered again. "There."

"Yeah. Somebody crawling along in the dark, no headlights," Haywood said.

"Sonofabitch, that's him." Lucas put the radio to his face: "I need a car at the… what the fuck is the name of this building? I need a car by the Hansen dairy place, first road west of the Hansen dairy trucks. We've got the suspect in sight, going down toward the elevators."

Haywood was already running across the slab and down the stairs, Lucas a few steps behind. The blacked-out vehicle was almost two blocks away, and once they were on the ground, they could no longer see it. They were running awkwardly over the uneven ground toward the grain elevator when one set of headlights caught them in the back, then another. They turned and saw two squads coming down toward them; Lucas waved them on and kept running.

When the cars caught up, Lucas pointed up ahead. "He was going under the elevator."

The driver in the lead car was a sergeant. "No way out of there," he grunted, "That's all dead end back there."

"Could he just bump it across the tracks?"

The cop shrugged. "Maybe. But we'd see him. He might be able to snake his way out alongside of them." He picked up his radio and said, "We need a car on the 280 overpass across the tracks. Put some light down onto the tracks. Where's the chopper?"

"Chopper's just leaving the airport, he'll be five minutes. We're confirming the car on the tracks."

"Get some K9 down here," Lucas said.

The sergeant said, "We called them; they're on the way." And the car pulled ahead of them, the second car close behind him. The sergeant spoke into the radio: "We need some guys north of the tracks."

"Gonna be dark in there," Haywood grunted as they jogged up toward the elevators.

"But once we got him, even if we only get his van, we get the VIN even if he's pulled the plates… then we get a name and an address."

"You're counting your chickens," Haywood said.

"First goddamn chicken we've had to count, and I'm counting the sonofabitch," Lucas said.

The cop slipped down the side of the building, his right hand cocked away from his body.

Carrying a gun, Mail thought. The night air was thick, cool, and moist, and the night seemed particularly dark; he couldn't see that well, but the cop was too small to be Davenport.

Still, it had been a trap, a rudimentary one. Mail smiled and turned to go, then slowed, turned back, lingered. Davenport's building was a block away and he felt remote from it, as though he were watching a movie. The movie was just getting good.

He'd found Ricky on a Hennepin Avenue street corner, half-drunk, his face sullen, his hair stuck together like cotton candy. He'd whispered cocaine, and just a bunch of computer pussies in there, and Ricky'd started slavering. He couldn't wait to get started.

Ricky needed drugs to function; without cocaine, speed, acid, grass, peyote, alcohol, even two or three of them at a time, the world was not right. He'd spent years on the inside and barely remembered a time where he didn't have a drug flowing through his veins-and what he remembered about that drugless state, he didn't like. He needed more dentists, he thought, people who'd say, "Here-I'll numb that up for you."

Even inside, with very strange people around-people who spoke to God, and got personal letters back-Ricky had been considered mad as a hatter.

But he could function in society, the shrinks said, so they had let him out and seemed proud of themselves when they did it. Now Ricky ate from trashcans and shit in doorways and carried a piece-of-crap revolver in his waistband. He gobbled up any pill he could beg, buy, or steal.

Now Ricky was out of sight, trying the windows on the far side of the building. The cop was running along the back of the building, to the side where Ricky was; he looked like an inmate in a prison movie, caught in a spotlight as he ran along a wall. The cop stopped at the corner, did a quick peek, pulled his head back, peeked again, ran out from the building, pointing his gun, and the shouting began, the words indistinguishable in the distance.