Trane said, “I don’t care if she’s pissed off. I won’t risk losing her.”

Hardy: “You bust her on prostitution, we make bail, we don’t cooperate. With anything.”

Trane: “Then we will add a few charges, and some of those might take her down to Shakopee.”

Cohen: “What’s Shakopee?”

Virgil: “The women’s prison. It’s not nearly as unpleasant as you might think.”

Cohen, wailing: “Larry . . .”

Hardy to Trane: “Okay, be a hard-ass. Ten o’clock tomorrow.”

Trane to Cohen: “On your feet.”

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

   Virgil should have woken the next morning with a feeling of accomplishment and well-being, but he didn’t. Instead, he thought of Cohen sitting in jail overnight and the extortion that Trane was about to drop on her. All of it was part of a game that both sides played: we bust you for prostitution, but we’re willing to let it go if you cooperate on something else.

He’d done it himself, but arrests for prostitution, where the woman was selling her services rather than having a pimp selling them for her and taking the big cut, had always seemed pointless. They weren’t going to stop it. From a cop’s perspective, the biggest problem with prostitution was the spin-off to other crime—drugs, blackmail, assault. And if a pimp were involved, sometimes the violence used to keep the women in line.

In a way it was like weed, he thought while he shaved. Weed was everywhere, and arresting people on charges that would be dropped or result in no jail time, even with a guilty plea, were pointless and a waste of police time and a lot of money.

A lot of money. On the other hand, weed was implicated in touching off schizophrenia in teenagers. One look at the weed-smoking, mental homeless problem would suggest exactly how not good it was.

He patted some bay rum aftershave on his face, smiled at himself, dragged his fingers through his hair, and went to get dressed. He selected a Larkin Poe shirt he’d been wearing a lot and that had developed a nice vintage look to it from being hung in the sun on an actual clothesline.

Cohen would be a dead end, he thought while pulling on his boots. She hadn’t said much the night before, but she had said that she’d never seen the person who attacked Quill. The best that could be hoped for was that she’d solidly pinpoint the time of death, which might affect some alibis.

Trane would take care of all of that.

The question was, what would he take care of? He hadn’t been able to find doctors involved in a conspiracy with Quill or even find anybody who believed that the cabal existed. Nobody believed in China White, though Quill’s desk had held a squib of cocaine. The theft of the maps didn’t relate to Quill.

Something was going on with the attack on Foster. He would think about that, but Foster wasn’t any help. And there didn’t seem to be any useful witnesses or entryways into the case. The St. Paul cops had come up dry.

There was also the matter of a malpractice suit against Quill and other doctors on Quill’s team. After giving it some thought, he decided to check the lawsuit.

He called Trane to tell her that. “Listen, about that cocaine in Quill’s desk: push Cohen on that, find out if she ever went to Quill’s house. Maybe she’s China White.”

“I’ll do that,” Trane said. “I can only give it a couple of hours. I’m supposed to be at the courtroom at noon. I’m the first witness after the lunch break, and they want to do some last-minute prep before I go on.”

“Good luck,” Virgil said.

* * *

—

Trane had mentioned that she’d gotten a copy of the malpractice lawsuit from the attorneys who were on a retainer with the university. He checked his notes, got an address in downtown St. Paul, made a call, was told they’d make a copy of the document for him, and he drove over. The offices of John Brennan, LLC, were in a remodeled firehouse, and they had done a good job, Virgil thought, as he stepped through the palm forest on the first floor. A plaque on the wall listed seven attorneys as partners of the firm, and eight more associates, in addition to Brennan himself—a bigger organization than Virgil had expected.

A receptionist gave him a copy of the lawsuit in a yellow legal envelope, and said, “Mr. Brennan would like to speak to you for a moment.”

“Sure. How soon? I could run across the street and get a Diet Coke if he’s busy right now.”

“He should be only a minute,” the receptionist said. She made a call, and said, “Follow me.”

Brennan’s office was on the second floor. Virgil stepped out of the elevator into what would probably have been the firefighters’ sleeping quarters when the house was active, with polished pine plank floors and exposed pine beams bigger around than Virgil’s torso. Brennan used a rosewood table rather than a desk and had a row of matching rosewood file cabinets behind the table to hold whatever papers needed to be held. An oversized picture on a side wall showed a man in a University of Minnesota football uniform cradling a football to his gut and pretending to stiff-arm the photographer who took the picture.

“That was me in younger days,” Brennan said.

Brennan stood behind the table, fussing with papers. He was a large man, with white hair, a fleshy nose and fleshy ears, and querulous green eyes that matched the green of his necktie. A white shirt and gray suit completed his ensemble. His face was finely hatched with burst capillaries, which could be a sign of too much golf, too much drink, or both.

As Virgil walked away from the elevator, Brennan came out from behind the table to shake hands, and asked, “Is Sergeant Trane still working this case?”

“Yes, but she’s in court today,” Virgil said. Brennan pointed at a chair, and Virgil took it. The receptionist came back unasked with a can of frosty-cold Diet Coke, a glass full of ice, and a napkin to protect the desk. Virgil thanked her, said, “I don’t need the glass,” and she took it and went away.

When she’d closed the door, Brennan said, “Sergeant Trane had concluded that our case didn’t have much to do with the murder of Barth Quill.”

“She’s probably right,” Virgil said. “I’m running out of leads and thought I should take a look. We’ve had a couple of minor breaks in the past couple of days, and maybe something in the suit will, mmm, mesh with those.”

“I see . . . You haven’t read the actual suit, though?”

“No, I read Margaret’s summary of it. A short summary.”

“All right. Let me give you a little more. It’s basically a nuisance suit, and if we settle—and we just might—the biggest benefactor is going to be a sleazy fellow member of the bar named Robin Jones. He’s an associate with the Larry Hardy firm over in Minneapolis. You know, ‘Call Me Lare,’ the billboards?”