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camera.
    “Wonderful. Glad to hear it,” Lucas said.
    “You ought to chain-whip him,” Lori said.
    Ben Lincoln at Ben’s Darts & Cues told him that two Harley clubs, the Asia Vets and the Leather Fags, were planning a paint-ball war on a farm south of Shakopee, and it could get rough; some of the Leather Fags were reportedly replacing the paint balls with ball bearings. Larry Hammett at Trax Freight said that somebody had dumped a ton of speed on local over-the-road drivers: “Half the guys on the road are flying; I won’t let my daughter take the car out of the fuckin’ driveway.”
    Lannie Harrison at Tulip’s Hose Couplings and Fittings told him a joke: “Guy walks into a bar and orders a scotch-and-soda. The bartender brings it over, puts it on the bar, and walks away. Just as the guy is reaching for the drink, this little teeny monkey runs out from under the bar, lifts up his dick, dips his balls into the scotch-and-soda, then runs back under the bar. The guy is astounded. He calls the bartender over and says, ‘Hey. This little monkey just ran out from under the bar . . .’ And the bartender says, ‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Let me get you another drink.’ So he brings over a fresh scotch-and-soda and walks away with the old one. Just as the guy is reaching for the fresh drink, this little monkey runs out from under the bar . . .”
    “Lifts up his dick and dunks his balls in the scotch-and-soda,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah? You heard this?”
    “No, but I’m familiar with the form,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. So the guy calls the bartender back and said, ‘The little monkey . . .’ And the bartender says, ‘Listen, pal, you gotta watch your drink. I’ll give you one more fresh one.’ And the guy says, ‘Well, what’s the story about the goddamn monkey?’ The bartender says, ‘I only worked here a couple of weeks. But you see that piano player over there?’ He points to a guy at a piano and says, ‘He’s worked here for twenty years. He can probably tell you about it.’ So the guy gets his new drink and goes over to the piano player and says, ‘You know that little teeny monkey that runs out from under the bar and lifts up his dick and dips his balls in your scotch-and-soda?’
    “The piano player says, ‘No, but if you hum a couple of bars, I can probably fake it.’ ”
     
    A T A S OUTHSIDE sweatshop, where illegal Latinos embroidered nylon athletic jackets with team insignias, Jan Murphy told him that a noted University of Minnesota athlete had gotten a job at a package-delivery service. Unlike the other messengers, who drove small white Fords, the athlete’s company car was a Porsche C4.
    “A kid’s gotta have wheels, this day and age. And who knows, maybe he only handles special deliveries, really important stuff,” Lucas said.
    “Oh, that’s right,” Murphy said, pointing a pistol finger at him, “Mr. Four-Year Letterman, right? Hockey? I’d forgotten.”
    At The Diamond Collective, Sandy Hu told him that nothing looked better with a little black dress than a black pearl necklace and matched tear-shaped black pearl earrings, on which she could give him a special police discount, four payments of only $3,499.99 each.
    “Why didn’t you just make it four payments of $3,500?”
    “ ’Cause my way, it keeps the price under the magic $14,000 barrier.”
    “Ah. Well, who would I give it to?” Lucas asked.
    Hu shrugged. “I don’t know. But you see a hickey like the one on your neck, you try to sell the guy something expensive.”
    She hadn’t heard anything new about anybody; she had heard the monkey balls joke.
    Svege Tanner at Strength and Beauty said that over the weekend, somebody took twenty-five thousand dollars in cash from an apartment rented by an outstate legislator named Alex Truant. “The word is, Truant has a girlfriend here in the cities and they’d been dropping some big money at the casinos. With one thing or another, he was like way-deep over