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Nobody listens anyway,” Lucas said, discouraged. “The planners believe we can count on the goodwill of the people; like the vandals are just another caucus. Fuckin’ morons.”
    “The people? Or the planners?”
    “The planners.”
    “Anyway . . .” The governor didn’t pay any more attention than anyone else, and his eyes strayed back to the stack of newspapers.
    “Anyway,” Lucas said, leaning forward, “this is something different. Do you know Alyssa Austin, Hunter Austin’s wife? Or widow, I guess?”
    “Yes.” The governor straightened around, picked a pair of black loafers off the floor, and slipped his feet into them, wiggling his toes. “I read about her kid. That’s awful. She’s dead, right?”
    “Ninety-nine percent,” Lucas said. “We cover Sunfish Lake on homicides, and we’ve got a new guy looking into it. He isn’t getting much. I’d like to be able to tell people that the governor asked me to poke around, as a personal favor, and that I had no choice but to say yes.”
    “So you won’t piss off the new guy. Or Rose Marie,” the governor said. The runt of the litter, but no dummy.
    “That’s right,” Lucas said.
    “Go ahead; I’ll cover for you,” the governor said. “I’ll be raising money there this summer, in Sunfish. Probably know half the people in town. So if you could settle it before then, that’d be good.”
    “Not a problem,” Lucas said.
    “Let them know that you’re out there at my suggestion,” the governor added. “Especially if you catch the killers.”
    Lucas nodded. “Ferragamo,” he said, and stood up. The audience was over.
    “Yup. You want a fashion tip?” The governor picked up another paper and checked the front page before turning back to the classifieds.
    “I always listen to fashion tips,” Lucas said. That was true; he did. He didn’t always follow them, but the governor had excellent taste.
    “You always want your socks and your pajamas to be slightly gay,” the governor said. “Not too gay, but slightly.”
    Lucas thought about it for a second, and said, “You’re right. I knew that, but I never explicitly formulated it.”
    “Of course I’m right.” The governor glanced at his solid-gold Patek Philippe. “Get out of here.”
    Back at his office, Lucas left a message with Rose Marie’s secretary about the governor’s request, made it clear that the message wasn’t too important, then found Jim Benson sitting in his cubicle, fingers knitted behind his head, looking at a whiteboard with a lot of names and arrows. Lucas knocked on the door frame and Benson swiveled, said, “Hey, Lucas, what’s up?”
    “The governor called me in this morning, man. He raises a lot of money over in Sunfish Lake, and he’s asked me to take a personal look at the Austin case.”
    Benson sat up: “I thought I had the bases pretty well covered.”
    Lucas said, “You probably do, but old lady Austin and the governor are pals, and she’s one of his big backers. . . . Nothing personal, man.”
    “I hate that kind of goddamn politics,” Benson said. “Favoritism for the rich, that’s what it is.”
    “Shhh,” Lucas said. “For Christ’s sakes, you don’t know who can hear you.”
    Getting the files out of Benson was like pulling a tooth; nasty. But Lucas got them, for a couple of hours, anyway. Told Benson he’d just skim the paper, talk to a few people, kick over a couple of rocks so when the governor asked . . .
    He’d already read the preliminary reports. Now he spent an hour looking at the paper, then gave the file to his secretary and told her to xerox it and return it to Benson, as quickly as possible. “It’d be nice if he thought I just glanced at it. Don’t mention that you made a copy.”
    “Ah, screwin’ the new guy, huh?” Carol said.
    By early afternoon, the storm had cleared. Splashing through the leftover puddles, Lucas took the Porsche off Robert Street south of St. Paul, and poked into the bare winter forest that