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was for Homicide cops. Lucas was Intelligence. He ran networks of street people, waitresses, bartenders, barbers, gamblers, hookers, pimps, bookies, dealers in cars and cocaine, mail carriers, a couple of burglars. The crooks were small-timers, but they had eyes and memories. Lucas was always ready with adollar or a threat, whatever was needed to make a snitch feel wanted.
    He had nothing to do with it, but after Yellow Hand produced the name, Lucas hung around to watch the cop machine work. Sometimes it was purely a pleasure. Like now: when the Homicide cop called downtown, several things happened at once.
    A check with the identification division confirmed Yellow Hand’s basic information and got a photograph of Tony Bluebird started out to the Indian Center.
    At the same time, the Minneapolis Emergency Response Unit began staging in a liquor store parking lot a mile from Bluebird’s suspected residence.
    While the ERU got together, a further check with utility companies suggested that Bluebird lived in the house where Yellow Hand had put him. Forty minutes after Yellow Hand spoke Bluebird’s name, a tall black man in an army fatigue jacket and blue jeans ambled down the street past Bluebird’s to the house next door, went up on the porch, knocked, flashed his badge and asked himself inside. The residents didn’t know any Bluebird, but people came and went, didn’t they?
    Another detective, a white guy who looked as if he’d been whipped through hell with a soot bag, stopped at the house before Bluebird’s and went through the same routine.
    “Yeah, Tony Bluebird, that’s the guy’s name, all right,” said the elderly man who met him at the door. “What’s he done?”
    “We’re not sure he did anything,” said the detective. “Have you seen this guy lately? I mean, today?”
    “Hell, yes. Not a half an hour ago, he came up the walk and went inside.” The old man nervously gummed his lower lip. “Still in there, I guess.”
    The white detective called in and confirmed Bluebird’s presence. Then he and the black detective did a careful scan of Bluebird’s house from the windows of the adjoining homes and called their information back to the ERU leader. Normally, when they had a man pinned, they’d try to make contact, usually by phone. But Bluebird, they thought, might be some kind of maniac. Maybe a danger to hostagesor himself. They decided to take him. The ERUs, riding in nondescript vans, moved up to a second stage three blocks from Bluebird’s.
    While all that was going on, Betty Sails picked Bluebird out of a photo spread. The basketball player confirmed the identification.
    “That’s a good snitch you got there, Lucas,” Wentz said approvingly. “You coming along?”
    “Might as well.”
     
    The ERU found a blind spot around the back door of Bluebird’s house. The door had no window, and the only other window near it had the shade pulled. They could move up to the door, take it out and be inside before Bluebird had even a hint of their presence.
    And it would have worked if Bluebird’s landlord hadn’t been so greedy. The landlord had illegally subdivided the house into a duplex. The division had been practical, rather than aesthetic: the doorway connecting the front of the house to the back had been covered with a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood.
    When the tac commander said “Go,” one of the ERUs tossed a flash-bang grenade through Bluebird’s side window. The terrific explosion and brilliant flash would freeze anyone inside for several seconds, long enough for the ERU team to get on top of him. When the flash-bang went off, another ERU blew the back door open with an AVON round fired from his shotgun, and the team leader went through the door, followed by three of his men.
    A young Mexican woman was lying half asleep on the sofa, a baby on her stomach. An older kid, a toddler, was sitting in a dilapidated playpen. The Mexican woman had been nursing the baby and her shirt was