Mortal Prey

11

The day was dragging on.

Malone had put together an approach to Levy, and one of the feds was doing a PowerPoint presentation on Levy's connections in the overground banking world and his possible ties with underground money-laundering activities. Levy's private-client list had turned up a vein of investment by people tied to organized crime. A three-man team had put together a half-hour-long briefing after six hours of financial research.

The team was taking questions when a silent strobe began flashing on a phone on a corner table. Malone was irritated by the interruption, but she was closest. She leaned back and picked up the receiver, listened for a second, and then looked at Lucas. "Marcy wants to talk to you. Problem at your office," she said in a quiet voice. She'd met Marcy during the Rinker investigation in Minneapolis.

"Sorry. She should have called me on the cell." Lucas walked around the table and took the call, half-turned his back to the guy making the presentation, pushed the hold button, and said, quietly, "Marcy?"

"Lucas?" Didn't sound like Marcy, unless she'd developed a cold.

"Yeah… Is this Marcy?"

"No, actually it's not, Lucas."

It took him just a second. In that second, he remembered what she smelled like, the nice smell of perfume and a little beer, the time they danced in her Wichita saloon. "How've you been?"

Lucas started waving frantically at Mallard, who looked puzzled for a second, then caught on. He said, silently, miming the name with his lips, "Rinker?"

Lucas nodded, but missed part of what Rinker had said. He caught, "… you should know about that."

Around him, the feds were scrambling for phones and one man dashed out the door, a yellow legal pad spinning to the floor behind him.

"Yeah, I heard you were hit pretty bad," Lucas said. His heart was pounding, but he thought, Cool down, cool down. She's too smart to give herself away. He groped for something that would make a human connection and keep her talking. "I'm really sorry about the baby," he said. "My fiancйe is pregnant… I'm doing that whole trip myself. Gonna get married in the fall."

One of the feds looked up at that and gave him the thumb-and-forefinger attaboy circle-sign. He could hear Malone mumbling into a phone: "Need an immediate trace on the call…"

Rinker said, "Your fiancйe-anybody I'd know?"

"No. She's a doctor. Pretty tough girl. You'd probably like her."

"Maybe… but to cut the b.s., I just wanted to call you and to tell you to keep Gene out of this. I knew the federales were going to get involved, I wasn't surprised when I saw that woman Malone in the paper, but we all know that Gene isn't quite right. Putting him in jail won't help anything. I'm not going to come in-you can't blackmail me. But you can tell whoever's running that show over there that I take Gene real personally, and if they mess him up, if they put him in prison, or hurt him, or do any of that, then they better look to their families. I won't try to blow up the president. I'll start killing agents' husbands and wives, and you know I'll do it."

"I'll try to get him cut loose. But I'm not a fed," Lucas said. One of the feds behind him said, "She's not on her cell," and Lucas thought, Ah, shit.

"You'd lie to me anyway," Rinker said.

"Hey, Clara-I'd put your butt under the jail if I got my hands on you, but I'm not fuckin' with Gene. I think Gene is a bad idea, and I'll try to get him cut loose. I'm just not sure how much clout I've got."

"Okay. I gotta go now. They're probably pretty close to busting this line. Give me your cell phone number."

"I don't have-"

"Goodbye."

"Wait, wait, wait-I was just trying to stall you." He recited the number. There was a pause, and he added, "You can call that anytime."

But she was gone. "Holy shit," Lucas said. He turned to the room. "She's gone. We got the line?"

Malone was on the phone, waving him off. Then the man who'd dashed out of the room hurried back in and said, "We're jacked directly into the highway patrol. When we get the line-"

"We got the line," Malone blurted. "It's in Illinois."

"Damnit," said the man who'd contacted the highway patrol. "We've got Missouri Highway Patrol on line one. They must have a quick way to get to the Illinois cops."

Malone punched up line 1 and, after identifying herself, told the Missouri cop that "she was calling from Illinois. How quick can you get to them? How long? Go, then. Here's the location…"

A truck stop. Lucas said, "When the cops get there, don't let anybody leave the truck stop. Isolate the phone she was on. We need to see if we can get more prints, see if we can get some people who saw her who can tell us what she looks like now."

Malone nodded, and started repeating what Lucas said. Mallard said, "I've got a car. Let's go."

"If it's just you, let's take my Porsche. I'll get us there in a hurry."

Mallard said to Malone, "I'll be on the cell phone. Call me in two minutes and vector us in on the truck stop."

"It's right off I-64. Get on I-64 and go east, and I'll call you and get you there."

"I've got a flasher for my car," Lucas said over his shoulder, as he and Mallard headed for the door. "Tell the patrol that we're coming through."

The distance was a little better than thirty miles. Once on the interstate, they flew, with Mallard hunched over his cell phone, listening to directions and updates from Malone, talking over the rush of the wind, sheltering the face of the phone away from the red flasher behind the windshield. Between calls, Lucas filled him in on what Rinker had said: the warnings about her brother.

"We've dealt with people a hell of a lot more dangerous than she is," Mallard said.

"Maybe not-maybe not as personally dangerous," Lucas said. "Most assholes aren't focused on a particular group of agents. That makes them easier to nail down. She's not nuts. Not in that way."

"The warning just tells us that the brother ploy is effective-it's working on her," Mallard said.

"Hope it doesn't bite you in the ass," Lucas said.

Mallard went back to the phone and filled in Malone on the warning from Rinker. When he got off, he said, "Malone's routing out a crime-scene guy to print the phone and another guy with a laptop ID kit. She talked to the manager of the truck stop and told him to keep people off the phones. If we can find one guy who got a good look at her, it'll be worth the trip."

Lucas looked out the window. "You know, if Rinker's staying here in town, and if she went out there just to make the call, the chances are we're driving right past her. Over in the other lane."

Mallard looked over into the westbound lane and said, "So close."

The truck stop looked like all truck stops-a yellow steel building with blackout windows in the middle of an oversized, oil-stained concrete fuel pad with a double line of gas pumps and a couple of diesel sheds. Inside, a convenience store was hip-joined to a macaroni-and-cheese restaurant, with a set of rest rooms in the middle and a locked suite of drivers-only showers. A half-dozen cop cars were parked around the place when Lucas gunned the Porsche up the ramp and into a narrow slot between two highway patrol cruisers.

An Illinois highway patrolman had just stepped up to the door, going in, when Lucas pulled up, and he shook his head and then stepped toward them when Lucas killed the engine. Mallard was out first with his ID. "FBI," he said.

The cop looked at Mallard, then at Lucas, then at the Porsche, and said to Mallard, "You guys're getting pretty fat rides these days."

"Hey, the income taxes are pouring in-you can't believe it," Lucas said. "We figure, might as well enjoy life."

Mallard said, "He owns it personally. He's rich, he's an asshole, he works for the city of Minneapolis. The federal government drives low-end Chrysler products that would make your mother cry with shame." And: "Who's running things?"

"I don't know, I just got here myself," the cop said.

The first cop on the scene had been a highway patrol sergeant named Eakins who hadn't known exactly what was required, and as an old hand, adept at covering his ass, had done exactly the right thing: He'd frozen the scene. Nobody out until the feds said so, nobody near a phone.

"Don't make much difference anyhow-everybody's got a cell phone," he said.

"Anybody see her?"

"Two guys think they might have-they're in the restaurant eating pie," Eakins said.

"All right," Mallard said. "Just keep doing what you're doing."

"Can we let people out?"

"Yeah. If you're pretty sure they're okay. But get IDs, truck tag numbers, just in case. Check the trucks, make sure nobody's hiding behind the seats. Anybody coming in, we should warn off-if they can move along, let them go. If they've got to stop here for some reason, tell them there could be a delay before they can leave."

"We can do that," Eakins said. "Let me show you the pie guys and then I'll get organized outside."

The PIE guys looked remarkably alike, big square-faced over-the-road drivers in checked shirts with guts hanging over their tooled-leather belts. The woman they saw was probably Rinker. They'd both had a chance to look her over: nice-looking blonde, they said, trim, short hair. Classy, but looked like a pretty good time. "She was in a hurry," Blueberry Pie said. "I was kind of watchin' her out of the corner of my eye. She made a couple of calls, but she was real quick with them-like a businesswoman. That's what I figured she was. A real-estate lady, checking on calls or something."

Apple Pie added that she had a nice ass and thought she might have been heading toward a Ford Explorer when she went out the door. "I didn't see her get in it, but there weren't a hell of a lot of cars down there, and when the cops come running in the door, I noticed that the Explorer was gone."

"What color?"

"Umm, dark red. Liver-colored, sorta."

"You didn't…?"

"Naw. Never looked at the plates. I was too busy looking at her ass."

Both pies agreed that Rinker had used the second phone from the end in a bank of phones on the back wall of the convenience store.

As Lucas and Mallard finished the interview, a black Tahoe pulled up and a half-dozen feds climbed out. Then another Tahoe, and more of them, all in suits. "Looks like a podiatry convention," Lucas said to Mallard.

They looked at the phones, which looked like a lot of other phones, and talked to other people who hadn't seen Rinker, and to people who hadn't seen her car, and to one guy who was fairly sure that he'd seen "a black feller" getting into the maroon Explorer.

"That's good," Lucas said to Mallard. "Now we're not sure about the Explorer."

Malone arrived, with another batch of feds. They all went to look at the phones again, and a fingerprint technician said, "I'm pretty sure those pie guys were right about the phone. This was the phone she used."

"How's that?" Mallard asked.

"I don't think any of the other phones will be this thoroughly wiped," he said. "Looks like she sprayed it with Windex."

An hour after they arrived, now convinced that they were wasting their time, Lucas bought a purple-flavored Popsicle, took Malone aside, recited the Rinker conversation as close to word-for-word as he could, through the crumbling bits of faux-grape ice, and said, "I want to talk to Gene. Maybe Clara's got some other reason for trying to push us away from him."

"We've got some pretty good guys talking to him," Malone said.

"I know, I know. I just want to chat with him. See what he has to say. Look him over."

"Can I come?"

"You can listen if you want, but I'd rather you not be inside with me. I'm looking for a nonfederal vibe."

She thought about it for a second, then said, "Okay."

"I want to bring another guy to listen. Old-cop type."

"Your friend Del?" She'd met Del in Minneapolis.

"No. A guy from down here. Old buddy, he's got a good ear. Maybe he could pick up something local, if Gene knows anything local. A hint, a little… anything." He looked around, finished with the Popsicle. "Where do I throw the sticks?"

She said, "No. Not the floor." Then: "I'll set it up for this afternoon. It's getting late, so it'll have to be soon. The Gene thing."

"What about Levy? You were all set to walk in on him."

"We're still go on that," she said. "We'll take him home, and when he gets there, we'll knock on the door."

They took an hour to get organized, get in touch with Andreno, and make it to Clayton, where Gene Rinker was being held in a rented cell at the county lockup. "I thought it was better from a security point of view, given Clara's style, to hold him here," Malone said, as they went up in the elevator. "We're not moving him in and out of an obvious spot when we want to talk to him."

Andreno, who'd been waiting for them in the parking lot, said, "So, you guys been working day and night on this thing? Round the clock?"

Malone glanced at him. Andreno had changed to a lush gray double-breasted chalk-striped suit that he'd apparently bought from Mafia Tailors. "Pretty much," she said. "We have more than fifty agents in the field right now."

"Got some great Italian restaurants in this town," he said.

Lucas shook his head. "She already has romantic entanglements," he said.

Andreno worked his eyebrows. "Yet another reason she might want to try the local rigatoni."

Malone looked troubled, and turned to Lucas: "He's not even a very good Sheetrocker. I realized that last night."

Andreno was puzzled: "A Sheetrocker?"

"The bottom line is, her heart belongs to another," Lucas said. "We're just trying to identify him."

Andreno shook his head. "If…"

"Ask me later," Lucas said to Andreno. "We'll get a cup of coffee and talk about feelings."

"Fuck you," Malone said, but she didn't say it in a mean way.

The elevator bell dinged, the doors opened, and they got out.

Gene Rinker was already in the interview room. Malone hung back, while a jailer let Lucas and Andreno into the room. The jailer gave Rinker the be good look, and shut the door.

Rinker sat wordlessly as Lucas and Andreno settled in. Rinker was an inch sort of six feet, and slender, but not thin: unhealthy, as though he ate bad food, his face so weathered that it actually seemed to be pitted with grains of sand. His hands were rough, as weathered as his face, slack in his lap; the roughness made them dark, but the first two fingers of his right hand were nicotine-stained. His hair was limp, dishwater blond, and fell lifelessly to his slumping shoulders. He wore a gray T-shirt and jeans a size too big, with white gym shoes-the clothing appeared to have been given to him by somebody who'd guessed at sizes. He didn't look straight at either Lucas or Andreno.

If Lucas had seen him on the street, he would have thought, Loser, a throwaway kid, a street kid, probably did a little dope, probably stole a little, probably too unsure of himself to go violent. As Lucas and Andreno sat down, he rubbed one finger between his eyes, nervous, then dropped his hands back to his lap.

"We're not feds," Lucas started. "I'm a cop from Minneapolis, this other guy's a cop from St. Louis… I've actually talked to your sister a couple of times. Talked to her yesterday."

Rinker was skeptical, but too scared to say anything. Lucas grinned at him. "You would've liked it. She called me in the FBI building, right in the middle of a meeting, and told me to get the feds off of you. There were FBI agents running around like chickens. We figured out where she called from, but by the time we got there, she was gone."

Rinker nodded, cleared his throat. "Good," he ventured.

"Listen, son, the feds only got one handle on Clara, and you're it, and they're pissed," Andreno said. "They're gonna stuff you in a drawer someplace if we don't catch her pretty soon, and you're not gonna like it. They got some tough goddamn prisons in the federal system." He was using his sincere voice, and it came off. He sounded absolutely paternal, Lucas thought.

"Catching Clara would be the best thing for everybody," Lucas said. "I know you don't want to hurt your sister."

"Not gonna hurt her," Rinker said.

"That's good, that's family feeling. I'm Italian, and we got that feeling," Andreno said. "The problem is, Clara's gonna get hurt. There's no way around it. The feds are gonna hunt her down, and they're probably gonna kill her. If we could get her off the street… I mean, hell, she has to have a trial and everything."

A spark of intelligence showed in Rinker's eyes: "They're gonna put her to sleep anyway, no matter what you say," he said. "One way she's free, and maybe she'll get away. If you get her in jail, they're just gonna put her to sleep. Better to get shot than that, having to wait around in a place like this"-he flipped one hand at the sterile room-"and then have somebody tie you to a table and put a thing in your arm."

"Maybe, but maybe not," Lucas said. "But I'll tell you this: She's not only hurting herself, and you, she's hurting her friends. She's crashing someplace around here, with one of her friends, and whoever that is… she's just as guilty now as Clara is. She's taking her friends down with her. Does that sound right?" He put a little authority into it, and watched Rinker's wavering intelligence crawl back in a hole.

Rinker mumbled, "I guess not," and he looked at his hands.

"Do you know her friends here?" Andreno asked.

Rinker said nothing at all, didn't seem to have heard the question. His eyes flattened, he seemed even slacker in the shoulders, as though his mind had slipped away.

Andreno repeated himself: "Do you know her friends?"

Rinker stayed away for another few seconds, then his eyes focused and he pulled himself out of wherever he'd gone. He shook his head. "She never said nothing about friends around here. I didn't know anything about St. Louis. I took off for Los Angeles as soon as I was old enough." He stopped, catching himself.

Lucas pushed: "Then where were her friends? She must have had friends back home somewhere."

"Maybe," Rinker conceded. He licked his lips. "I wouldn't know nothin' about that. She was older'n me."

They worked on him for another fifteen minutes, but nothing came out of it. He was not only a thrown-away kid, Lucas realized; he did have some mental deficit, or otherness. He slipped away when they pressed him, and only reluctantly came back.

When they ran out of questions, Lucas and Andreno sighed simultaneously, and Lucas said, "Well, hell," and Andreno said, "Wish we could help you, son. These goddamn feds… they can be real assholes."

"I gotta get out of here," Rinker said, struggling to come alive. "I got all my stuff back in L.A. If I don't get back, Larry or Jane is gonna find it and they'll just flat sell it. They'll sell it first chance they get. Got some good stuff, there. Got a suit. Got a radio."

"I wish-" Andreno began.

"I gotta get out of here," Rinker said, cutting him off. His eyes were big, and going oily, and he looked around the room, looked for a window or a crack or anything that might let in some air. "I mean I just… I just… I gotta get out of here. I can't breathe, I got dreams…"

"About Clara?" Lucas asked.

"About me. I'm like this big moth, like the moths that come at night when you've got flowers, they're like hummingbirds, but they're moths, and I'm one of them, and these guys catch me and I'm flapping my wings and they keep pulling at me like they're gonna pull my wings off, and my feelers. I got these big feelers like feathers and they're gonna pull them off. And they were all laughing and when I sat up on the bunk last night I thought I was there, that they were pulling my wings off, and I couldn't breathe, I just kept flapping my wings…"

Lucas called the jailer, then told Rinker, "We'll try to do something. Gotta be a little patient, though."

Andreno chipped in: "Hold on, son."

When the jailer took him away, Rinker looked back at them and said, "I really gotta get back. All my stuff is in L.A. They're gonna sell it if I don't get back."

Malone had a tape."If you want to listen to it again, it's all there," he said, as they took the elevator down.

"I only saw one thing," Lucas said, looking at Andreno. "Clara had a friend or maybe a couple of friends back home. He didn't want to say it."

"Shouldn't be hard to find, if they're still there," Andreno said. "Town's about two blocks long."

"We've had agents out there," Malone said. "Interviewed everybody-nothing. Her mother's a vegetable, barely remembers Clara. We've gone over the whole house, from top to bottom, looked at every scrap of paper."

"Find any friends?"

"Nobody. Not many people even remembered her. The family was sorta… isolated."

"Huh." Lucas thought about it, then asked Andreno, "What do you think?"

"What else have we got?"

"Maybe our friend the phone guy," Lucas suggested.

"We could try him again. If we don't get anything, it's about three hours down to Tisdale. We can go down late tonight, after we talk to Levy, poke around tomorrow morning, stop at the Bass Pro Shops store, and still get back by early afternoon."

"Gotta think about it," Lucas said. To Malone: "And you gotta think about cutting Gene loose. There's nothing there. He could use some… help."

"This whole thing will resolve itself in the next week or so," Malone said. "We've got so many people looking that we'll either turn Rinker up, or she'll leave. When it's resolved… yeah, we'll probably cut him loose. If we don't catch her here, we'll let him go and keep an eye on him for a few months, see if he has any visitors."

They deflected Malone 's curiosity about the phone guy. She made a call, talked to Mallard for a few minutes, lifted her face away from the receiver to tell Lucas that they'd rendezvous in Central West End at seven o'clock, and go from there to Levy's. Levy, according to his watchers, usually worked late at his office and got home sometime after six o'clock. "Louis wants to find a place to eat before we go in." She looked at Andreno.

Andreno thought about it for a second, then brightened. "Perfect spot. Tell him there's a place called the Black Lantern, five-minute walk from Levy's place. Steak joint. Good salads. Good martinis. We've got just enough time to eat comfortable."

Malone relayed the information, listened for a moment, then said goodbye and hung up. She told Lucas, "He says you're supposed to call Marcy at your office. She says it's semi-urgent."

When they got out on the sidewalk, Lucas used his cell phone to dial the office in Mineapolis. Black picked up, then switched him over to Marcy. "What's up?" Lucas asked.

"A columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called here, trying to get you. He says that Rinker called him this afternoon and gave you as a reference for some stuff she told him. He says he's pretty sure it's Rinker who called."

"Gave me as a reference?"

"Yeah. Whoever this is, she told him that she talked to you," Marcy said.

"She did. She said she was you."

"What? Tell me…" And in the background, Lucas could hear her say to Black, "She called him. She said she was me." She sounded thrilled to have been touched by a celebrity.

"I'll talk to you later," Lucas said. "What's this news guy's name and number?"

"His name's Sandy White…"

Lucas jotted the name and number in the palm of his hand, rang off, and told Malone and Andreno what had happened.

"Jesus," Andreno said. "Who's running this operation, the FBI or Rinker?"

"There seems to be some disagreement about that," Malone said.

"So do I talk to White?" Lucas asked. "You make the call."

"We'll have somebody else talk to him. I'll call Louis on the way down to Central West End," Malone said. "That way, White can't push you, because our guy can deny knowing too much about it. And we find out what she said."

The black lantern was an old-style steak house, set a few steps below street level and smelling of sizzling beef fat and beer. Mallard had already taken a table, and was reading a menu the size of a wall calendar.

Lucas introduced him to Andreno, and Mallard asked, "Does anybody read this guy Sandy White?"

"Probably not more than half the people in St. Louis," Andreno said. "He's got a job as a TV editorial guy, too, so he'll have that going, along with the column."

"Goddamnit," Mallard grumbled. "I talked to him. Rinker called him, all right. He's running a piece tomorrow, warning us off her brother. White talked to a cop somewhere and got Gene Rinker's arrest record, and they know we're holding him on simple possession."

"One good thing about it," Lucas said, as he studied the menu.

"Tell me, please."

"If somebody gets screwed for this, it's gonna be you, not me," Lucas said.

Andreno nodded and said, "Got that straight."

They ordered wine, and Malone told Mallard about the interview with Gene Rinker, and then Mallard and Malone ordered salads and Lucas and Andreno ordered steaks, and Andreno said, "Gene Rinker is a troubled young man. I don't think it was dope-looked like he was fucked from the git-go."

"And you got nothing from him," Mallard predicted.

"Eh," Lucas said. "Probably nothing. We might run down to Tisdale and poke around."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tonight, if nothing comes up. Get a bed in Springfield."

Mallard shrugged. "We talked to everybody she knew-but hell, if you want to, it's fine with me. Maybe you'll turn something up."

"She didn't make good friends. She was too messed up," Lucas said. "We think she might have had some friends when she was a kid. We keep thinking, she's gotta be staying somewhere. She's not sleeping in her car."

"Whatever…"

The steaks came a few minutes later and they talked about the case a bit, and Lucas thought about the friend that Rinker must be staying with, and said, gesturing with a neatly forked square of rib eye, "You know, if you really don't care how you get her-I mean, dead or alive-you ought to talk to all the local assholes and tell them that she's staying with a friend. Somebody in that whole grapevine would know who her friends were. She worked for them, and somebody would know. Especially if there was some money on the table."

Malone nodded. "There would have been no reason for her to keep her friendships secret back then."

Mallard said, "Except that she's smart. We know she's smart, and this whole thing with this White guy makes me think she's a little smarter than I realized. I mean, she's messing with us. She's gonna have a bunch of civil rights attorneys on our asses in the morning. All that makes me think-she'd know that her old pals might sell her out. She'd be ready for that."

Levy lived on a semiprivate street four blocks from the Black Lantern, a huge black-brick pile with a marble entrance and a carriage house visible in the back. One end of the street was open, but with warning signs against nonresident parking; the other end was closed with a wrought-iron fence.

They'd decided to go in cold. The supervisor in the group covering Levy called Mallard toward the end of the meal to say that Levy had arrived home. "He's scared. He's got a guy traveling with him, apparently a bodyguard. He took his car straight into the carriage house, and the bodyguard ran between the carriage house and the main house. Somebody met him, and then Levy ran up to the house while the bodyguard waited at the door."

"Must be pretty sure that nobody's in the carriage house, then," Lucas said.

"Our guys said both the house and the carriage house are wired up tight."

"Well, at least we know he'll be there. Doesn't sound like he expects to go barhopping," Andreno said.

They took their time walking over, looking at the houses along the side streets. There were lights everywhere, people moving around. If Rinker was in one of the houses on Levy's street, or behind Levy's street, she'd have a tough time getting out, Lucas thought. "As soon as we talk to him, you oughta have the net guys start going door to door, making sure that Rinker's not holding somebody in one of these places," Lucas said.

"We'll do that," Mallard said. At the entrance to Levy's street, they passed though a wrought-iron gate, closed it behind themselves. A man in a suit climbed out of a car and walked toward them. He was carrying a pale straw hat, and said, "Louis."

"David. Everybody, this is David Homburg," Mallard said to Lucas and Andreno. To Homburg: "We're going in-you and me and Malone, and Lucas. And, uh, Mr. Andreno, I guess."

"Hate to miss it," Andreno said.

Mallard told Homburg to leave two watchers on the front and back of Levy's, and to have the rest of the net begin knocking on doors, two men at a time. Homburg stepped back to his car and spoke on a radio for a few moments, then rejoined them. "Done."

"So let's go," Mallard said.

Levy was not what Lucas expected-he'd expected one of the tough-faced finance guys, and instead got a round-faced beach boy, middle forties, with bleached tips on his light brown hair, a carefully revised nose, dark brown golf shirt under a soft leather lounging jacket with fawn slacks, and leather moccasins without socks.

The bodyguard was another case altogether. He was a muscular size 48, with a buzz cut; he looked like he was made from leather that the cobbler had thrown away before making Levy's shoes. He'd come to the door carefully, checking them from a side window, then through the security-glass window on the door.

Mallard and Malone held up IDs so he could read them, and when he opened the door, he still had a hand on his back hip pocket, where, Lucas thought, he had a gun.

"Federal Bureau of Investigation," Mallard told him. "We're here to talk to Mr. Levy."

"I'll see if he's in," the tough guy said.

"We know he's in, because we've had a net around him all day, watching him. We just watched you take him from the carriage house to the back door, running. When you see if he's in, you might suggest to him that Clara Rinker is unlikely to show up with a committee."

"Wait here." The tough guy left them standing on the porch, one minute, two, looking at their shoes and the trees, listening to the cicadas fiddling down at them.

"Nice night," Mallard said eventually.

"Fuckin' guy," Andreno said.

Then the tough guy came back, looked them over again, and said, "Come in."

Levy, bleached — tip hair and sockless mocs, stood with his hands in the pocket of his jackets, in the doorway of a library.

"Mr. Mallard? Could I see your ID again?"

Mallard handed him his ID. Malone and Homburg held theirs up so he could scan them as he read down Mallard's. Then he looked at Lucas and Andreno, a petulant frown creasing his forehead. "What about these gentlemen?"

"They're essentially hired thugs," Mallard said. "They don't have ID. In any case, we really don't want to spend any more time sorting through the personnel, Mr. Levy. Clara Rinker is here to kill you. We know that for sure. We're trying to catch her. You might be able to help."

"How do you know it for sure?"

"Because one of our agents talked to a gentleman who she interrogated, and your name was prominent in the discussion. We think you know all of this-we've been watching you for a couple of days, and we've noted the precautions you're now taking… like the man with the gun."

Levy stared at Mallard for a moment-Mallard looked placidly back-then said, "Why don't we sit down?"

They filed into the library. The library was a stage setting, Lucas thought, filled with decorator book sets, bought by the running foot, an oversized mahogany desk with an inset leather top, an expensive-looking oriental carpet, and a globe the size of a weather balloon. Levy settled into a chair behind the desk; Mallard and Malone took guest chairs facing the desk, Homburg found a seat on a faux Louis XIV, and Lucas and Andreno picked out places to lean. Andreno seemed fascinated by the globe, and began turning it under one hand as Mallard and Levy talked.

Levy said, "How do you know she's looking for me?"

"She blames you and several other people for the attempt on her life in Mexico. You managed to kill her fiancй. She was also pregnant, and when she was wounded, she lost the child. She has now clearly gone over the edge. She's insane. We frankly think you have one small chance to stay alive: cooperate with us."

"What if I decide to take care of myself?"

"Then you'll die," Mallard said. "Nanny Dichter was as well protected as you are, and she picked him like a bad apple."

Levy said, "I really don't know anything about what happened in Mexico, and my involvement with her was only peripheral. One of my other clients once asked me to help her set up a retirement account, which I thought was entirely legitimate."

"You can cut the shit," Malone said. "We've known about your private-client accounts for quite a while. We let you run them because we were learning so much about the crime club around here. But just leave out the bullshit, okay? It'll make this conversation a lot shorter."

Lucas suppressed a smile. The Mallard and Malone good-cop/bad-cop act was back in town, and Malone made an excellent bad cop. The vulgarities slipping from her notably prim mouth made her that much more effective.

Levy leaned back. "I do not know-"

Mallard interrupted. "What we would like to do is slip a few people in here, as soon as we're sure that she isn't watching. Then we'll pull back our covering net, and let her walk into the trap. That's what we want."

"What if you don't have enough guys?"

"This isn't a TV movie. She's not invincible, she's not Wonder Woman. Once we see her, we'll take her," Mallard said. "We'll have two or three guys who could take her by themselves, and we'll have two or three guys to back them up, and then we'll have a couple more guys to back them up. We'll have a net to take you downtown, and another trap at the bank. You'll be safer than the President."

"So all I have to do is agree?"

"I'll be blunt, Mr. Levy. We think we could build a hell of a money-laundering case against you," Malone said. "We think we could see you into Leavenworth for twenty years, and there'd be no parole. You might want to get a lawyer and see what you can negotiate. If you had any kind of information for us, we'd be happy to take that into account. Otherwise, do what you want-but it's in both of our interests to take out Clara Rinker."

Levy made a steeple of his fingers, resting them on his chest. Then: "I'm gonna want to talk to my guy, my counsel. My attorney. I'll get him over here tonight. Until then, keep her off me."

"If she sees us, we'll be wasting our time," Mallard said. "You've got to decide tonight so we can get our people out of sight."

"I'll decide," Levy said. "Let me call my guy."

They all sat for a moment, with nothing more to say, until Andreno said, "This is a hell of a globe. Where do you get a globe like this?"

Levy left them talking in the library while he called his attorney. Seeing no point in waiting, Lucas collected Andreno and told Mallard that they were going out-"Have a couple of beers, talk to people. Maybe head to Springfield."

"Back tomorrow?"

"Late afternoon, unless something comes up. You've got my cell phone."

On the walk back to Lucas's car, Andreno asked, "You think she'll walk into it?"

"Mmm. No."

"Could happen."

"It could happen, but I doubt it. She ain't gonna walk up and ring the doorbell. It'll be something trickier. I just don't know what."

"Let's find Sellos. Maybe she's come back to him."

They headed downtown, but when they got to the BluesNote, they found that Sellos had disappeared. The bartender said, "He went to golf school."

"What?"

"Yeah. A short-game school." He polished a glass and held it up to a light, looking for smears. "You know, from a hundred yards in. Don't know where, exactly."

Andreno looked at Lucas and said, "Now what?"

Lucas leaned close to the bartender and said, "Give me four bottles of Dos Equis. Just crack the caps."

Outside again, with the four bottles of beer in a paper bag, Lucas said, "Where do you think he went?"

"If he's alive, maybe… Michigan? They've got good golf courses."

"Mmm. I guess Palm Springs would be a little hot this time of year…" A warm breeze scuffled down the street. Lucas looked up at the moon. "Nice night for a road trip."

"Unless the highway patrol catches us with open beer."

"Like they could catch us," Lucas said.