Mortal Prey

9

Lucas got up early, for him, a little after eight o'clock. He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, went to the lobby and got a Post-Dispatch and a couple of Diet Cokes, returned to his room, lay in bed and drank the Coke and read the paper. Gene Rinker, in orange prison coveralls and chains, was on the front page, being taken into a jail somewhere, behind a row of shotgun-armed marshals.

A show. A movie. The FBI was making a movie about being tough, about kicking a little Rinker ass. The Post-Dispatch quoted Malone on Gene Rinker's arrest, and described her as a tough, flinty FBI agent, a veteran of the mob wars. A small photograph at the bottom of the story showed Malone talking to a marshal, looking flinty.

"Maybe she is," Lucas thought, and he extracted the comics and read them while room service put together some pancakes and bacon. During the leisurely breakfast, he started calling local banks, and got lucky with the fifth one.

Lucas got to the FBI building at nine-thirty. Loftus wasn't yet on duty; another man gave him his neck card and escorted him to the meeting room. When he stepped inside, the collected agents turned to look, and Mallard said, "We started at seven."

"Had a late night," Lucas said. "Out drinking."

"Oh, good," one of the male agents muttered.

"Let's try to keep ourselves together, folks," Mallard said, but he was exasperated. Behind him, on the white board, was an expanded list of names, heavy on the Italian.

"Rinker's probably going after a guy named Andy Levy. A banker," Lucas said, as he found a chair. He pulled it back from the table so he could stretch his legs. "She had a list of at least two guys when she came into town: Nanny Dichter and Andy Levy. There's an Andy Levy who's a vice president at First Heartland National Bank here in St. Louis. I don't know he's the one, but he's a possibility."

They all turned to look at him again. Malone, who'd been sitting in the corner poking at a laptop, asked, "Where'd you get this?"

"On the street," Lucas said. "While I was out drinking."

"Drinking with any specific guy?" asked the tomboy agent, who the day before had been wearing khaki. Now she was wearing an olive-drab blouse, with epaulets. Lucas liked the look, sort of square-shouldered Italian Army.

"Nobody specific," he said. "Just a bunch of guys."

"Maybe nothing to take seriously," said another one of the agents.

"Gotta take it seriously," Lucas said. "You don't take it seriously and Andy Levy gets hit, and the papers hear about it, then you're a laughingstock. That's not the FBI way. Or maybe it is, but it's not something you'd want to talk about."

"Who'd tell the papers?"

Lucas shrugged. "I might. I always liked newspaper guys."

Mallard said, "Ah, man-Lucas, let's step out in the hallway for a minute, huh? We gotta talk."

Mallard pushed the door shut, stood with his back to it, and asked, "Who's your source?"

"A guy I ran into last night," Lucas said. "If you wind up desperately needing him-and I can't see how that would happen-then I'll tell you who he is. Until then, the information's got to be enough."

"Is it good information?"

"It's good. It comes right out of Rinker's mouth. But I'm not sure the guy at Heartland is the right guy. Rinker's the one who called him a banker, and my source doesn't know if she meant a mob banker or a legit banker or what. If Levy's legit, maybe Rinker's got some money with him."

"That'd be good-that'd be really good. Anything else I ought to know?"

"Yeah. The AIC here is running another Rinker group out of his back pocket. Four guys named Striker, Allenby, Lane, and Jones, out of Intelligence. He doesn't like you being here. What that means is, there are about six groups of cops looking for the same woman and not finding her. But pretty soon, they're gonna start finding each other."

"Boy-you do keep your ear to the ground. Where'd you hear this? On the street?"

Lucas grinned. "Everybody knows about it. You're the last."

Mallard sighed and said, "Listen, I'm going over to talk to John Ross. That's really why I was a little anxious about your not being here. I want you to come along, and we're leaving in fifteen minutes."

"Could have called."

"Never occurred to me that you might be sleeping in," Mallard said. "I figured you were up to something… and I was right. And listen, take it easy in here, okay? I know they're a little chilly with outsiders."

"A little chilly, my ass. I almost froze to death last night," Lucas said. "I'm sure your guys are good at what they do, but that's not what I do. I think I'd be more valuable doing what I'm doing-hooking up with the locals, seeing who is doing what."

Mallard shrugged. "That's fine with me, as long as you stay in touch. I sort of value your input."

"I'll be around."

"Andy Levy, a banker," Mallard said.

"That's right."

"Let's go back in."

Back inside, Mallard looked at one of the agents and said, "I want you and four more guys on this Andy Levy, and I want a list of all the Andy Levys in the metropolitan area. As soon as we've got the right guy, I want a team on him around the clock. Start now-find him. Take whoever you want, except Sally."

The woman named Sally, in the epaulets, sat up and tapped the eraser end of a pencil on her yellow pad. Why not her? Mallard answered the question without being asked.

"Sally, Lucas is going to be running around town. I want you to run around with him as our liaison."

She shook her head, looked at Lucas, unhappy.

"I can't do that," Lucas said.

"Don't be a princess, Lucas," Malone snapped from the corner. "Take Sally. Her old man is a cop, her brother's a cop, she understands."

"I don't care if her father's the fuckin' Pope of Cleveland, I ain't taking her," Lucas said. "The people I talk to aren't going to talk to me if she's around."

"Don't tell them that she's with the Bureau."

Lucas looked at Mallard. "Think about the second piece of information I gave you. That'll give you a clue about where some of my sources are, and why I can't take Sally along."

"Are you… ah, man." He got it in one second. At least some of Lucas's sources were with the FBI. "All right. Sally, you work here with Malone, but Lucas, Sally's your contact with us. She'll get you what you need, from our side. Call her anytime day or night. Feed her everything you collect, all right? And try to get to the morning report on time. Seven o'clock, okay?

"Okay," Lucas said, with no sincerity whatever.

Mallard went through the list of the day's assignments, then said to Malone, "I'm outta here. I doubt that we'll be with Ross for an hour, and I'll be on the phone the whole time."

"Good luck," she said.

Sally followed them out into the hall. "Give me two minutes with Chief Davenport," she said to Mallard. Mallard said, "I'm going to hit the john," and walked away. To Lucas, she said, "What was the second piece of information?"

Lucas shook his head. "You'd have to get that from Louis."

"I surmise that one of your informants is with the Bureau."

He shook his head again, kept his face straight. "You'd have to get that from Louis."

"It's really good to build up this level of trust with the guy you're coordinating with," she said.

"I don't need my balls busted by the FBI," Lucas said. "I'm getting tired of leading you guys around by the hand."

"I don't think that's the case," she said.

"Bullshit. You guys couldn't find your own elbows with two agents and a pair of binoculars."

Her lip twitched, and Lucas thought she might smile. "My old man would've said, 'You couldn't find your asshole with both hands and a flashlight.' "

"That was my thought," Lucas admitted. "I edited it because of your tender years."

"I'm not that tender," she said. "What are we doing?"

"I'll get your number and give you mine. It's always on, except at night."

"Good." They finished the arrangements in two minutes, and she asked, "That Andy Levy stuff isn't just a rumor, is it?"

"No. But I don't know anything about him."

She nibbled at the inside of her lip. "We'll have a formal profile in an hour. We're very good at that."

Lucas started down the hall. "Then do it. When you find anything out, call me," he said over his shoulder. "And hey-I like the epaulets."

THEY TOOK A dark government car, a Dodge, Mallard in the back, a younger agent driving, Lucas riding shotgun. On the way over, Mallard browsed through a file on Ross, reading out occasional anecdotes.

The anecdotes covered Ross's youth (he'd taken piano lessons for four years as a child, but didn't like them; he had allegedly pushed the piano out of his parent's fourth-floor apartment and down the stairs, it had rocketed through the side of the apartment house and into the street); his love life (he was on his fourth wife; his third had died tragically in an unsolved hit-and-run shortly after the divorce, while Ross had been vacationing in alibi heaven); and his legitimate interests (his long-distance trucking company was "Mother Trucker of the Year" for '98, and was listed in Missouri magazine as one of the top 100 Missouri companies to work for).

Ross lived on a semiprivate street in the town of Ladue, in the middle of a broad, rolling lawn of faultless green, dappled here and there with flower beds. The house, a rambling redbrick mansion with white trim, was set at the crest of a low hillock, and was surrounded by mature, artfully spaced trees. If Ross had any kind of security system, Rinker would need a rocket launcher to get at him, Lucas thought.

The driver stayed with the car, while Lucas and Mallard went to the door. Ross's wife answered the doorbell. She was a striking woman in her mid-thirties, with strawberry-blond hair, a smooth oval face, and jade-green eyes-way too much for her Missouri accent. She was wearing tennis whites and carrying a bottle of orange Gatorade. She led them across polished wooden floors, past colorful, intricate framed prints, back to a home office, and called, "John-they're here," and then said to Mallard, "Well, I'm off to play tennis," as though she found the idea amazing.

"Good luck," he said. She turned away as John Ross came up to the office door.

"Come in," Ross said, looking after his wife. Mallard and Lucas followed him back into the office.

Ross looked like what he was: a hood. The smart, hard kind of hoodlum, the borderline psychopath, the kind who might have run the docks in New York in another era. He weighed maybe two-twenty, Lucas thought, and had wide sloping shoulders. He was square, with heavy lids over dark eyes, a dark, saturnine face, and fingers like fat stubby cigars.

The office around them was attractive, just as old man Mejia's library had been: all good wood and well-coordinated, the furniture sitting on a blue-and-beige oriental carpet that glowed at them from the floor. Two orchids sat on his desk, and another on a side table. One of the orchid blooms was the exact color of green that Lucas remembered from a huge Luna moth that had once visited his Wisconsin cabin.

"Beautiful flowers," Mallard said, as they settled around Ross's desk.

"My principal hobby," Ross said. "I have two thousand of them."

"You take care of them yourself?"

Ross nodded. "Mostly." He wasn't interested in talking about his flowers. "What can I do for you folks?"

"You've probably got a pretty good idea," Mallard said. "You once employed Clara Rinker. She just killed Nanny Dichter, and we think she is probably going after you. She blames you for the killing of Paulo Mejia."

Ross made a hand gesture, a what can you do gesture, and said, "I never had anything but the best relationship with her. I was amazed when I found out that she'd been killing people. But her career started way before I met her-at least, if what the papers say is correct."

"Look, you know as well as I do that the Bureau has a major file on you," Mallard said. "I think that some of the… surmises… made in those files are correct. But I don't care about that. I don't care if you're a big-time mobster, because my job right now is to find and stop Clara Rinker. What I want from you is any ideas you may have of where she's staying, who she may be working with. Old friends, people she could force to take her in-anything like that."

Ross was shaking his head. "I'd have no idea. I will go around and ask, though. When she worked for me, she mostly worked in the warehouse, and there must be twenty or thirty people out there who knew her. I'll have one of my guys talk to everyone."

"How about if we talk to them?"

"I've got no problem with that," Ross said. He leaned forward, opened a small drawer, and took out a sheet of paper and a yellow pencil. He scribbled on it and pushed it at Mallard. "This is the manager's name and phone number. I'll call him as soon as you leave, and tell him to expect a call from you."

Mallard nodded. "Thank you… You personally have no idea…"

Ross shook his head again. "None. I'll tell you, I'm really not sure that she's coming after me. I'm not sure exactly why she went after Nanny Dichter-I mean, you hear these rumors that Nanny played by his own rules, sometimes, but I didn't know they had any prior… relationship. Maybe that'll be the end of it. Nanny."

"That's a possibility, but she has at least one more man on her list for sure-not you. And we know that she made a series of phone calls from Mexico, to Missouri, after the shooting, and that you were the main topic of conversation. So we think there are at least two more people on the list, and you are one of them."

"Who's the other guy?" Ross's dark eyebrows went up.

"Sorry," Mallard said. "I can't…"

"Paul Dellaglio?"

Mallard shook his head. "… really give you that information. Why would you think Dellaglio?"

"Because anything Nanny Dichter did, Paul was part and parcel of. Unless the Rinker thing involves sex."

"Don't think so."

"Neither do I. Nanny didn't get around so much. So I would guess that Paul's the other guy on your list."

Mallard shook his head and said, "I'll have a couple of our agents around to your warehouse this afternoon."

"Anything I can do," Ross said.

That was the interview. After a few more unpleasantries, Ross took them out. On the way, they stopped in a room whose leaded-glass wall overlooked the back lawn. To the left, a greenhouse stood facing the south. A resort-sized rectangular swimming pool was straight ahead, and with its black-painted bottom, acted as a reflecting pond. To the right was a tennis court, where Ross's wife was batting tennis balls around with a white-haired man.

"Tennis lessons," Ross said ruefully. "That guy costs me fifty bucks an hour."

"Your wife's got a nice swing," Lucas said.

Ross looked at him with a tiny spark in his eye, the first sign Lucas had seen of humor. "Yes, she does. Always has had," Ross said.

Ross stood in the doorway and watched them go. When they were in the car, he pushed the door shut and walked to the opposite end of the house, moving silently on the thick carpet. Two men were in the billiards room, one of them looking out the window, while the other, a fiftyish man with a bald, pink scalp and a long Swedish face, was flipping playing cards down the length of a billiards table, at a tweed hat.

Ross watched him for a moment. Johnson's dour face reminded him of someone, but he couldn't think who. Ross did not like Honus Johnson-nobody did-but he was sometimes afraid that he'd let that attitude leak through, and that Honus had picked it up.

Honus was a throwback, a genuine sadist who'd found his perfect place in life as an interrogator, a punisher, with Ross's organization. Some of the others used him from time to time, with Ross's approval, but he was Ross's creature… and like most people who owned creatures, Ross sometimes wondered if the beast would ever turn on him.

Johnson, with his playthings, his hammers and saws and pliers and wire, would give a man a hard way to go.

He stepped into the room, and both men turned to him. "They're gone," Ross said. "They have no idea where she is. But they pretty much said what I told you-she has to be staying with somebody she knew from before. I want you guys to get out there and start talking to people."

"If we find her?" asked the man from the window.

"If you find her-if you literally find her, like walk in on her-you won't have to worry, because she'll kill you. But if you hear where she is, get back to me. We'll get some guys to pick her up."

"I don't know if I can be of much use," Honus Johnson said. "I'm not a scout."

"I want you to go along with Troy, here, and stand in the background," Ross said. "People have some ideas about you. That might convince them to be more forthcoming. And I have something else for you."

"Hmmm?" Johnson didn't quite look eager.

Ross looked at Troy. "You remember that woman Nancy Leighton? Used to work in fulfillment? Black hair, little mustache… Quit maybe three years ago?"

"Drove a Camaro," Troy said.

"That's the one. She used to be a good friend of Rinker's. I think she's got an apartment down on the south side somewhere. Get in her apartment, take her apart."

Johnson's eyebrows went up. "Take her apart? Completely?"

"Completely. Be careful-no prints, no DNA, but we want it to be noticed. We want it in the newspapers. Front page. Make it ugly."

"An example," Johnson said with relish. He rubbed the edge of one hand through the palm of the other, back and forth, like a saw. Then: "Do I get Clara if we pick her up?"

"I'd have to think about that," Ross said. "I do like the girl-but she's a very bad example, hitting Nanny like she did."

"I'd like to have her for a while," Johnson said. His flat tongue flickered out to his thin lips, his flat pale eyes catching Ross's. "It wouldn't have to be long."

At that moment, when he caught Ross's eyes, Ross realized who Johnson looked like: the old man in the Grant Wood painting American Gothic, the somber old man with the pitchfork standing next to his equally somber wife. "Old rivals, huh?" Ross said, and smiled at the thought. The two of them had been a powerful combination.

Too bad about Clara.

At the FBI building, Lucas said goodbye to Mallard and got into his car. "Gonna roll around town for a while," he said. He dug up Micky Andreno's phone number and dialed it. Andreno was out in the yard and snatched up the phone on the fifth ring, as Lucas was about to hang up. "Washing the car," he said.

"Know anybody at Heartland National?"

"No, but one of Bender's kids works there. Want me to call him?"

"I think that Andy Levy's a vice president. I did some calling around."

"Oh, shit… Oh, shit."

"What?"

"I'm so fuckin' stupid. How could I be this fuckin' stupid?" Andreno sounded shocked.

"What?"

"Nine, ten years back, there was a double murder-a woman and her divorce attorney were found together in bed, shot to death. Actually, the guy was in bed and the woman was on the floor right beside the bed, and the way it was reconstructed, they'd been screwing. Right in the act. This was at her house. Somebody walked in and shot the attorney twice in the back of the head with a small-caliber weapon. The woman apparently tried to slide out from under and get out, but she was shot in the forehead and then twice in the temple. There was a hideout in the bottom of her dresser, and a bunch of jewelry was taken… worth maybe ten grand? Something like that. The husband was a guy named Levy-I think it was Aaron Levy-but I'll tell you what: Nobody knew it at the time, but looking back, it sounds exactly like Rinker. Like one of her hits."

"Aaron Levy, Andy Levy… could be the same. Or maybe Sellos got it wrong," Lucas said. "No arrests on the two killings?"

"Never a smell of one. Levy, this guy-a young guy-was like at some big Jewish convention somewhere, with several thousand witnesses. His wife's name, I think, was Lucille. Lucy. That's what I remember. Bender could probably get a file. He's still tight with the guys in homicide."

"See if he can. Ask him if his kid will talk to us," Lucas said. "Call me back when you know."

"Pick me up," Andreno said.

"Sure. Call Bender."

Lucas dialed the number Sally had given him. She answered with "Yes?"

"I just talked to a guy who said there was an Aaron Levy, a case nine or ten years ago, whose wife Lucille and her divorce attorney were shot to death in her bed. Execution-style, Rinker-style, small-caliber weapon, close range, head shots. No arrests."

"Hang on a minute."

He heard her repeating what he'd said, and then Malone came on. "Interesting," Malone said. "Louis just walked in… I'm on-line… Let me get this… Aaron Levy and Lucille? Conventional spellings?"

"That's the names I got."

He could hear her typing, and then she said, "Here it is. Case still open. Nothing here… let me search." She hit a few more keys, then said, "Nothing here on Rinker, so nobody attributed it to her. All I get is Aaron-no Andy, no bank job. No job reported here."

A male voice in the background said, "That's him, though. We've got a newspaper file from the Post-Dispatch website, a speech for the Chamber of Commerce. He's listed as Aaron parenthesis Andy parenthesis Levy, vice president at Heartland National Bank. This is five years ago."

Then another male voice: "Where is Davenport getting this shit?"

Malone said, "I'm speeding everything up. We're putting a screen around Levy right now. We've got to talk some tactics here, but I'm going to suggest to Louis that we might go see him. Go see Levy."

"Let me know," Lucas said. They talked for another minute, then he rang off. Five seconds later, before he could put the phone away, another call came in. Andreno.

"Bender's going downtown to see if he can get the Levy file. He doesn't think it'll be a problem to look at it, but he'll have to slide around a little to Xerox it. He'll try to get it."

"What about the kid?"

"He's calling the kid."

"Outstanding."

"If it works out. Let me tell you how to get where I am…"

Andreno lived in an aging brick house in a narrow street of older brick houses, all shoulder-to-shoulder, with tiny yards and high porches, and pairs of bedroom windows looking out over the porch roofs toward the street; working-class, 1920, maybe, Lucas thought. A movie set for an Italian neighborhood.

Lucas pulled up in front, and Andreno banged out through the door a few seconds later. Lucas climbed out of the Porsche and said, "Want to run it?"

"Sure."

Lucas tossed him the keys, got in the passenger side, and located the instruments for the other man. Andreno eased away from the curb. "Now we got to drive around in front of all my ex-girlfriends' houses. That's gonna take a while."

"Never got married?"

"Got married twice, loved both of them to death, but they didn't like me much, I guess," Andreno said. "I can be an asshole."

"Any kids?"

"Two. One with each. They seem to like me all right."

"Got one myself, with another one in the oven," Lucas said.

"Gotta have kids," Andreno said. "Otherwise, what's the point?"

They were halfway downtown, the old courthouse on the horizon with the Gateway Arch behind it, when Bender called. Andreno answered, then handed the phone to Lucas: "I can't talk and shift."

Lucas took the phone. "What's up?"

"My daughter's name is Jill. She's got a friend in the computer systems department over at Heartland, and he can get you a list of Levy's private clients. Take about twenty minutes."

"Can he do it without anybody knowing that he's the one who printed it? We don't want Levy pissed at anybody, in case… you know, in case Rinker's a friend of his."

"We talked about that: He can get it without anybody knowing. Turns out he pipes stuff out to a business guy at the Post-Dispatch, so he's done it before. Jill's gonna get it, she'll meet you at Tony's Coffee."

Lucas looked at Andreno. "Tony's Coffee?"

"Sure. Right downtown. Ten minutes."

"We'll be at Tony's," Lucas told Bender.

"How're we doing?"

Lucas laughed. "Everything that's broken on the case was broken by us. We're rolling."

"Hang around Tony's. I'll see you there myself in a half hour," Bender said.

Jill Bender was a thin redhead with a big nose and wide smile. She found them two-thirds of the way back in Tony's, huddled over cups of coffee. She slid in beside Andreno and asked, "Where've you been keeping yourself?"

"Playing golf," Andreno said. He introduced Lucas and then asked her, "How's your mom?"

"She still hurts. They say they replace both knees at the same time, because if you only do one, you'll never do the other, because of the pain."

"Better than being crippled," Andreno said. To Lucas: "Arthritis."

"I heard that about the knee thing," Lucas said. "My fiancйe's a surgeon."

Bender was digging in her purse, and came up with a plain white business envelope. "You never heard of me," she said.

"If they really busted their asses, could they figure out how it got to us?" Lucas asked.

She shook her head. "I don't see how. Nobody knows about me and Dave, and even if they did, it'd be a long train. And dad sounded excited about the whole thing… so take it."

Lucas took the envelope and put it in his pocket. "I'd like to buy you something: a cup of coffee or a diamond necklace or something-but it'd probably be better if you got out of here."

She bobbed her head. "Yup. You guys be careful. Make Dad be careful."

They said they would, and she patted Andreno on the thigh in a niece-like way and left. Lucas took the envelope out of his pocket and spread the four sheets of paper on the table. On the left side of the paper was a list of names and addresses, and on the right, a bank balance and account number. He scanned them, but nothing in particular caught his eye. As he finished each page, he pushed it across the table to Andreno. When Andreno had read the last page, Lucas asked, "See anything?"

"I know a couple of the companies, the names," Andreno said. "Nothing out of line. But did you see the balances? Nothing under four mil. Bronze Industries at thirty-two million? What the hell is Bronze Industries?"

"I don't know. Some kind of metal deal? I never heard of it."

"Only four individuals, never heard of any of them. I don't know what to tell you."

"I gotta get this back to the feds," Lucas said. "This is what they're good at."

"There's a copy place down the street-they probably got a fax."

Andreno waited at Tony's for Bender, while Lucas walked down the street. On the way, he punched Sally's number into the cell phone, got her, and asked for a fax number. She came back with it, and he scribbled it on the palm of his hand.

"What is it?"

"Andy Levy's private client list, with addresses, account numbers, and current balances. You need to look at them and see what they lead back to. Most of them are companies."

"Where'd you get it? This might not be legal."

He heard somebody else in the room ask, "What?"

Lucas said, "Look, I'm gonna fax these things to you. If you don't want them, shred them. As far as legal is concerned, I'm not a lawyer. I just got them from a guy."

He punched off and, five minutes later, started dropping the sheets into the fax machine; the machine on the other end was running, and accepted them.

Bender and Andreno were drinking coffee when Lucas got back. As Lucas sat down, Bender pushed a neat stack of paper across the table. Lucas thumbed through them: xeroxes of a police file.

"I read some of the crime-scene reports while I was xeroxing them," Bender said. He was pleased with himself. "Rinker killed them. Look at the pages I marked with the red pen."

Lucas started pulling out paper: reports from a crime-scene team, from a pathologist, from a cop who ran the case. The killer got in without breaking anything, and there were no signs of tools used around the door-the killer almost certainly had a key, which didn't mean much. There were ways to get keys.

The killer also knew where to find a jewelry hideout box-a concealed vertical slat on the side of a dresser in the master bedroom. The investigating cop described it as "built-in and invisible. In my opinion, the perpetrator must have had prior knowledge of its location."

Further along was a note that Levy had receipts and appraisals for the missing jewelry, setting its value at about sixty thousand dollars.

"Sixty thousand on the jewelry," Lucas told Andreno.

"My memory's getting bad… or maybe it's just the inflation."

Some of the jewelry Levy had purchased for his wife, but most she'd inherited from her grandmother and a great-aunt. The Levys' insurance covered only a small fraction of the valuation, no more than five thousand dollars, because they'd neglected to get a jewelry rider on their home insurance policy. There was also a later note, by a second investigator, made when the active investigation was suspended, that much of the value of the inherited jewelry was not in the stones but in the maker's mark-early Tiffany gold and diamonds-and that value would be lost if the pieces were melted down or broken up. Though a knowledgeable thief might try to sell them intact, nothing had been recovered.

"Typical Mafia greed-head would have been insured up to the nuts," Bender said.

"Maybe he thought that'd be too much of a tip-off," Lucas said. "Like pulling the family pictures out of the house before you torch it."

Andreno said, "Might even consider it a nice touch-losing the jewelry."

The victims had been sexually engaged when they were killed. The man was shot in the back of the head. There were no exit wounds, and according to the pathologist, the. 22 hollowpoints had made mush out of his brains. Because there were no exit wounds, there were no spatter marks to indicate his exact position when shot. The woman had tried to push him away, but was shot herself before she could get entirely from beneath him; she was draped over the bed onto the floor, with one leg under the man's body.

Lucas tapped the papers back together into a neat stack. "Somebody comes in after a lot of research, gets very close, kills with a. 22 that none of the neighbors hear-maybe a silencer-provides Levy with a nice touch on the jewelry, and is long gone before the bodies are found. Very efficient."

"Rinker," said Bender, finishing his coffee.

Bender offered to drop Andreno. Lucas took the Porsche back to the FBI building, went through the identification rigamarole, and found Malone sitting in the conference room by herself. She looked up from her laptop, blinked a few times to refocus, and said, "Lucas."

"Where is everybody?"

"Most of them are working Levy. Louis is down talking to the AIC, and the two computer guys went to lunch. Got anything new?"

"You get the faxes?"

"We're running them now. Davy Mathews, the organized-crime guy-we introduced you, the guy with the blue suit and white shirt? — thinks he remembers three of the names from references back in Washington. If he can remember three off the top of his head, then there are probably more. Levy could be a serious matter." Her eyes drifted back to the laptop.

"Okay. When is Mallard getting back?" Lucas pulled out a chair and sat down, dug a legal pad out of his briefcase.

"A few minutes. He's just trying to get straight on who's doing what."

"You want to see the St. Louis file on the Levy murder?"

Now she turned to him, one eyebrow raised. Lucas had heard that the one-eyebrow ability was genetic, like the ability to curl your tongue. "You have access?"

"I got the file," Lucas said. "Not the original, but a complete xerox." He took it out and pushed it across the table, and Malone walked her office chair over and thumbed quickly through it. "I'll have somebody check it and cross-reference the names. Thanks."

"Sure."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Sit back, close my eyes, and think," he said. He put his feet and calves on the table, tilted the chair back and closed his eyes.

After a minute, she asked, "You're just going to sit there?"

"For a while."

Malone watched him for a few more seconds, then shrugged and went back to the laptop. After a minute or two, his eyes still closed, he asked, "Louis make a move on you yet?"

Heavy silence, then: "No."

"Is he going to?"

"I don't know. He's certainly taking his time."

"He wants to. But he's too shy. I tried to get him to grab you in Mexico, and he got in a heavy sweat. He's sorta that way. You may have to help him along."

"Ah, jeez," she said. And after a while: "I'm not one hundred percent sure I want to. He's not the most… I don't know."

"Not a paperhanger?"

"Sheetrocker. The Sheetrocker is like a fantasy. Big arms, big legs, little butt. Dumb as a bowl of mice. He'll never finish his novel. He only has a novel because he's just barely smart enough to understand that women aren't impressed by Sheetrocking. I doubt that he's faithful; jeez, I know he's not. I mean, I haven't caught him running around or anything, but it just isn't his nature."

Lucas cracked his eyelids and looked at her. She was sitting in her chair facing him, shoulders hunched, hands in her lap. She looked lonely. "You guys… Look, try him out. Mallard. Really. Take him out for a cup of coffee, and just… take a meeting, for Christ's sake. You both know how to do that."

"Thank you for your concern, Chief Davenport."

"Fuck it. I'm going back to sleep."

After a while, he dropped the chair back down, scratched his head, and asked, "I guess you're monitoring Clara's cell phone, in case she calls anyone?"

"Yeah."

"Did you think about asking her brother to call her on that number?"

"Why'd you have to mention Louis?" Malone asked.

"I thought somebody ought to. Put the poor bastard out of his misery, if nothing else." She sniffed, and Lucas said, "No, no no… you know the rule: no crying."

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, and he went back to his question. "Anyway, did you think about having her brother call Rinker? Like, early in the morning? If he did, and she answered, and he kept her on for a few minutes, maybe we could zero in on the neighborhood where she's staying. She's gotta be ditched with a friend."

"We're talking about that," Malone said. "We don't have the street contacts here, but we've got the brains. We've talked through most of the possibilities, based on what we've got."

"You gonna do it?"

"Probably-if she doesn't move on Levy. Or one of the others. We're doing a full-court press."

"You got the budget?"

"Yes, we did…" She sniffed again and said, "You know, I always thought I was going to grow up and be pretty glamorous, an FBI agent, high up, with a gun and a computer and fly in jets. And all I wind up doing is marrying stupid guys and I get to be a joke. I'm too tall and I'm too thin and I always dress too conservatively. I'm flinty. This isn't the way it was supposed to be."

"Jesus, Malone, you married them. I can't tell you about that."

"It always seemed like such a good idea at the time. You know, one of the guys, the actor, we got married at the courthouse by a judge and we went outside and he asked me if I had enough money for a cab, and I thought, This isn't going to work. We'd been married exactly seven minutes."

"Talk to Louis, for Christ's sake… I'm going back to sleep."

Lucas leaned back again. He could hear an occasional flurry of keystrokes from the laptop, as Malone pushed through a file somewhere out in electronic FBI-land.

His basic personal asset in the investigation was a bunch of guys who knew the town-but that didn't mean much at the moment, because there was no way to leverage that into more information. If they had even a rough idea of where she was, then some of the FBI data, combined with street information, might get them close. Until then… He'd read in an informational brochure at the hotel that there were more than two and a half million people in the St. Louis metro area. Too many.

Another thought popped up. "Say, did you check Levy's past account records, to see if Clara's in there? If we could tell where she's moved her money, that'd be good. Or maybe Levy would know."

"Workin' on it," Malone said. "If we can figure out these other accounts, we may have something to squeeze him with."

"Huh."

Two minutes of silence, then another thought: "She probably crossed the border illegally. I mean, you know, wetbacked it across. She can't know the level of surveillance at the border, she wouldn't want to take a chance of a random check on faked or stolen documents."

"So?"

"So, if she crossed the border illegally, that means she probably crossed in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or California."

"Yeah?"

"I drove out to California last year, and there aren't that many ways to get from those places to the Midwest, in a hurry. She could fly, but she never flew much when you guys were tracking her before, because there's always a record and they want ID to get on the planes… I bet she crossed out of Mexico and bought a car. She'd need one when she got here. And I think she'd stick to interstate highways, because there's more volume of traffic and she'd be less conspicuous. And she'd probably pay cash for everything…"

"Where's this going?"

"You'd only have to backtrack down a couple of interstates… Seventy, Forty-four."

"Maybe Fifty-five," Malone said, getting interested now.

"Ever since gas theft became a deal, most of the interstate stations have surveillance cameras snapping photos of the cars as they gas up. What if you gave the ID photos to all the local sheriff's departments and had them paper the gas stations along the interstates? If somebody recognizes her…"

"If we could even find out what day or even week that she was at a particular place, we could run all of the plates and check the anomalies."

"Long shot," Lucas said.

"But it's a shot," she said.

They were still talking about it when Mallard arrived, looking harassed. Lucas's eyes met Malone's across the table, and she gave a tiny negative shake of her head: not now. Lucas turned to Mallard and asked, "You all meetinged out yet?"

"Meetings are the water we swim in," Mallard said. He fussed with some paper. "But now we all agree who's running this particular investigation." He paused. "Me."

"What about the net on Levy?"

"We're all over him. He's in his office, and if he walks down the hall to the rest room, we'll know." He looked at Malone. "When I was listening to all that bullshit from Lewis, I was thinking about Levy. I want to contact him now. This afternoon. Get everything we can on him, go over there, tell him he's on Rinker's list, and ask him why. Find out if he knows her, or knows where her money is. At least get him cooperating with the net."

"What if he runs?" Malone asked.

"What if she kills him?" Mallard said.

They all thought about that for a moment, then Malone asked, "If you make the call, I can put it together in an hour."

Mallard looked at Lucas. "What do you think?"

Lucas shrugged. "If he decides to run, can you stop him? Running would be the safest thing for him-and he wouldn't even have to talk to you. If you have something-anything-that would keep him from leaving, I'd put it on him. Because if he has money ditched offshore somewhere, and he splits, it could be a long time before any of us see him again."

Mallard nodded. "We'll find something. You can't live in this country for two days without breaking some law, somewhere."

"You want me to put it together?" Malone asked.

Mallard nodded. "Yes. Do it."