Certain Prey

hard as he could, handicapped by his loafers; one of them came off as he cleared the fence, and she swiveled as she ran and fired two more quick shots at him, wildly, but he ducked away, purely by instinct, lifted the pistol but saw window lights behind it and held off, still running. She crossed another fence, a higher one, and now he was only a hundred feet back, and then . . .
    She ran up a ladder that was leaning against the back of a low rambler, kicked the ladder sideways and ran up the roof. He risked the shot this time—it should hit the Mississippi or the far riverbank—but it was a bad shot and then she was over the ridge of the roof and out of sight. He tried to run around the side of the house, but hit a garbage pail and went down, got up, ran another few feet and hit a lawn mower and went down again, got up and ran out onto the lawn . . .
    She was gone.
    The homeowner was at the door yelling, and Lucas screamed, “Call the cops. There’s been a shooting, call 911.”
    He had to pick a direction and he picked north, since that had been her tendency. He ran hard for a hundred feet, kicked off the second shoe, stopped at the street corner, looked wildly up and down, started to run west, turned back . . .
    Nobody there.
    She was gone.
    The St. Paul cops arrived three minutes later.

    M ALONE, LOOKING BUSINESSLIKE again, in a light tweed jacket and carefully ironed, pleated-front blouse, said, “. . . valuable information. We know she’s still in the States, which suggests to me that she wasn’t planning to leave. We’ll get her.”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said. He was fiddling with a yellow No. 2 pencil; since the crime lab had taken the Report away, he didn’t have anything to fiddle with.
    “Have some faith,” Malone said. “After all, you’re the only guy who ever survived her.”
    “Ah, it was a complete fuckup,” Lucas said. “I fired five shots, and never hit her. She fired more than that, and never hit me. We must’ve been five feet apart for a couple of seconds . . .”
    “You’re complaining about her bad shooting?”
    “Well . . .”
    “She would have put a couple right through your brain if you hadn’t had that Report, and hadn’t managed to throw it up in time.”
    “Fuckin’ Report,” Lucas grumbled. “Now I miss the goddamn thing. Took two in the heart for me.”
    Malone pushed up out of her chair. “Listen, I’m heading back to D.C.”
    “Really? I thought you were gonna be here for a while.”
    “Too much going on back home,” Malone said. “I’m flying out tomorrow morning.”
    “Well, jeez,” Lucas said. “Uh, you think you’d have time tonight, you know, we could go fox-trotting again?” WINDING DOWN.
    Kissing Malone good-bye at the airport.
    Careful at nights.
    Carmel, then Clara Rinker. Out of his life, he hoped.

    A WEEK AFTER the visit from Clara, Lucas sat in his office, rereading a note from Del. A woman had been referred to him through hippie friends: she claimed that her abusive husband was actually a Russian spy, a mole. When Del checked, the guy had no past that went back before 1974. He was carrying the name of a Montana boy who’d died in 1958. What should he do?
    Shit, Lucas didn’t know. Call the State Department?
    The phone rang, and he picked it up.

    “T OOK ME a little while to get switched to you,” Rinker said.
    He picked up the accent instantly; could almost smell the french fries and beer at the Rink. “Bureaucracy,” Lucas said. “Are you all right?”
    “Yeah, but you scared the hell out of me. I took a little glass in my shoulder, from when that slug went through the car window.”
    “What can I tell you?” No way to trace this; no way to call anybody, no way to let anyone know he was talking to the new Number One on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
    “I never touched you, did I?” she asked.
    “No, but you screwed up a perfectly good Ermenegildo Zegna sport coat,” Lucas said. “I gotta find a place to have it rewoven. And I had these nice slacks, Italian slacks, they’re ruined.”
    “Aw. Too bad. I’ll tell you what—the thing that got me was the flash from that weapon of yours. What was that, a forty-five?”
    “Yeah, exactly.”
    “I couldn’t see anything. I was hiding by that evergreen of yours, the one by the garage.”
    “Juniper.”
    “Yeah. My eyes were so adjusted to the dark that when you flashed me . . . there was nothing I could do but keep pulling the trigger. I couldn’t see anything. Never