Certain Prey

made to fix cars, no more’n I’m made to pull cow tits; I’m made to rock ’n’ roll.”
    “You’re made to . . .”
    The man in the van spoke over Lucas’s shoulder: “All done.” He handed Carmel’s key ring to Lucas, and Lucas handed it to Blue.
    “Dunwoody,” Lucas said.
    “Rock ’n’ roll,” said Blue as he walked away.

    L UCAS, WEARING his dark blue lawyer suit and carrying a black leather briefcase, said “Jim Bone” to the doorman at the desk, who looked at a list and said, “And your name, sir?”
    “Lucas Davenport.”
    “Go right on up, Mr. Davenport,” the doorman said, making a tick next to Lucas’s name.
    Lucas had made a medium-sized fortune when he sold his simulations company; Bone’s bank managed it.
    “. . . really risky,” Bone said. “The economy could drop like a rock and who’s going to pay a hundred dollars a round after that?”
    Lucas nodded: “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have to make a hundred dollars a round—I could break even at sixty.”
    “You don’t know anything about running a golf course,” Bone said.
    “Of course not; I wouldn’t even try to. I don’t even like golf. That’s why they’re talking about professional management.”
    “It’s not completely crazy,” Bone admitted finally.
    “The whole point,” Lucas said, “is that I could give my daughter that big chunk right now, take a mortgage on the rest, put all the excess into course maintenance, building value. By the time she’s twenty-five or thirty, she owns the whole limited-partnership share, ninety-nine percent, while I own the general partner’s share, one percent, and we sell it and she’s fixed. She picks up four or five million, minimum, and who knows? Maybe five or ten.”
    “The concept’s okay, but to tell you the truth, you might do better in the long run just to pay the government’s bite . . .”
    When they were done, Lucas said good-bye to Kerin, who seemed much softer than when he’d first met her; slower, happier, pleased with herself. Bone, at the door, said, “I’ll have the guys work it up for you. We’ll have something in a week.”
    “Thanks, Jim.” T HERE WERE FIVE DOORS on Bone’s floor. Three apartments in addition to Bone’s, and the fire-stair door. No security camera. Lucas let the elevator doors close behind him, and pushed twenty-seven. As the elevator started up, he took a nylon sock out of his pants pocket, spread it apart and slipped it over the top of his head, like a watch cap. If there were somebody in the hallway, he could slip it back off— maybe without it being seen.
    But the hallway of the twenty-seventh floor was dead quiet. Still in the elevator, blocking the door with his foot, he pulled the nylon down over his face, turned up his coat collar so it looked almost clerical, and did a quick peek out in the hall. No video cameras. He walked quickly down to Carmel’s apartment, slipped the first key in. The key turned—the other, he thought, must be for her office.
    There was one light on, somewhere at the back of the apartment.
    “Hello?” he called. No answer. “Hello?”
    He did a quick tour, checking, his nerves starting to jangle. He’d done this before, but he’d make a poor burglar, he thought.
    He started with her home Rolodex. There were dozens of names, most attached to the name of a law firm or a corporation—business acquaintances. There were a few names with a first and last, followed by a number, but usually by two numbers. An office and a home phone, Lucas thought. Probably not a killer’s number. There were ten numbers that involved simply a name and a number, and he copied those into a notebook.
    Then, in the kitchen, he found another address book, this one, apparently, purely personal. He took a small Nikon camera from his briefcase, made sixteen shots, stopped to reload the camera, made eight more, and dropped it back in his briefcase.
    Then he started through the apartment:
    He found a Dell computer in her study, with a built-in Zip drive. He’d brought Zip, Jaz and Superdisks; he brought the computer up, clicked on the Computer icon, and dragged all of her documents to the Zip icon. As the computer began dumping to the Zip drive, he began looking through the array of filing cabinets on the other side of the room. He pulled the drawers one at a time, and in the last drawer, found a mass of paid bills—nothing big, just the usual once-a-month routine. He riffled through them quickly, separated out the