Easy Prey

I’m gonna run out and get a cheeseburger.”
    “All right.”
    Jael Corbeau was sitting on a wooden stool, wearing a clay-spattered apron over jeans and a loose flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled over her elbows. She was turning a cream-colored juglet in her hands. She looked up when Lucas came in. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her nose red and a little swollen; she was still striking. “This thing is three thousand years old,” she said. “Look how nice it is.”
    She handed him the juglet; it was the size of a hand grenade, with a soft, porous surface. “Where’d you get it?”
    “My mother gave it to me, because of my name. Amnon got one, too. They come from Israel, the north part of the country, the Galilee.”
    “I don’t know Israel.” He handed the juglet back. “You wanted to talk?”
    “Where’s Marcy?”
    “Since I was here, she went to get a bite,” Lucas said.
    “Okay. So why don’t we walk?” Jael said. “I wouldn’t mind getting out for a while. Did you bring your gun?”
    The last question came with a small hint of humor in her eyes, and Lucas nodded. “Not only that, but it’s got a hair trigger.”
    “Now I feel completely safe,” she said. But as they stepped outside, she said, “Do you really think somebody might be trying to hurt me?”
    “I don’t know, but there’s no point in taking a chance.”
    “I’m not sure I’d be missed that much.”
    “Maybe not, but if you were killed, the media would trash us. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
    She smiled now. “ Now I feel safe. You’ve got a selfish motive for keeping me alive.”
    “Damn right.”
     
 
THEY WALKED ALONG for a while in the cold air, and then Jael asked, “What’s the thinking on Sandy Lansing?”
    “Well, she’s kind of a mystery,” Lucas said. “She wasn’t a hotel executive, and she had no family money, but she had great clothes, a nice apartment, drove a Porsche, and apparently snorted a massive amount of cocaine, which is not free of charge. We’re trying to figure out where the money came from. We thought maybe it was sex, that she was taking care of rich people at Brown’s, but that seems unlikely now.”
    Jael stopped and looked up at him, her face sober. “It’s weird, you know, all the people at that party.”
    “What?”
    “Oh, just the way they all made the same excuses: there was no dope, they didn’t see any, they didn’t know about any. All so worried about their reputations, just like me. And really, in my world, a little dope is no big deal.”
    “Maybe in the back of their minds, they’re worried about something a little more stark, like jail,” Lucas said. “Rich people don’t like jail. They don’t function well in that environment.”
    “But they didn’t tell you about Sandy. And I didn’t tell you about Sandy. We were all busy thinking about Alie’e, what a tragedy it was, and just keeping your mouth shut about a little dope. . . .”
    “What about Sandy?” But now he knew.
    “She was the dealer,” Jael said. “Half the people at the party bought dope from her—anything you wanted, she could get. She was discreet, she had to know you before she would sell to you, you had to have a recommendation . . . but she could get it.”
    “Did you ever buy from her?”
    “A little heroin, once or twice. Just little touches of it,” she said.
    “Jesus Christ, Jael, that stuff is poison.”
    “But it feels so nice. It smooths you out.” Lucas shook his head angrily and stalked off down the sidewalk. She watched him go, then hurried after him. “What?”
    “That’s so fuckin’ stupid, what you just said. It makes my goddamned head hurt.” Then he stopped, and faced her. “Will you come in and amend your statement, and say that Sandy Lansing was a dealer?”
    “Would I go to jail?”
    “No. There’s nothing illegal about knowing that somebody deals. Bring your lawyer, so you get all the words right. But it’s important that we get it on paper, so we can use the paper to pry information out of other people. I knew something was going on with Lansing, but it was so hard to look in her direction, when everybody was screaming about Alie’e. Did Alie’e get that shit from her?”
    “Yeah. Actually, I wasn’t there, but I think Sandy had a kit in her purse, and I think she’s the one who popped Alie’e. You didn’t find a syringe . . .”
    “No. Nothing like that. Nothing but the tracks.”
    “You didn’t find Sandy’s