Easy Prey

purse?”
    “No”.
    “Well, she had one. Pretty big—a lot bigger than fashionable. She had some stuff in it.”
    “Okay,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll come make another statement, but I won’t turn in any of my friends. Or anybody else, for that matter.”
    “Goddamnit.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Then you just might be covering for a killer,” Lucas said impatiently.
    “It’s more important to me to protect my friends than to catch the killer. Catching the guy won’t bring Alie’e or Sandy back. If I turn in my friends . . . well, I won’t do that.”
    “Listen, how about if I put a name on you, and you tell me . . . Look, here’s what I want to know. We’re ninety-nine percent sure that Sallance Hanson knew that there were drugs all over the place.”
    “I won’t--”
    “We’re not on the record here. It’s just you and me. But I don’t want to go off on Hanson if she’s really naive. But she can’t be that naive, can she?”
    Jael kept her mouth shut. Lucas said, “So tell me, can she be that naive? You don’t have to accuse her of anything, but tell me that: Is Sallance Hanson naive?”
    “You’re getting me twisted around.”
    “Is she naive?”
    Jael turned and started back toward her house, her arms wrapped around her body, as if the cold air had suddenly gotten to her. Over her shoulder, she threw one word: “No.”
     
 
LUCAS FOLLOWED AFTER her, said, “Tell me one more thing—something that won’t hurt anyone anymore. Did your brother buy from Sandy Lansing? Did he know her?”
    She slowed, and let him catch up. “I don’t know if he knew who she was, or what she did. Maybe. Somebody might have told him. But he didn’t like dope. He’d get pissed when I used it.”
    “He said he used it when he was young.”
    “Yeah. He was precocious. He used everything when he was a kid,” Jael said. “Then he went to New York and he met Mapplethorpe just before he died, and knowing Mapplethorpe did something to Plain’s brain.”
    “Mapplethorpe. You mean the photographer?”
    “Yes, completely decadent. Plain used to go on rants, about how Mapplethorpe had this good talent that never came to anything, because he killed himself.”
    “Suicide?”
    “No, he died of AIDS, but he was notorious for putting anything and everything into his body, and into anybody’s else’s body. Anyway, Plain got to see the end of that whole thing, and he stopped using.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. He was going to live forever.”
    “So . . . Lansing. He didn’t know her,” Lucas said.
    “Maybe knew her, didn’t buy from her.”
    “Okay.” That’s what Plain had told them.
    “Does any of this help?” Jael asked.
    “Yeah. We couldn’t get any traction. We couldn’t figure out why anybody would kill either of these women, or your brother, for that matter. Dope was always a possibility, but if Sandy Lansing was dealing, then it becomes a serious possibility.”
     
 
A STHEY GOT back to her house, Lucas asked casually, “Are you still using?”
    “Oh, you know, sometimes. Just a little pop.”
    “It’ll kill you, Jael.” He liked her name; it rolled smoothly off the tongue. “You gotta stop.”
    “I need to get smoothed out sometimes,” Jael said.
    “Smoke a little grass. Stay away from the heroin.”
    “Not the same,” she said. But she was amused again. “I should have been recording this: a cop telling me to smoke a little grass.”
    “Grass’ll kill you, too,” Lucas said. “But not until you’re eighty.”
    At the house, they sat on the stoop and talked, Lucas trying to tug the conversation back to the party, looking for another name, another hint. “Look, I’m not going to tell you any more names,” she said. “If I thought it would really help, I would—but it won’t.”
    A city car pulled to the curb, and Sherrill got out. “Sherrill likes you a lot,” Jael said. He could feel her watching his face.
    “I like her a lot,” Lucas said. He half turned. “Sherrill and I have a little history. That’s all over. We weren’t good for each other.”
    “She talks tough,” Jael said.
    “She is tough.”
    “Tough as you?”
    Sherrill was coming up to them. Lucas said, “Maybe.”
     
 
SHERRILL SAID, “HOW’S it going?”
    Her eyes slid from Lucas to Jael, and Jael stood up and said, “Fine. I better go call my lawyer, though.”
    “What, did he whack you around or something?”
    “We’re not that friendly yet,” Jael