Easy Prey

looked down the hall toward the emergency operating theater.
    “There’s no way to tell. Until she’s fixed.”
    Lucas looked at Del. “I told you man, I got a bad feeling.”
    Del asked the nurse, “Have you seen Dr. Weather Karkinnen around?”
    “Yes. She was down asking about Officer Sherrill just a few minutes ago. I think she’s doing her morning rounds.”
    “Let’s go,” Lucas said.
    They tracked her down in the surgery wards, talking to the parents of a child who’d had some reconstruction work after a car accident. Lucas stuck his head in the room, and Weather saw him and said, “I’ll be just a minute.”
    They waited in the hall, listening to the murmur of voices, Lucas pacing, until Weather came out. “I don’t think it’s too bad,” she said. “I think it’s that one leak.”
    “They said she was pretty strong,” Del said.
    “Well . . .” Weather’s eyes slid away from Lucas. “She was in a lot better physical condition than most people who come in.”
    “Aw, man, you’re saying she wasn’t that strong.”
    “Lucas, this had to be done. If they’d waited, she would have gotten weaker, and that would have been worse. Hirschfeld thought he had to go in now.”
    “Is she gonna make it?”
    Weather nodded once, quickly. “Yes.” This time her eyes held on to his.
     
 
SALLANCE HANSON KNEW Rodriguez only slightly. “He’s quite a respected real estate investor, but he’s not part of the usual . . . group. The group that comes to my parties. Do you think he’s the one? Who killed Alie’e?”
    “We’re just doing a second round on everybody,” Lucas lied. He went back to Rodriguez. “I’m curious about the investor part. Our preliminary workup showed him as an employee . . . an apartment manager, not an investor.”
    “Well, like I said, I don’t know him that well, but that’s not the way he talks. That’s not the way he dresses, either. He’s a coarse man, but he has a nice taste in clothes. So do you, by the way.” She reached out, folded back the lapel on Lucas’s jacket, read the label, and asked, “Where’d you get this?”
    “Barneys.”
    “Really. Nice material. You went to New York?”
    “I have a friend there. I visit sometimes,” Lucas said. He pushed the topic back to Rodriguez. “Why is he coarse? What makes you think that?”
    “He’s just . . . Every once in a while, something slips out. He’ll say, ‘twat,’ or something. A lot of guys say ‘twat,’ you know, when they’re looking for an effect, or they’re trying to shock you or piss you off. I even know one guy who tried to tell me it was a variation of twit.”
    Lucas grinned. “He had to be a moron.”
    “Yes, well . . . yes. But with Richie . . . I’ve heard—overheard—Richard say it sort of casually. Like that was the word he’d normally use in that place, and if he said ‘woman,’ it was because he was trying to be polite. He’s a coarse man, with a layer of politeness that he learned somewhere. Maybe a book or something.”
    “Do you know anything about his financial dealings?”
    “No, no. Nothing. Although every time I talked to him, that’s what he wanted to talk about. He was always complaining about his tenants—late with the rent, or skipping out, or whatever.”
    Del chipped in. “You never saw him with Sandy Lansing?”
    “I just don’t remember.”
    “You know Lansing was dealing drugs.”
    She looked at Del for a moment, then at Lucas, then back to Del. “Look, I know . . . I’ve talked to my lawyer, and he says telling you this is no crime. . . . I know some people at the party were using drugs. And I’d heard that you could sometimes get something from Sandy. But I didn’t want to slander a dead woman.”
    Del leaned back on the couch. He was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and a ragged thirty-year-old political T-shirt on which the words “Lick Dick in ’72” were barely legible. He grinned, showing his yellow teeth. “You oughta tell that to Derrick Deal.”
    “Derrick . . . ?” She was puzzled.
    “A guy we know,” Del said. “He’s in the icebox down at the morgue.”
     
 
“RIGHT UP TO that point, I was trying to make nice with her,” Lucas said when they were out on the sidewalk.
    “Fuck the bitch. She’s one of those people who’ll drive you to communism,” Del said. He scratched the side of his face; he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. “After we see about Marcy, maybe you oughta talk to your friend