Easy Prey

He’s basically a remora. He’s probably back in New York right now, looking for somebody else.”
    “He is. You didn’t like him?”
    “It’s not that. I just didn’t care about him. Didn’t even think about him when he was standing in front of me. He made himself into what he is. Not my fault. He wants to carry bags and hang out with pretty women, and that’s what he does.”
    “Sounds bad,” Lucas said.
    “He doesn’t think so.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Jael said, “You and Marcy had a relationship.”
    “For six weeks or so. It was a little too intense.”
    She cocked her head. “Why would you walk away from intensity? Other people go their whole lives without intensity. They dream about it.”
    “Like I said, this was a little too much. We were headed for a disaster.”
    “You mean, like, you’d strangle her or something?”
    “No. But something was going to happen, and we’d wind up hating each other,” Lucas said. “We didn’t want to do that. Risk it.”
    “She’s still sort of hung up on you,” Jael said. “You know what would’ve been fun? For the three of us to go away. You and me and Marcy.”
    She said it so conversationally that Lucas was neither embarrassed nor surprised. He said, “I’m a little too Catholic for that. Marcy would be, too, if she was a Catholic.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” Jael said. “Not Marcy, anyway. I think she might be interested in the idea.”
    “Really?” She’d said it with some certainty, and now he was surprised. He looked a question at her.
    “No, no, we weren’t playing. We hardly had a chance to talk,” Jael said. “But you can sort of pick out people who like to feel. Marcy’s one of us.”
    “You mean, a little gay?” Lucas asked.
    “No. That’s not what I mean. You’re one of us. I could tell from talking to you, and the way you look at women.”
    “I gotta stop talking about this,” Lucas said.
    “Sure,” she said.
    “It really makes me nervous.”
    “That’s the Catholic part,” she said. “You’ve probably been fighting it all of your life.”
    “Maybe,” he said.
     
 
“YOU KNOW, ” SHE said later, “I’m a little scared.”
    “I know. You should be.”
    “The way Plain was killed. He probably never had a chance even to say anything.”
    “The guy is nuts. But he’s not some great force. We just haven’t been able to find him. We will.”
    “Soon, I hope. I don’t like being cooped up. I’m thinking of heading out to New York, as soon as I can get Plain taken care of.”
    “You could leave that to your father.”
    She shook her head. “Dad . . . couldn’t handle it.”
    “So New York’s an idea,” Lucas said. “But you wouldn’t have any protection.”
    “I could stay in a hotel. How could he find me?”
    “Something to think about,” Lucas said.
    DOWNSTAIRS, AS LUCAS was leaving, Hutton asked, “Learn anything new?”
    It wasn’t meant as a double entrendre, but Lucas turned it into one. “A little more than I wanted,” he said.
     
 
ON THE WAY home, he called St. Anne’s, and got Elle on the line. “I know it’s cold, but I could take you for an ice cream.”
    “Never too cold for an ice cream,” she said. “I’ll walk over, meet you there.”
    The ice cream shop was across the street from St. Anne’s, and was recognized as the local nun hangout. Elle was sitting with three other nuns in a booth near the front of the shop when he walked in, and she laughed and said something to one of the other women and then stood up, and led the way toward the back—a scene, Lucas thought, virtually identical to millions that had taken place in bars that night, if you took away the odor of spilled milk, and, of course, the nuns.
    “Get a break?” she asked, and added, “I told Jim to make you a chocolate malt.”
    “That’s fine. We’ve got a couple of things working. I think we’ve got an eye on the guy who killed Alie’e, and we’ve booby-trapped everybody the second guy might be going after.”
    “You’re sure there’s a second guy.”
    “I think so. And he’s the guy who’s bothering me. The Homicide people have a candidate. Tom Olson.”
    “Ohhh . . . no.”
    “The thing is, they have a theory,” Lucas said. “The theory is, the same kind of mental pressures that made him an ecstatic also made him a multiple personality, and one of those personalities is a psychotic who made a run at Jael Corbeau but got chased off, killed Plain, came