Eyes of Prey

not in the right place.
    He parked, got out and sauntered toward the mall. A bronze rent-a-cop car rolled slowly through the lot, andDruze headed inside. He’d worked on his face with Cover Mark cosmetics and wore a felt hat with a snap brim, so he wouldn’t be particularly noticeable from a range of more than a few feet. Not unless they saw the nose. He pulled the hat farther down on his forehead.
     
    Druze was worried. In the beginning, when he and Bekker had worked through the plan, it had seemed simple. Bekker would take Armistead, and Druze would take Stephanie Bekker. Both he and Bekker would get what they wanted—Bekker his freedom, Druze his security. Both would have solid alibis. If the pressure on Bekker got too great, Druze could take a third. No problem. But then the lover came along . . . .
    Was George the right one? He looked like the man in the hall, but the man in the hall had been wearing only a towel, his thinning hair had been wet, his face contorted. Druze had seen him only for an instant. Had he been heavier than George? Now, at this distance, Druze just wasn’t sure. He’d looked at too many pictures of people who were almost right. Contaminated with information, he thought.
    Bekker . . . He was no longer sure of Bekker. They’d met after a show, in a theater café, Bekker there with Stephanie and some kind of doctors’ group from the university. Bekker had been out on the edge of the group, left alone. Druze had come in, also alone, looking for a drink. He’d seen the beautiful man immediately, couldn’t take his eyes away: Bekker had so much . . . .
    Bekker had been equally fascinated. He’d made the first approach: Hello there, I think I saw you on the stage a few minutes ago  . . . .
    And later, much later, after they were . . . friends? was that right? . . . Bekker had said, “We’re the opposite sides of the same coin, my friend, trapped by our looks.”
    But it hadn’t been their appearances that held themtogether. It had been something else: the taste for violence? what?
     
    He stood next to the atrium rail in the mall, looking down to the lower floor. Shoppers strolled down the length of the mall, some still in careful winter dress, dark, somber, protective, gloves sticking out from coat pockets. Others, the younger ones, had shifted with the Gulf winds, going into summer, T-shirts under light nylon windbreakers, a few of them in shorts, surfers for the boys, tennis shorts for the girls.
    He started picking out women. Forties. Somebody attractive. Somebody who might catch the eye of a psycho. There were dozens of them, singles, twos and threes, tall, small, heavy, slender, scowling, laughing, intent, window-shopping, strolling, paying cash, checking receipts, holding up blouses . . . . Druze unconsciously flipped his car keys in the air with one hand, picked them out of the air with the other, tossed them back to the first, and did it again.
    And he chose: Eenie meenie minie moe . . .
     
    Nancy Dunen couldn’t believe the price of jeans. She never believed. Every time she came in, she thought the last time must have been an aberration, a nightmare. The twins always managed to wear out the back-to-school jeans, bought in September, at the same time in the spring. Two twelve-year-olds, four pairs of jeans, thirty-two dollars a pair . . . she stared blankly into the middle distance, her lips moving, as she calculated. A hundred twenty-eight dollars. My God, where would it come from? Maybe Visa would have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
    She held the pants up, checking for flaws in the fabric. Noticed the feminine cut. Twelve years old, and they were getting curves in their pants already. Must be hormones in the breakfast cereal.
    A man meandered past the open front of the store.Something wrong with his face, though it was hard to tell exactly what it was. He was wearing an old-fashioned brown felt hat, with the brim snapped down. She was looking past the pants when she saw him; she felt the light clink of eye contact, turned away as the man turned away, and she scraped at a knot in the denim with a fingernail. Good eye, Dunen, she thought. She put that pair of jeans back, got another.
    Nancy sometimes thought she might be pretty, and sometimes she was sure she wasn’t. She kept her dark hair cut short, skimped on the makeup, stayed in shape with a three-time-a-week jog around the neighborhood. She didn’t spend a lot of time