Mind Prey

looking at the rows of neat, anonymous little houses. “Laying up.”
    “Yeah. Or he could be out.”
     
    M AIL FOUND A cut-rate gas station with no customers and no visible television. He pulled in—the shotgun, the hat and cop jacket in the backseat—and pumped ten dollars’ worth of gas into the car. A bored kid sat behind the counter eating a packet of beer nuts, and Mail passed him the old woman’s ten-dollar bill. Another customer pulled in as he paid for the gas. Mail walked back out, head averted, got in the car, and left. The other customer filled his tank, walked inside, and said, “That guy who just left—he looked like the guy they’ve got on TV.”
    “Don’t got no TV. Asshole owner won’t let me,” the kid said dully. He did the credit card, and the other man said, “Sure looked like him, though,” and went off to work, where he talked about it most of the morning.
    Mail went on down the block, stopped for a red light, turned on the radio. They were talking about him. “…apparently a long-time mental patient who faked his own death. Police have not yet identified the body found in the river.”
    Good. A break.
    But they could be lying. Davenport could be mouse-trapping him.
    Another voice said, No big difference. There’s no way out anyway. Anger cut through him, and he thought: no way out.
    Another voice: sure you can …
    He was smart. He could get down to the house, pick up what cash he had, take care of Manette and the kid, make it out to the countryside, knock off some rich farmer, somebody whose death wouldn’t be noticed right away. If he could get a car for forty-eight hours, he could drive to the West Coast. And from the West Coast…he could go anywhere.
    Anywhere. He smiled, visualized himself driving across the west, red buttes on the horizon, cowboys. Hollywood.
    As the light changed to green, Mail saw the freestanding phone booth at the side of an Amoco station. He hesitated, but he wanted to talk. And shit, they knew who he was—they just didn’t have the LaDoux name. He pulled into the station, dropped a quarter, and dialed Davenport.
     
    T HE PHONE RANG and Sloan looked at Lucas, and said, “If it’s him, give me the high sign, and I’ll tell the Cap.”
    Lucas took the phone out, flipped it open. “Davenport.”
    Mail’s voice was dark but controlled. “This was not fair. You had a lot more resources on your side.”
    “John, we’re all done,” Lucas said, jabbing a finger at Sloan. Sloan ran off to where the uniform captain was talking by radio with the cars on the perimeter. “Come on in. Give us Manette and the kids, huh?”
    “Well, I just can’t do that. That’d just be losing all the way around, you know? I mean, if they go away, then you’ve lost, too. You know? You’ve really lost, completely, in fact, because that’s all you really want.”
    “John, I’m not worried about winning or losing…”
    “I gotta go,” Mail said, interrupting. “You’ve got those assholes tracing this.”
    “Are you trying to protect your friend? The one who’s feeding you information on us?”
    There was a moment of silence, then Mail laughed. “My friend? Fuck my friend. Fuck her.”
    And he hung up.
    Lucas ran to the uniform captain’s car, and the captain was saying, “Are you sure that’s it? All right, I’m on the way.”
    To Lucas, he said, “It’s an Amoco station not five miles from here. We didn’t have anybody close. He’s out.”
    Lucas said, “Shit,” walked in a circle.
    The uniform cop screeched out, leaving them, and Sloan said, “What’d he say?”
    “He’s gonna kill them.”
    “Aw, shit.”
    “But it’s gonna take him a while to get there,” Lucas said. “Patch through to Dispatch. Call Del, get him in. Get Loring from Intelligence and that rape guy, Franklin. Get him. Get them out of bed, anything you have to do, but tell them to meet me downtown in fifteen minutes. Tell them don’t shave, don’t clean up, just get there. Fifteen minutes.”
    “What’re you gonna do?”
    “You know somebody’s feeding information to Mail?”
    “I know you think that,” Sloan said.
    “I’m gonna arrest her,” Lucas said.
    Sloan’s eyebrows went up. “Her? Who is it?”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “Get going.”
    Sloan, puzzled, hurried away. Lucas went back to the telephone, dialed. When the phone at the other end was picked up, he said, “Time to make your humanitarian visit to White.”
    “Lucas…” Roux