Mind Prey

handkerchief, rubbing his Rudolph-red nose while his eyes watered, trying to smile…
    He was useless until the state swept them all out of the hospital and gave them, in a ludicrous gesture at their presumed normalcy, both medical and life insurance, along with their places in a halfway house. The life insurance had doomed Martin LaDoux.
    Gloria was sitting on Mail’s front porch, waiting, not at all impatient. The house was locked, but John was around—through the front window, she could see the pieces of a microwave meal sitting on a TV tray in the living room.
    The question was, where was he keeping Manette and the kids? The house felt empty. There was nothing living inside. A feather of unease touched Gloria’s heart. Could he have gotten rid of them already?
    No. She knew about John and Manette. He’d keep her for a while, she was sure of that.
    Gloria was sitting on the front steps, chewing on a grass stem. When Mail pulled the van into the yard, she stood up—dressed all in black, she looked like the wicked witch’s apprentice—and sauntered down to meet him.
    “John,” she said. Her face was pallid, soft, an indoor face, an institutional face. “How are you?”
    “Okay,” he said, shortly. “What’s going on?”
    “I came out to see how you’re doing. Got a beer?”
    He looked at her for a moment, and her face shone with knowledge and expectation. She knew. He nodded to the question. “Yeah, sure. Come on in.”
    She followed him inside, looked around. “Same old place,” she said. She plunked down on his computer chair and looked at the blind eyes of the computer monitors. “Got some new ones,” she said. “Any new games?”
    “I’ve been off games,” he said.
    He got two beers from the refrigerator and handed one to the woman, and she twisted the top off, watching him.
    “You’ve got a Davenport game,” she said, picking up a software box. There was a pamphlet inside, and three loose discs.
    “Yeah.” He took a hit of the beer. “How’s your head?” he asked.
    “Been okay.” She thumbed through the game pamphlet.
    “Still on your meds?”
    “Ehh, sometimes.” She frowned. “But I left them back at my apartment.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. I don’t think I can go back there.” She said it as a teaser. She wanted him to ask why not. She tossed the pamphlet back in the software box and looked up at him.
    “Why not?”
    “The cops were there,” she said. She took a drink from the bottle, eyes fixed on him. “Looking for you.”
    “For me?”
    “Yup. They had a picture. I don’t know who told them that I know you, but they knew. I managed to put them off and slid out of there.”
    “Jesus, are you sure? That they didn’t follow…” He looked at the front window, half-expecting squad cars.
    “Yeah. They were stupid; it was easy. Hey, you know who one of them was?”
    “Davenport.”
    She nodded. “Yeah.”
    “Goddamnit, Gloria.”
    “I jumped a bus, rode it eight blocks, hopped off, walked through Janis’s apartment building, and took the walkway to Bob’s, borrowed the car key from Bob…”
    “Did you tell him you were coming to see me?”
    “Nope.” She was proud of herself. “I told him I had to bring some school stuff home. Anyway, I got the key, went down into the parking garage, and got his car. There was nobody around when I left.”
    He watched her as she talked, and when she finished, he nodded. “All right. I’ve been having some trouble with the cops.”
    “I know,” she said. And she popped it out, a surprise: “They were here, too.”
    “Here?” Now he was worried.
    “A cop pulled in just after I got here—they’re checking all the farmhouses. I don’t think he was too interested after I told him I was your wife, and we lived here together.”
    Mail looked at her for a moment, and then said, “You did.”
    “I did,” she said. “And he left.”
    “All right,” he said, his voice flat.
    She caught the hems of her dress and did a mock curtsey, oddly crowlike in its bobbing dip. “You took the Manette lady and her kids.”
    He was dumbstruck by the baldness of it. He tried to recover: “What?”
    “Come on, John,” she said. “This is Gloria. You can’t lie to me. Where’ve you got them?”
    “Gloria…”
    But she was shaking her head. “We took down fifteen thousand, remember?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That was sweet,” she said. “I’d like to help you collect on Manette…if you’ll let me.”
    “Jesus.” He