Mortal Prey

okay.”
    “All right. Still, this fuckin’ woman ought to be in the CIA or something. They could use her.”
    Lucas looked up and down the street. “I’d say we could put a squad at the far end, but then…it’d just scare her off, if she’s coming. I’d rather have her come.”
    “And fuck a bunch of Rosses?”
    “He knows what he’s getting into…. And yeah, fuck him.”
    Andreno shook his head. “That’s harsh, man.” He looked down the street again. “Just like standing naked in the window.”
     
    THEY WENT UP the steps and inside, showed their IDs to a guard, went up the interior steps and out the back, past the lighted fountain. To the left, on the other side of a long, low, redbrick building, a group of waiters were setting up tables and lighting mosquito-repelling tiki torches. They turned that way, down more stairs, up a sidewalk edged with button-sized red and blue flowers.
    A woman in a blue dress and matching shoes, pearls, and carefully coiffed blond hair was supervising the waiters. She saw them, said something to a waiter, then hurried over: “I’m sorry, this is a private party.”
    She had a perfectly sculpted nose, and it was quivering like a rat terrier’s.
    “We’re cops,” Andreno said laconically. He snapped his gum. “We’re…making sure there’s no problem tonight.”
    “Problem?” She looked from Andreno to Lucas. “What kind of problem?”
    “A woman named Sally, from the FBI, will be here in a couple of minutes,” Lucas said, looking back at the entry building. “She’ll explain it all. We’re making a routine security check. We hear one of the cellos could…do something crazy.”
     
    SHE WANTED MORE , her nose quivering even more fiercely as they put her off and wandered past a rectangular bed of red and gold chrysanthemums, past a pool, then through a hedge into the rose garden, strolling with their hands in their pockets, looking at the flowers. “Rinker’d have to be thinking about climbing a tree,” Lucas said, finally, as they walked out the far side of the rose garden and stopped under a crab-apple tree. There wasn’t much contour to the land, but there was some, and the higher ground was to the left, and was covered with trees. “Ross’ll be okay as long as he stays in the rose garden. The feds’ll have three teams covering out there. They all rented tuxes, they’ll come in one at a time, and once they get out in the dark, you won’t be able to see them.”
    “You really think something is gonna happen?”
    “I think…I don’t know. These things get a rhythm. If I were Rinker, and if I were going after Ross, I’d go after him soon. Not because I had to, but because I couldn’t stand not doing it. Getting it over with. Being done.”
    “But if she’s not going after him…”
    “Something’ll happen. Something to put a period on it. If Ross gets here and he’s walking around free as a bird, slapping people on the back, happy—then I’d be inclined to think that Clara’s on her way to Paris. But if he’s walking around keeping his head down, and his shoulder blades pinched together…it’ll be interesting to see.”
     
    OFF TO THE RIGHT , they could see the glass-and-steel Climatron dome, with more pools in front of it. They wandered down that way.
    “Can’t see much from here—too many bushes,” Andreno said.
    “Other side would be better,” Lucas agreed. “From a shooting point of view.”
    They paused next to a pool. A few feet from the corner, two bronze statues, naked dancing women, hung over the water. “Look at the knockers on that one,” Andreno said.
    Lucas had to laugh, because the same thought had trickled through his mind. “Look at the knockers on both of them.”
    They walked. Ambled. Hands in their pockets.
    “Rinker’s not gonna be here,” Andreno said after a minute or two. “A: She doesn’t know about it. B: He’s too protected.”
    “She fooled us on Levy, she fooled us on Malone, she fooled us on Dallaglio—she shouldn’t have been able to do any of those things. We knew she was smart, but she was a lot smarter than we were ready for,” Lucas said. “She doesn’t miss anything.”
    Andreno looked past him. “There’s Sally. And Jesus, there’s Mallard—he looks like he was hit by a truck.”
    “Man, I just…I think if somebody killed Weather, my fuckin’ head would explode,” Lucas said. “Let’s go talk to him.”
    “What is it that the feds kept saying? Showtime.