Mortal Prey

been at his office, working late? She’d be sitting here and never know. There was no chance that he’d call from either his house or his business, though. The feds probably had him so tapped that they knew every time he opened the refrigerator.
    At ten-forty, a Mercedes rolled out of Chirac Road, sat for a minute, then turned right, away from her, and headed down the street, slowly. Dichter always drove a Mercedes. Rinker reached for the key, then stopped. The Benz was a little obvious, don’t you think, Clara? Rolling up and stopping like that, so anybody could get a look?
    She sat still as the Mercedes disappeared at a corner three blocks away. Maybe a mistake? Maybe he’d be calling in two minutes, and she’d have no idea where he was?
    Then another car rolled out of Chirac, a station wagon—a Volkswagen, she thought—and turned left, toward her. This car did not hesitate at the street entrance. When it passed her, she saw two men inside; one had a hand to his head, as thought he were talking on a cell phone—probably to the driver of the Benz, Rinker thought. She let the car get two blocks down Nouvelle, over a hump and out of sight, before she followed.
    She didn’t think Dichter would go far. Any phone would do, as long as it wasn’t his. She started to tighten up now. Started to feel the adrenaline, the hunting hormone, flowing into her bloodstream. She’d always liked the feel of it, the stress.
    And she thought about Paulo, dead on the ground in Cancún, his blood all over her, his blue eyes vacant. Thought about her baby, the way things were going to be forever. The adrenaline was a familiar thing, but now something else flowed in, a coldness that she’d felt only once before, about her stepfather.
    Hate. And it was liquid and cold, like mercury flowing through her veins. Nanny Dichter, two blocks away, still breathing, while Paulo lay rotting in his grave…
     
    SHE KNEW ENOUGH not to try to get close to the Volkswagen. She stayed way back, turned off her lights once, followed the Volkswagen around a corner west onto Clayton Road, worried that she’d lose him. Clayton Road had more traffic than the side streets, and she closed up just a bit. The Volkswagen continued on, turned north off Clayton, then west again, and finally cut into a Lincoln Inn.
    She continued past the hotel, down the block, to a second entrance. Kept looking back and saw the Volkswagen pull up to the reception bay, and a man who looked very like Nanny Dichter get out and go inside.
    She parked as close to a side door as she could, picked up the Sony tape recorder, and turned it on. The Dixie Chicks were singing something inoffensive. She got out of the car and walked toward the hotel’s side door. The door was locked. She took a step away, looking toward the front, thinking about the second man in the Volkswagen—and saw a young guy coming down the hallway toward the side door, carrying a sleepy, red-eyed kid. The guy pushed through, and Rinker held the door, smiled, and was inside.
    The telephone rang. She punched it on, held the tape recorder close to her face as she walked along the hallway, and answered. “Hello?”
    “This is me,” Dichter said. “What do you want?”
    “I want to know whose idea it was to go to Cancún,” she said. “Was that John? Or was that the whole goddamn bunch of you?”
    “I didn’t know anything about it until the feds told me,” Dichter said. “I got with John…”
    “Hold on,” Rinker said. “I’m gonna go outside. I can barely hear you.”
    “Where are you?”
    “In a bar,” she said tersely. She pulled the tape recorder away from the phone, as though she were walking away from the jukebox, and clicked it off. Then: “Wait a minute, a guy’s coming…. Let me get over here.”
    A guy was coming. A hotel guy, with a chest tag that said “Chad.” She put her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and asked, “Could you tell me where your pay phones are?”
    “Down the hall, into the lobby, turn right, then around the corner and they’re right there.”
    “Thanks.” She continued down the hallway, into the lobby, phone to her ear. Slipped the safety on the nine-millimeter. Into the lobby, not looking at the few faces passing through it.
    Glanced to the left, her vision sharp as a broken mirror, picking up everything as tiny fragments of motion—the Indian woman behind the desk, the guy with the suitcase talking to her, another guy in the tiny gift shop, a sign