Mortal Prey

never called him. She can’t have been here for more than a few days. Somehow, she got to Dichter through an intermediary. And she bought a phone at the same time.”
    “If Dichter was calling her at night, at eleven o’clock, I bet he didn’t have her number for long,” Bender said. “Why would you sit around all day looking at the cell phone number and then go out at eleven o’clock to call her?”
    The St. Louis cops sat and looked at him for a moment, waiting for Lucas to absorb the point. Lucas had absorbed it, and after a moment said, “That’s one thing the feds didn’t come up with,” and then, “Anybody who can’t keep their mouth shut, raise his hand.”
    Nobody raised a hand. Carter said, “Whataya got?”
    “I’ll tell you, if this shit gets out, Dan could be guarding a parking ramp,” Lucas said.
    Loftus didn’t bother to look around the table. “They won’t talk. Whataya got?”
    Lucas took a paper out of his pocket. He’d pulled it out of the information packet that Mallard had passed around. All the packets were supposed to remain in the building. “List of phone numbers that called Dichter,” Lucas said. He put it on the table, and the St. Louis cops huddled over it. Andreno finally said, “Pay phone at Tucker’s, down at LaClede’s Landing.”
    Carter said, “Yeah?”
    “Tucker’s is right next to the BluesNote. John Sellos.”
    Loftus leaned back and said to Lucas, “There you are. Sellos is connected, he knows Dichter and all the rest of them, and he’ll sell you a phone if you ask him right.”
    “Tell you what else,” Carter said. “Sellos used to work for John Ross, driving a truck. This was years and years ago.”
    “Maybe I oughta go see him,” Lucas said.
    Andreno looked at his watch. “Got time for a couple more beers—but if you’re going, I’d like to ride along. I know Sellos from way back.”
    “Don’t go hittin’ anyone. You don’t have a badge anymore,” Loftus said to Andreno. To Lucas: “Micky sorta liked to fight, himself.”
    Andreno shook his head. “Those days are gone. Now all I do is hit golf balls and wonder what the fuck happened.”
    They had a couple of more beers, and talked about what the four cops were doing in retirement. None of them was sixty, and all were looking at twenty years of idleness before they died. “If the goddamn pickled pig’s feet don’t get to me first,” Carter grumbled.
    A few minutes later, Loftus asked Lucas, “Did you meet Richard Lewis, the AIC?”
    “Yeah, he was in the meeting for a while. Dark suit, one of those blue shirts with a white collar?”
    “That’s him. I’ll tell you what, he don’t like this Mallard guy coming in and taking over. He’s running a little hip-pocket operation of his own, looking for Rinker. He’s got his intelligence guys doing it.” Loftus said it in a way that suggested a further step into treason—all in the way of the brotherhood of cops.
    “Got any names?” Lucas asked.
    “Striker, Allenby, Lane, and Jones,” Loftus said.
    “Let me…” Lucas took a pen out of his pocket and jotted the names in the palm of his hand. “Striker, Allenby, Lane, and Jones.”
    “Don’t tell anybody where you got that.” Lucas looked at him, and Loftus said, “Yeah, yeah.”
     
    AT ONE O’CLOCK , Andreno tipped up his beer glass, finished it, and said to Lucas, “Let’s go.”
    As they stood up, Loftus looked at Lucas and said, “Might be best if we don’t spend too much time talking at the office—but I’ll be sitting here tomorrow night.”
    “We’re gonna kick some ass,” Lucas said. He burped. “Fuckin’ Budweiser.”
    “Jesus Christ, watch your mouth,” Loftus said, and he crossed himself.
     
    ANDRENO WAS A slick, hard, neighborhood boy: capped teeth, probably paid for by the city after they got broken out; forehead scars; too-sharp jackets, hands in his pockets; and the attitude of a housewife-slaying, mean fuckin’ vacuum cleaner salesman. Even if he hadn’t had an Italian name, Lucas would have bet that he’d gone to a tough Catholic high school somewhere, probably run by the Psycho Brothers for Christ.
    Andreno liked the Porsche and cross-examined Lucas on how he could afford it. As they rolled along through the night, top down, the moon in the rearview mirror, Lucas told him a little about the role-playing games he’d written in the seventies and eighties, how he hired a kid from the University of Minnesota to translate them into