Mortal Prey

lawyer—and you’re gonna need him really bad.”
    “I didn’t help set Nanny up,” Sellos said. He didn’t bother to deny any of it. “I had no idea what Clara was going to do. I thought she was going to try to talk to him and needed a safe way to call him. She came in, she put a gun on me—a big fuckin’ automatic. You know how many people have looked down Clara’s guns and walked away? Not many. Anyway, she got the phones—four phones—and she told me if I talk to you guys, she’ll kill me. And she will, if she hears about this. Not ten years from now on death row, she’ll kill me this week. ”
    “When was she here?”
    Sellos told them the story. At the end of it, he stood up, went to a half-sized refrigerator, got a Heineken, popped the top off, took a sip. He didn’t offer one to Lucas or Andreno. “She wanted Nanny to call, and she wanted this Andy Levy guy’s phone number, the banker, so she could call him. That’s it, other than that she’d kill me if I talked to anyone.”
    Lucas asked, “You’ve never heard of this Andy Levy?”
    “No. When she mentioned him, that was the first I ever heard of him.”
    Lucas looked at Andreno and cocked an eyebrow. Andreno shook his head. “Never heard of the guy.”
    Back to Sellos. “You think he’s here in the city?”
    “That’s the impression I got.”
    They ran him through the story again, but Sellos had nothing more to say, except that Rinker had not disguised herself at all. “She looked just like she did when she was working at the warehouse, except richer. She looked pretty well-tended.”
    “Well-tended,” Andreno repeated, as though he liked the phrase.
    “Very well,” Sellos said.
    They left him behind the desk, worrying. Lucas said, “ We won’t talk to anyone, and you better not. I mean, we’re a couple of friendly guys. I don’t think Clara would be all that friendly.”
    Andreno left his beeper number with Sellos. Sellos said he’d call the minute Rinker got in touch with him, if she did. “You aren’t gonna run, are you, John?” Andreno asked.
    “No, no. Somebody would find me. Either you or Clara. I got nowhere to run to.”
     
    OUT ON THE STREET , Andreno stretched and yawned and looked down the quiet streets and up at the sky, and said, “What a great fuckin’ night. This was more fun than I had in five years.”
    “Operating,” Lucas said.
    “That’s exactly what it is,” Andreno said, poking a finger at Lucas. “I’m operating again.” After a moment: “Is there anything else I can do? Any other way I can cut into this?”
    “Let me think about it,” Lucas said. “I’ll see what the feebs say tomorrow, when I drop Andy Levy on them. If Andy Levy isn’t dead tonight.”

9
    LUCAS GOT UP EARLY, FOR HIM, A LITTLE after eight o’clock. He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, went to the lobby and got a Post-Dispatch and a couple of Diet Cokes, returned to his room, lay in bed and drank the Coke and read the paper. Gene Rinker, in orange prison coveralls and chains, was on the front page, being taken into a jail somewhere, behind a row of shotgun-armed marshals.
    A show. A movie. The FBI was making a movie about being tough, about kicking a little Rinker ass. The Post-Dispatch quoted Malone on Gene Rinker’s arrest, and described her as a tough, flinty FBI agent, a veteran of the mob wars. A small photograph at the bottom of the story showed Malone talking to a marshal, looking flinty.
    “Maybe she is,” Lucas thought, and he extracted the comics and read them while room service put together some pancakes and bacon. During the leisurely breakfast, he started calling local banks, and got lucky with the fifth one.
     
    LUCAS GOT TO the FBI building at nine-thirty. Loftus wasn’t yet on duty; another man gave him his neck card and escorted him to the meeting room. When he stepped inside, the collected agents turned to look, and Mallard said, “We started at seven.”
    “Had a late night,” Lucas said. “Out drinking.”
    “Oh, good,” one of the male agents muttered.
    “Let’s try to keep ourselves together, folks,” Mallard said, but he was exasperated. Behind him, on the white board, was an expanded list of names, heavy on the Italian.
    “Rinker’s probably going after a guy named Andy Levy. A banker,” Lucas said, as he found a chair. He pulled it back from the table so he could stretch his legs. “She had a list of at least two guys when she came into town: Nanny Dichter and Andy