Mortal Prey

her hands on a dishcloth. “I heard on the radio about you calling the FBI. There are cops all over that truck stop, if that was really you.”
    “It’s on TV?”
    “It’s everywhere on TV,” Pollock said. “They’re taking fingerprints, they’re talking to witnesses. They’re making a sketch of you from witnesses.”
    “All right,” Rinker said. “Soon as it gets dark, I’m gonna take off for a while. I’ll be gone two or three days, out a here.”
    “I don’t want to know where you’re going.”
    But she did; and Rinker said, “Anniston, Alabama, the garden spot of the Deep South.”
    “I been there. I don’t remember no garden,” Pollock said.
    “That’s okay, because I’m not going after carrots,” Rinker said. “I’m going to see an old Army buddy.”

11
    THE DAY WAS DRAGGING ON .
    Malone had put together an approach to Levy, and one of the feds was doing a PowerPoint presentation on Levy’s connections in the overground banking world and his possible ties with underground money-laundering activities. Levy’s private-client list had turned up a vein of investment by people tied to organized crime. A three-man team had put together a half-hour-long briefing after six hours of financial research.
    The team was taking questions when a silent strobe began flashing on a phone on a corner table. Malone was irritated by the interruption, but she was closest. She leaned back and picked up the receiver, listened for a second, and then looked at Lucas. “Marcy wants to talk to you. Problem at your office,” she said in a quiet voice. She’d met Marcy during the Rinker investigation in Minneapolis.
    “Sorry. She should have called me on the cell.” Lucas walked around the table and took the call, half-turned his back to the guy making the presentation, pushed the hold button, and said, quietly, “Marcy?”
    “Lucas?” Didn’t sound like Marcy, unless she’d developed a cold.
    “Yeah…Is this Marcy?”
    “No, actually it’s not, Lucas.”
    It took him just a second. In that second, he remembered what she smelled like, the nice smell of perfume and a little beer, the time they danced in her Wichita saloon. “How’ve you been?”
    Lucas started waving frantically at Mallard, who looked puzzled for a second, then caught on. He said, silently, miming the name with his lips, “Rinker?”
    Lucas nodded, but missed part of what Rinker had said. He caught, “…you should know about that.”
    Around him, the feds were scrambling for phones and one man dashed out the door, a yellow legal pad spinning to the floor behind him.
    “Yeah, I heard you were hit pretty bad,” Lucas said. His heart was pounding, but he thought, Cool down, cool down. She’s too smart to give herself away. He groped for something that would make a human connection and keep her talking. “I’m really sorry about the baby,” he said. “My fiancée is pregnant…. I’m doing that whole trip myself. Gonna get married in the fall.”
    One of the feds looked up at that and gave him the thumb-and-forefinger attaboy circle-sign. He could hear Malone mumbling into a phone: “Need an immediate trace on the call…”
    Rinker said, “Your fiancée—anybody I’d know?”
    “No. She’s a doctor. Pretty tough girl. You’d probably like her.”
    “Maybe…but to cut the b.s., I just wanted to call you and to tell you to keep Gene out of this. I knew the federales were going to get involved, I wasn’t surprised when I saw that woman Malone in the paper, but we all know that Gene isn’t quite right. Putting him in jail won’t help anything. I’m not going to come in—you can’t blackmail me. But you can tell whoever’s running that show over there that I take Gene real personally, and if they mess him up, if they put him in prison, or hurt him, or do any of that, then they better look to their families. I won’t try to blow up the president. I’ll start killing agents’ husbands and wives, and you know I’ll do it.”
    “I’ll try to get him cut loose. But I’m not a fed,” Lucas said. One of the feds behind him said, “She’s not on her cell,” and Lucas thought, Ah, shit.
    “You’d lie to me anyway,” Rinker said.
    “Hey, Clara—I’d put your butt under the jail if I got my hands on you, but I’m not fuckin’ with Gene. I think Gene is a bad idea, and I’ll try to get him cut loose. I’m just not sure how much clout I’ve got.”
    “Okay. I gotta go now. They’re probably pretty