Mortal Prey

cars. He took them on a tour of Soulard, which was much like the fading neighborhoods near the St. Paul breweries, not far from where Lucas lived—lots of redbrick apartments, grimy with age, old houses, some of them in good repair, some of them on the edge of collapse with sagging roof-ridges, scaling shingles, flaking paint. Some had been substantial residences. Some, built after the neighborhood began its decline, had been poor from the start. Here and there, like good teeth, were fully restored buildings, all tuck-pointed and painted. Lucas picked up on the place in ten minutes, bumping over the narrow, sway-backed streets: “Lots of illegal apartments, rented rooms being lived in—if she lives down here at all.”
    “Now you sound like you don’t believe.”
    “Oh, I believe,” Lucas said, peering out the passenger window at two old ladies hobbling along the crazy-quilt sidewalk. “This is one place where you might wind up if you were on the run.”
    “Let’s see if we can get the guys down here—Loftus can’t do it, but if we could get Bender and Carter, along with us two…we could cover some ground.”
    “I’ll call them tonight. Get going tomorrow,” Andreno said.
    “Seven? Eight?”
    “Jesus, no. Not that early. I got a date.”
    “Heavy date?”
    “I do have plans involving sex. Then I’ll probably have to talk to her for a while and probably won’t be outa there until three o’clock or so.”
    “You sensitive types are going out of style,” Lucas said. “Women are going back to the more macho, tough-talking guys.”
    “What I got is what I got,” Andreno said, and he eased the car away from the curb.
     
    NOT MUCH MORE to do this night.
    Lucas got a sandwich, then walked to a downtown mall, bought a pile of magazines and a couple of newspapers, and carried them back to the hotel. He thought about Andreno going out, and felt a little sad. In the past, out of town, he’d always been happy enough to make the rounds at night, seeing who was doing what to whom—and who might be available for a tightly scheduled romance, a meaningful overnight relationship.
    No more, he thought. But hell: He was wearing pajamas most of the time now. The bottoms, anyway. And reading Barron’s, in hotel rooms, at eight o’clock at night. Getting older; and life goes on.
    For some people, anyway.
    Lucas had a good night, the kind of night you have after a good day, when you traveled, learned a few things, felt like you were making progress. But the phone rang way too early. An agent named Forest said he was calling on Mallard’s behalf to tell him that Gene Rinker had committed suicide in the jail out in Clayton.
     
    “ WHAT THE FUCK are you talking about?” Lucas asked. Or shouted. “I thought he was on suicide watch.”
    “He was. But he knew what he was doing.”
    “Well, what the fuck did he do? What time is it, anyway?”
    “Five-forty-five. He cut his wrists with the punch-out thing, the hole, from a can of soda. He had a can of soda at dinner, and he must’ve palmed it.”
    “Jesus, they didn’t find him? Where in the hell were the—”
    “He had one blanket—this is what I’m told, I haven’t been there myself—he had one blanket and he got down under it, and after one of the checks, cut himself. They say he knew what he was doing. The cuts are real deep, vertical, right down both wrists. There’s a second set of scars going the wrong way, across the wrists, so he had some experience. He messed it up the first time he tried, and this time, he knew better. After he’d cut himself, he curled up under the blanket and bled to death. They were watching him in the camera—they thought he was sleeping until the blood started to drip on the floor and they saw the puddle….”
    “Ah, man.”
    “Emptied him out. Mr. Mallard’s over there, Malone’s on the way. They thought…you might want to run out.”
     
    LUCAS TOOK TIME to clean up. An extra ten minutes wouldn’t make any difference to Gene Rinker now, and Lucas had taken enough unexpected calls to know how crappy he’d feel later in the morning if he didn’t clean up now. In the shower, he thought about Rinker. He thought about what she might do. Could they turn this to their advantage? And he thought about Sandy White and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
    And before he left the room, he dialed Andreno, smiling grimly as he did it. At least this piece of misery would have a little company.
    Andreno picked up the phone and