Mortal Prey

assholes,” he said.
    “Who?” Lucas asked, but he knew.
    “The fuckin’ feds. Malone and Mallard,” Andreno said. He was fuming. “For Christ’s sakes, they’re the ones who did this, not some poor broke-down jailer. But guess who’s gonna take it in the ass?”
    “Friends of yours?”
    “Not exactly. But—they’re our guys. They’re not some big-shot assholes piped in from Washington to run the world.”
    “If the jail people have any sense, they’ll announce an investigation and all, but then they’ll go out the back door and talk to press and blame the feds…and nothing’ll happen to anybody.”
    “Maybe,” Andreno said, squinting at Lucas.
    “That’s what would happen in Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “I’d take care of it myself.”
    “If you were gonna take care of it yourself, would you call White directly, or go through a friend, or what?”
    “Everything,” Lucas said. “I’d know White would bite, because he’s a hometown boy and he’s inclined to piss on the feds. He’s already started. Then, if I had any media friends, I’d fill them in, get them on my side. That’s if I was in Minneapolis.”
    Andreno nodded, and then said, “And that’s just taking care of yourself. Nothing to do about that poor fuckin’ Rinker kid.” Lucas shook his head, and Andreno continued: “I grew up in a shithole, and half the kids I went to school with wound up in jail, or dead some bad way. I feel like I’m about one inch from Gene Rinker. If it hadn’t been for my mom…Why’n the hell did they have to drag him out here? Wasn’t right, Davenport.”
    “No, it wasn’t. But I’ve done something like it, a few times, myself.”
    Andreno thought about it for a minute, then nodded quickly, a head jerk: He’d done it, too. “So’d I, but I always knew what was going on. I always knew the guy I was fuckin’ with. I wouldn’t have done it with Rinker, if I’d known him. You could see this coming. Both of us could.”
    “Didn’t do much about it,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah…” Andreno shook his head again, in disgust. “What’re you gonna do now?
    Lucas told him: He’d head for Soulard, wait for the news of Gene Rinker’s death to be released, and then wait for the call from Clara.
    “Drive around in the Porsche?”
    “I guess,” Lucas said.
    “I got a couple errands to run,” Andreno said. “When I get done, I’ll call you. We can hook up, cruise in my car.”
    “See you then,” Lucas said. “Good luck with the errands.”
    Andreno looked up at the jail. “Yeah, well, fuck those fuckers.”
     
    LUCAS WENT BACK to the hotel, had breakfast, went up to his room, checked his cell phone to make sure it could receive calls inside the room, and then sprawled across the bed and read the paper. A second Sandy White column was stripped across the top of the front page, this one from inside the St. Louis police—some of the cops apparently thought his Rinker column was a little too pro-outlaw, so now it was kiss-and-make-up time. The favored cops agreed that if Rinker was caught, she’d be caught by a cop on the street, probably during a traffic stop.
    Lucas yawned through the column. The next day’s story would be better, he thought, when the paper found out that Gene Rinker was dead. White was about to become a prophet, which, over the long term, was unfortunate, Lucas thought. In his experience, few newspaper columnists could resist prophet status, and after assuming the robes, became tedious and eventually stupid.
    When would Clara Rinker hear about Gene? And how? On television, probably. Maybe on the radio. Word was probably leaking already—certainly was if Andreno had carried out his preemptive strike on the feds. Could be any time. He went into the bathroom to take a leak, and thought, halfway through, that maybe he shouldn’t be in the bathroom—maybe the phone wouldn’t work in there, with all the tile….
    He was back on the bed, with the paper, when the room phone rang. He frowned at it: Could Rinker have his room phone? They hadn’t thought of that. He picked it up. “Hello?”
    “Instead of sitting around pulling our weenies, I got Bender and Carter meeting us down in Soulard in half an hour. Bender got a big map from the assessment guys, shows everything,” Andreno said. “So you gonna sit on your ass or what?”
    “See you there,” Lucas said.
     
    RINKER NEVER THOUGHT about the television or the radio. She unpacked the guns and the booby-trapped