Mortal Prey

it looked blurred, like a propeller.
    “Well, Jesus, you gotta work on something,” Lucas said. “You can’t sit around a fuckin’ mahogany table and pull on your weenies.”
    “There’s Levy and Ross,” Mallard objected. “We got that going.”
    Lucas jumped in: “I’ll tell you something else that’s not a theory.”
    Brown: “That’d be a goddamned relief.”
    “Clara Rinker is gonna come after our ass,” Lucas said. “I promise you. She was nuts this afternoon.”
    “What’s she gonna do?” Mallard asked. He sounded curious, rather than skeptical.
    “She’s gonna kill somebody, or try to,” Lucas said. To Mallard, he said, “If you’ve got any family that she can figure out, or if Malone has any…She mentioned Malone the first time I talked to her, so she remembers her from Minneapolis.”
    Mallard and Malone were both shaking their heads. “Not really,” Malone said. “I’ve got my folks, of course, but I don’t know how she could figure them out. She’d have to pull my file at the Bureau, and all that stuff is pretty locked up. We’ve had some pretty tough hackers make a run at it.”
    “She’s gonna do something,” Lucas insisted. “If she figures out that we’ve got a net around Levy and Ross, she might try to hit one of the guys on the net. They’ve gotta be warned, and we’ve got to set up some kind of reaction procedure in case that happens. So we’re not just running around in a circle waving our arms.”
    “We’ll talk to everybody right now,” Malone said. “I think that’s a good point.”
    Even Brown nodded, but he added: “We’re not being proactive. We gotta be more proactive. We gotta find something….”
    Andreno said, “Hey…we’re listening.”
    Malone: “Washington’s gonna come up with some ideas if we don’t. They’re getting anxious.”
    Snarling, Lucas thought, like a pack of yellow dogs.
     
    RINKER AND POLLOCK had watched the street when they got home, had seen the big cars trolling by, way too many of them, and talked about Pollock’s life. “So nobody knows where you’re at,” Rinker said.
    “Not exactly where I’m at,” Pollock said. “My folks know I’m around somewhere. I think they know it’s St. Louis. I call them every once in a while.”
    Rinker looked around, felt the house closing in on her, a rat trap. “You call them? From here?”
    “No, of course not,” Pollock said. “I go out.”
    “How far?”
    Pollock thought for a minute, then said, “Up to the gas station, the minimart, you know.”
    “Close by.”
    Pollock thought again, and finally said, “Shoot. That’s it, isn’t it? They looked up all the phone calls to my mama, and they figured out that they all came from down here.”
    They thought about the implications of that, and then Rinker said, “Ah, jeez, Patsy, I’m sorry. They never would have come looking if it weren’t for me.”
    “We don’t know…”
    “It’s Davenport. I’m gonna wax his ass one of these days. I swear to God.”
    “The guy you danced with.”
    “Yeah. He’s lucky.” Then she said, sadly, “You’re gonna have to run again. They’ll be going house to house.”
    But Pollock shook her head and said, wryly, “Naw. I ain’t gonna run. I’m gonna turn myself in.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” Rinker said, her eyebrows up.
    “I can’t stand this shit anymore,” Pollock said, sinking into a couch. “I can’t stand my job, I can’t stand this place—I’d just as soon be in prison and get it over with.”
    “You never been in prison, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “I’ve read about it, all kinds of things, at the library,” Pollock said. “I been thinking about it for three or four years now. I talked to my folks about it, and they’re for it. Did I ever show you my back?”
    “Your back?”
    “I kinda hide it…. I’m not a swimsuit girl.” Pollock stood up, turned around, and pulled her blouse up. Rinker didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, then noticed what seemed to be a large, paler birthmark on Pollock’s pale back.
    “What the heck is that?”
    “What does it look like?”
    “It looks like…an iron,” Rinker said.
    “Rick held me down on the bed one day and ironed me. And I got scars from a few more cuts and burns. Cigars, mostly. I think, after all these years, if I turned myself in…I kinda think I’d either get off, or they wouldn’t put me away too long. And I want to go home, Clara. I know you