Mortal Prey

wouldn’t hang around with her. He wouldn’t want anybody to even know that they’d talked. Maybe they wouldn’t talk, so the cops couldn’t draw any lines. So that if Rinker was picked up, she couldn’t say, ‘Well, I met with Nanny Dichter at the Balloon Ballroom on October 31, during the Halloween dance, and we made the deal.’ So she couldn’t say shit about who, what, where, and when. You see what I mean?”
    “Maybe,” Lucas said.
    “What I mean,” Dallaglio said, “is that this guy might not know shit about Clara Rinker. Not really.”
    “Too bad for that guy,” Lucas said.
    Jesse Dallaglio asked, “Where is Giancati going? Back to England?”
    Lucas shrugged. “He just said he was leaving.”
    She chewed her lip. “Maybe that’s the thing to do.” She looked at her husband. “You like the Old Country. We could go for a couple of months.”
    “But if they don’t catch her,” Dallaglio said, “it’s like he says…she can wait.”
    “But maybe they do catch her,” Jesse Dallaglio said. “I’d hate for you or me or the girls to be the last ones killed before they got her.”
     
    ON THAT NOTE , with nothing more developing, Lucas said goodbye. Outside, Mallard said, “What?”
    “Not much. Treena Ross may have known Clara. Might have been a friend.”
    Malone said, “Huh.”
    “Huh, what?” Lucas asked.
    “Huh, nothing. I don’t see where that goes. We already knew that John Ross was a friend of Rinker’s. I’m not surprised that his wife knew her, I guess.”
    “Well, it’s what I got,” Lucas said.
     
    ROSS WAS WAITING for them behind his big desk. He had a half-dozen orchids this time, including one that smelled something like cinnamon. He wanted to talk about Levy. “I knew the guy, sure—but what’s this about telephones? Clara’s no electronics wizard. Where’d she think that up?”
    Mallard shook his head. “We were hoping you might be able to think of something.”
    Ross exhaled in exasperation. “I told you, I never knew about her. I didn’t know she was a killer, for Christ’s sake. I’m in some tough businesses, but we don’t kill people. It’s easier just to buy them out. And legal.”
    “Sounds like you’re a little worried,” Lucas said, letting the amusement show.
    “Yeah, well. Guns is one thing. Now I’m thinking, what if a rocket comes flying through the window? A phone bomb—that sounds like something the CIA would do.”
     
    HE WAS SURPRISED to hear that the Giancatis were thinking of running.
    “Off to merry old England again, huh? Home of the fruits and the nuts.” He reached out and took a peppermint candy from a crystal bowl, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.
    “And maybe the Dallaglios,” Malone added. “They may go back to the Old Country, whatever country that is.”
    “You do what you gotta do,” Ross said.
    Eventually, Mallard and Malone got tired of being stonewalled, and after another warning, got up to leave. Lucas went into this let’s-talk routine; Mallard shook his head and went out the door.
    “So, what?” Ross asked.
    “Like Mallard said, I’m not FBI. I’m a Minneapolis cop. I have no jurisdiction….” He went through the rest of it, feeling like a third-grader reciting to a skeptical teacher.
    Ross said, “I can appreciate the fact that you get off on hunting Clara, and I hope you get her, but there’s not much more I can do to help. I told you that the last time. There are still some people at the warehouse who knew her, but I knew her as well as anyone. I could tell you where her old apartment used to be, I could tell you where she’d go for drinks, but you gotta remember—that was all before Wichita. This was years ago, and she only worked in the warehouse a couple, three years.”
    “Did your wife know her?”
    “Treena? Yeah, sure. Treena worked in the warehouse along with Rinker.”
    “Could she tell me anything?”
    Ross snorted. “She can barely remember her middle name, Mr. Davenport. She’s basically a great set of tits and a terrific ass being run by a brain the size of a cashew. I can’t imagine that she could give you anything useful on Clara Rinker. But you’re welcome to ask her. She’s around here someplace.”
    “If that’s what you think, why did you marry her?”
    “It gives me about three headaches a week, going over that. She’s got these tits, and I got these hormones…. You know what I mean. I should’ve stuck with the last one.”
    “Number