Rules of Prey

through the streets of St. Paul. He hungered for her, and the real-estate agent was almost forgotten. But not quite.
    For the next week, he saw the card each time he took his wallet out of his pocket. Jeannie Lewis of the raven hair. A definite candidate.
    And then the fiasco.
    He woke the next morning, bruised and creaking. He took a half-dozen extra-strength aspirin tablets and carefully twisted to look at his back in the bathroom mirror. The bruises were coming and they would be bad, long black streaks across his back and shoulders.
    The obsession with the artist was broken. When he got out of the shower, he saw a strange face in the mirror, floating behind the steamed surface. It had happened before. He reached out and wiped the mirror with a corner of his towel. It was Lewis, smiling at him, engaged in his nudity.
    Her office was in the south lake district, in an old storefront with a big window. He drove the neighborhood, looking for a vantage point. He found it on the parking boulevard kitty-corner from Lewis’ office. He could sit in his car and watch her through the storefront window as she sat in her cubicle, talking on the telephone. He watched her for a week. Every afternoon but Wednesday she arrived between twelve-thirty and one o’clock, carrying a bag lunch. She ate at her desk as she did paperwork. She rarely went back out before two-thirty. She was stunning. He best liked the way she walked, using her hips in long fluid strides. He dreamt of her at night, of Jeannie Lewis walking nude toward him across the desert grass . . . .
    He decided to collect her on a Thursday. He found a nice-looking home on a narrow street in a redeveloping neighborhood six blocks from her office. There were no houses directly across the street from it. The driveway was sunken a few feet into the lawn, and stairs led behind a screen of evergreens to the front door. If he rode with Lewis to the house and she pulled into the driveway, and he got out the passenger side, he would be virtually invisible from the street.
    The house itself felt empty. He checked the cross-reference books used by investigators at his office, found the names of the neighbors. He called the first one in the book and got anosy old man. He explained that he would like to make a direct offer for the house, cutting out the real-estate dealers. Did the neighbor know where the owners were? Why, yes. Arizona. And here’s the number; they’re not due back until Christmas, and then only for two weeks.
    Scouting the neighborhood, the maddog found a small supermarket across from a Standard station a few blocks from the house.
    On Thursday, he packed his equipment into the trunk of his car and wore a loose-fitting tweed sport coat with voluminous pockets. He checked to make sure Lewis was in, then drove to the supermarket, parked his car in the busy lot, and called her from a pay phone.
    “Jeannie Lewis,” she said. Her voice was pleasantly cool.
    “Yes, Ms. Lewis?” said the maddog, pronouncing it “miz.” His heart was thumping against his ribs. “I ran into you in the clerk of court’s office a month ago. We were talking about houses in the lakes area?”
    There was a moment’s hesitation at the other end of the line and the maddog was afraid she had forgotten him. Then she said, “Oh . . . yes, I think I remember. We went down in the elevator together?”
    “Yes, that’s me. Listen, to make a long story short, I was cruising the neighborhood down here, looking, and I had car trouble. So I pulled into a gas station and they said it would be a couple hours, they’ve got to put in a water pump. Anyway, I went out to walk around and I found a very interesting house.”
    He glanced at the paper in his hand, with the address, and gave it to her. “I wonder if we might set up a time to look at it?”
    “Are you still at that Standard station?”
    “I’m at a phone booth across the street.”
    “I’m not doing anything right now and I’m only five minutes away. I could stop at the other realtor’s, they’re only two minutes from here, pick up the key, and come and get you.”
    “Well, I don’t want to inconvenience you . . .”
    “No, no problem. I know that house. It’s very well-kept. I’m surprised it hasn’t gone yet.”
    “Well . . .”
    “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
    It took fifteen. He went into the supermarket, bought an ice-cream bar, sat on a bus bench next to the phone booth, and licked the ice cream.