Rules of Prey

hiding place.
    Saw in an instant that she was alone.
    Wrapped her up, the gun beside her face.
    The grocery bag burst and red-and-white cans of Campbell’s soup clattered down the wooden floor like dice, beige-and-red packages of chicken nibbles and microwave lasagna crunched underfoot.
    “Scream,” he said in his roughest voice, well-practiced with a tape recorder, “and I’ll kill you.”
    Unexpectedly, the woman relaxed against him and the maddog involuntarily relaxed with her. An instant later, the heel of her foot smashed onto his instep. The pain was unbearable and as he opened his mouth to scream, she turned in his arms, ignoring the gun.
    “Aaaiii,” she said, a low half-scream, half-cry of fear.
    Time virtually stopped for them, the seconds fragmenting into minutes. The maddog watched her hand come up and thought she had a gun and felt his own gun hand traveling away from her body, the wrong way, and thought, “No.” He realized in the next crystalline fragment of time that she was not holding a gun, but a thin silver cylinder.
    She hit him with a blast of Mace and the time stream lurched crazily into fast-forward. He screeched and swatted her with the Smith and lost it at the same time. He swung his other hand and, more from luck than skill, connected with the side of her jaw and she fell and rolled.
    The maddog looked for the gun, half-blinded, his hands to his face, his lungs not working as they should—he had asthma, and the Mace was soaking through the ski mask—and the woman was rolling and coming up with the Mace again and now she was screaming:
    “Asshole, asshole . . .”
    He kicked at her and missed and she sprayed him again and he kicked again and she stumbled and was rolling and still had the Mace and he couldn’t find the gun and he kicked at her again. Lucky again, he connected with her Mace hand and the small can went flying. Blood was pouring from her forehead where it had been raked by the front sight on the pistol, streaming from the ragged cut down over her eyes and mouth, and it was on her teeth and she was screaming:
    “Ass hole, ass hole. ”
    Before he could get back on the attack, she picked up a shiny stainless-steel pipe and swung it at him like a woman who’d spent time in the softball leagues. He fended her off and backed away, still looking for the gun, but it was gone and she was coming and the maddog made the kind of decision he was trained to make.
    He ran.
    He ran and she ran behind him and hit him once more on the back and he half-stumbled and turned and hit her along the jaw with the bottom of his fist, a weak, ineffective punch, and she bounced away and came back with the pipe, her mouth open, her teeth showing, showering him with saliva and blood as she screamed, and he made it through the door and jerked it shut behind him.
    “ . . . ass hole  . . .”
    Down the hall to the stairs, almost strangling in the mask. She didn’t pursue, but stood at the closed door screaming with the most piercing wail he’d ever heard. A door opened somewhere and he continued blindly down the stairs. At the bottom he stripped off the mask and thrust it in his pocket and stepped outside.
    Amble, he thought. Stroll.
    It was cold. Goddamn Minnesota. It was August and he was freezing. He could hear her screaming. Faintly at first, then louder. The bitch had opened the window. The cops were just across the way. The maddog hunched his shouldersand walked a little more quickly down to his car, slipped inside, and drove away. Halfway back to Minneapolis, still in the grip of mortal fear, shaking with the cold, he remembered that cars have heaters and turned it on.
    He was in Minneapolis before he realized he was hurt. Goddamn pipe. Going to have big bruises, he thought, shoulders and back. Bitch. The gun shouldn’t be a problem, couldn’t be traced.
    Christ it hurt.

CHAPTER
2
    The counterman was barricaded behind a wall of skin magazines. Cigarettes, candy bars, and cellophane sacks of cheese balls, taco chips, pork rinds, and other carcinogens protected his flank. Next to the cash register, a rotating stand was hung with white buttons; each button carried a message designed to reflect each individual purchaser’s existential motif. Save the Whales—Harpoon a Fat Chick was a big seller. So was No More Mr. Nice Guy—Down on Your Knees, Bitch.
    The counterman wasn’t looking at it. He was tired of looking at it. He was peering out the flyspecked front window and