Sudden Prey

snail’s track of purple blood, and LaChaise walked around and kicked him in the side of the head and the cowboy stopped crawling.
    “Jesus Christ, you’re gonna kill him,” the old man yelled, and a few other men yelled, “Yeah . . .”
    The bartender picked up the phone and Martin was suddenly there with his pistol: “Don’t touch that dial.”
    LaChaise was walking around the cowboy, and the old man yelled, “Give him a break, for Christ’s sake,” and LaChaise pointed at him and said, “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
    And moving behind the cowboy, he kicked him in the crotch. Sandy caught his shirtsleeve: “Dick, c’mon, no more, Dick, please, please, let’s go, he’s hurt . . .”
    “Get the fuck away from me,” LaChaise growled.
    Martin, his gun now hanging by his side, said, “She’s right, man. We better get going.”
    The cowboy was not moving. He lay with one hand under his chest, the other thrown to the side. LaChaise said, “All right,” and picked up one booted foot and stomped on the outstretched hand, the bones audibly crunching in the silent room. “Let’s go.”
    On the way past the bar, he took a ten out of his pocket: “Four Buds to go: just crack the top.”
    And Martin said, “Don’t nobody come running out to look at our tags, y’ hear? I’d have to go and shoot you. So you just stay here inside and talk on the telephone, and don’t get shot.”
    As they were going out the door, LaChaise with the four bottles of Bud, the old man shouted, “Crazy fuckers!”
     
     
     
    SANDY HUDDLED IN the back as they took I-494 west, then north up I-35W into town, LaChaise laughing aloud, Martin serious but pleased: “The hair was what done it,” he said over and over. “He thought you was an old fuck, and he just sort of lobbed at you . . .”
    They felt good, Sandy realized. This was what they liked.
    “You know what we shoulda done with the truck? We shoulda driven it over to this Davenport’s place, his house, and drove it right through the front of the place. Up the porch and right through the front, and left it there.”
    “Might be a lot of cops hanging around,” Martin said, now a bit more sober. “And they could pick us up on the way . . .”
    “Well, shit . . . we oughta do something.”
    Sandy said, “You oughta take the car and start driving. If you’re careful, you could be in Mexico the day after tomorrow.”
    LaChaise said, “You know what? I bet if we tore up that apartment, I bet we’d find some more cash. I bet he’s got a stash around somewhere. I can’t believe a dealer wouldn’t.”
    “Maybe in the car . . .” Martin said, and they started talking about money. Sandy sank back into her seat: at least they weren’t talking about Davenport anymore.
    A minute later, LaChaise said, “I think I got a leak in my side.” Sandy sat up. “What?”
    “It was itching, so I just reached in there to move the bandage, and got a little blood.”
    “Probably pulled a stitch in the fight,” Martin said.
    “So let’s get back and take a look,” LaChaise said. The ebullience left him, and, deflated, he stared morosely out the window. “Fuckin’ place,” he said.

15
    THEY’DSWEPT UP everybody they could find, running the dopers, dealers, bikers and gun freaks until you could hardly find one on the streets.
    “If they’re holed up, I’d bet they’ve got a television,” Lucas told his group. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet on the top drawer, the others scattered around the small office. “That’s the first thing this kind of idiot gets: a TV. We could use it to talk to Sandra Darling.”
    “What do we say?” Del asked. “We can’t just come out and tell her to run. They’d kill her.”
    “We make it a plea for information, stress how anyone cooperating with LaChaise is going away for a long time. We say, ‘Just call 911, nobody’ll know.’ She’ll know we’re talking to her.”
    “Maybe get the shrinks into it,” Sloan said. He was sitting on a backwards chair, his chin on his folded arms. “You gotta believe she’s with them, at least semivoluntarily. Or started out that way. She was at the funeral home when LaChaise escaped . . .”
    “And I don’t think they would’ve taken her along if they thought they’d have to watch her every minute,” Sherrill said, nodding at Sloan. She was slumped in a swivel chair. Her dead husband’s parents were handling the funeral details, and she was torn