Mortal Prey

by John Sandford

  What was the name of the woman in Minneapolis? Marcy? Or Cheryl? Marcy, she thought.

  She got a central switchboard at the FBI office and said, “My name is Marcy, and I’m with the Minneapolis Police Department. I work for Chief Lucas Davenport. Chief Davenport is there in St. Louis, working with Special Agent Malone. I really need to talk to him—it’s an emergency with a case he’s on.”

  “Please hold.”

  AND THEN ,after a minute and a half on hold, like magic, after a click or two, Davenport was on the line. “Marcy?”

  “Lucas?”

  “Yeah . . . Is this Marcy?”

  “No, actually it’s not, Lucas.”

  A long silence, then, his voice gone suddenly deeper: “How’ve you been?”

  “Not so good—but you should know about that.” She could imagine the ferocious gesturing and waving on the other end of the line.

  “Yeah, I heard you were hit pretty bad.” He sounded calm enough. “I’m really sorry about the baby. My fiancée is pregnant. . . . I’m doing that whole trip myself. Gonna get married in the fall.”

  “Your fiancée—anybody I’d know?”

  “No. She’s a doctor. Pretty tough girl. You’d probably like her.”

  “Maybe . . . but to cut the b.s. , I just wanted to call you and to tell you to keep Gene out of this. I knew the federales were going to get involved, I wasn’t surprised when I saw that woman Malone in the paper, but we all know that Gene isn’t quite right. Putting him in jail won’t help anything. I’m not going to come in—you can’t blackmail me. But you can tell whoever’s running that show over there that I take Gene real personally, and if they mess him up, if they put him in prison, or hurt him, or do any of that, then they better look to their families. I won’t try to blow up the president. I’ll start killing agents’ husbands and wives, and you know I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll try to get him cut loose. But I’m not a fed.” In the background, faint but clear, she heard a man’s voice say, “She’s not on her cell.”

  “You’d lie to me anyway,” she said.

  “Hey, Clara—I’d put your butt under the jail if I got my hands on you, but I’m not fuckin’ with Gene. I think Gene is a bad idea, and I’ll try to get him cut loose. I’m just not sure how much clout I’ve got.”

  “Okay.” She looked at her watch. They’d been talking for exactly one minute. “I gotta go now. They’re probably pretty close to busting this line. Give me your cell phone number.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Wait, wait, wait . . . I was just trying to stall you.” He read off the number, and Rinker jotted it down. Without saying goodbye again, she hung up, moved quickly out to her car, and put it on the highway back to St. Louis. Six miles out, an Illinois Highway Patrol car went by in a hurry, going east, all lights and no siren.

  Maybe a train wreck, she thought.

  • • •

  SHE WAS RESTLESS ,and though she wasn’t inclined to move around in the daylight, she headed back downtown. Maybe, she thought, another little probe on Andy Levy. Maybe she should call Levy, to sweat him a little, to get him used to the idea of talking. And she thought about that: Davenport was in town.

  She’d been told that he was not only ruthless but lucky, which really frightened her. Ruthless she could deal with. Lucky was a problem. When she’d been stalking people, she’d always been so careful, but always so aware that at any moment, luck could turn and strike at her like a rattlesnake. In her disastrous visit to Minneapolis, she and her client had twisted and turned and worked and struggled and never had been able to pull the last piece of sticky-tape bad luck off their backs. Luck had beaten them, not intelligence, skill, or bad planning.

  But maybe she’d had a piece of luck this time. She’d heard that man’s voice talking about a cell phone. They must have the number on the cell phone that Dichter had called: They would have traced the number he was calling when he was shot, and when it came up with a stolen phone, must have known it was her. What if they’d traced it to John Sellos? She’d asked Sellos about both Dichter and Levy.

  BEFORE SHE WENT to look at Levy again, she might as well ask Sellos about it. She saw a sign for a BP station coming up, took the off-ramp, rolled in to a drive-up phone, found Sellos’s number in her phone book, and punched it in. Sellos answered—Sellos, who was always home. Rinker said, “If you tell me why you talked to them, if you tell me honestly, I won’t hurt you.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  After a pause, and then in what was almost a groan, Sellos said, “They knew all about it. I didn’t have a choice. They said if I didn’t talk to them, they’d bust me on the Dichter murder, as an accessory, and send me to death row. They said they could trace the guy who stole the phone. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You gave them Levy’s name.”

  “Clara, what could I do? I figured I could either tell them to screw themselves, and maybe wind up on death row, or maybe sneak it past you.”

  He was honest enough, anyway. “Goddamnit, John. Was Davenport there? A guy from Minneapolis? Big, dark hair, good-looking guy?”

  “Yeah. Guy from Minneapolis. Tough guy. He came in with a local ex-cop, another tough guy. I don’t know how they found me, exactly.”

  “All right.”

  “You gonna kill me?”

  “No. But I’ll tell you, John, the feds are cutting a wide swath with this one. If they really think you’re involved, you could be in deep shit.”

  “Ah, you don’t know half of it. . . .”

  “What?”

  “Clara, you know that guy Troy who works for Ross? Muscle guy with a flattop who always puts that tanning stuff all over himself?”

  “No. He must’ve been after me.”

  “Well, he’s a real mean asshole, and he’s going around to everybody, asking if they’ve seen you, or heard where you might be. Guess who he’s traveling with?”

  “I don’t know, John. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Honus Johnson.” Again, it came out almost as a groan. “I know you know Honus.”

  “I know Honus.”

  “Honus said that if they find out I’m lying about you, that he’d spend some time with me. He said it in that real queer way, and he touched me on the cheek. I’ve been washing my cheek every five minutes.”

  “But you lied.”

  “Well, I like you, Clara. But I’m really scared now. Between the cops and you and Honus.”

  “I’m sorry about this,” Rinker said. “If I were you, John, I’d go away for a while. It really would be for the best. For you. In six weeks, it’ll all be over.”

  “What if you’re over. Honus Johnson—”

  “Before I leave, I’ll take care of Honus Johnson,” Rinker said. “So: Go away, John.”

  “I got the club, Clara.”

  “Yes, I know. But you can’t add value to the club if you’re dead. Be very calm, make arrangements with your accountant and the bartenders, and then go.”

  “Oh, man . . .”

  “That’s my last word, John. Good luck to you. Goodbye.” She hung up, and thought, That answers that. The feds had Levy’s name, and that meant they were probably crawling all over him by now. More to think about. And she had to consider Honus Johnson and his toys. Honus once told her that in his work for Ross, he preferred Craftsman tools from Sears, because of the guarantee. It hadn’t made her laugh, because Honus had been serious.

  Then it occurred to her that luck had been with her this time; Sellos had provided a lot of critical information. And then she thought, As long as the cops weren’t monitoring Sellos’s phone. She looked around for a cop car, a finger of fear touching her heart, then peeled out of the BP lot, and didn’t start breathing again until she was back on the interstate.

  AT POLLOCK ’S ,she turned on the television, looking for the local news. When you don’t need it, you can’t find anything else. When you
do need it, you can never find it. She spent an hour clicking around the local channels, then clicked over to CNN Headline News and, after a twenty-minute wait, saw a short piece of tape of federal marshals taking Gene into what was either a courthouse or a jail. She saw Malone again, apparently supervising. The tape made her so angry that she jumped off the couch and walked around the house, back and forth, punching at the air, talking to herself, “Fucking hurt him, you fuckin’ hurt him,” imagining what she’d do if they fuckin’ hurt him.

  In the tape, Gene had looked utterly forlorn. He couldn’t take much jail time. He was claustrophobic, along with everything else. If Davenport didn’t get him out of there, she’d have to do something. Move on the FBI? That would kill her.

  Maybe she should simply leave. She thought about that. Her money was well hidden, and she had a place to go, a warm place with beaches—if it weren’t for Gene, she could just give it up, make a call to Ross to warn him off again, let Dichter stand as a warning. She could leave. Now she couldn’t, not until Gene was taken care of.

  POLLOCK USUALLY GOT home around three o’clock. When she was going out, Rinker liked to go with Pollock, because then Pollock became part of the disguise. By two o’clock, she’d been thinking about Gene for so long, and had looked at the Post-Dispatch article so many times, that she finally said the hell with it and went back out, looking for another phone. In the morning, she’d gone east, so this time she turned west, out I-64. She eventually stopped at an upscale shopping center called Plaza Frontenac to make the call.

  She called the Post-Dispatch, but it wasn’t easy. The Post-Dispatch operator switched her to the reporter who’d written that morning’s story about Gene, but the reporter wasn’t in, and his voice mail handed her to a woman on the city desk. The woman sent her back to the same reporter before Rinker could object, and the voice mail sent her back to the city desk again. This time, she told the desk woman that “I just need to talk to somebody who covers this Clara Rinker thing. I used to know her.”

  The woman on the other end was unimpressed with the information, and said, in as close to a monotone as anyone could manage, “I could switch you to either Fabian Broeder, who’s our organized-crime reporter, or to Sandy White, the metro columnist.”

  “Well, which one do you think? Who’s the most important?”

  “Sandy’s the best known. He’s working on a Rinker column for tomorrow.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  She was on hold for another three seconds, then the phone rang once and a man’s voice said, “White.”

  “Are you reporting on the Rinker case?”

  “I’m writing a column,” White said. “Who is this?”

  “Clara Rinker.”

  A moment of silence. Then: “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit your own self,” Rinker said. “You got something to take notes with?”

  “Yeah. But I still don’t think this is Rinker.”

  “That’s what I’m gonna prove to you, dumbhead. Just listen. There’s a cop from Minneapolis working with the FBI on this case. His name is Lucas Davenport”—she spelled it for him—“and he’s a deputy chief from Minneapolis. I had a run-in with him up there, and he chased me out of my bar in Wichita. Now he’s down here helping the federales. You got that much?”

  “Yeah.” He was typing like crazy, the computer keys rattling in the phone.

  “Okay. Here’s how I prove who I am. I called him this morning about ten o’clock from East St. Louis and talked to him about the case. He told me that his fiancée is pregnant. I called him at the FBI building.”

  “Pregnant. Jesus. Are you kidding? Is this really Rinker?” His voice was rising; he was starting to believe.

  “Yeah. This is Rinker. If you call Davenport and ask him about his fiancée, he’ll confirm that I called him and that nobody else could know about it. About that part of the discussion. Now, I have a statement, okay?”

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Go with the statement,” White said.

  “Oh. Okay. Um, the FBI arrested my brother Gene in California on some made-up drug charge. Gene isn’t right in the head. He never has been. He’s not stupid, but he’s just not in this world, you got that? And he’s claustrophobic. They are torturing him by putting him in jail. He’s an innocent kid, and they’re torturing him because they think that will make me surrender. But I won’t. I will tell you and everybody else this: If anything happens to Gene—he’s just like a helpless kid—if anything happens to him, the blood is on their hands and I will wash it off them, one at a time. One at a time, off them and off their families. Off the FBI people who’ve done this.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “You say the drug charges are bullshit?”

  “You sure swear a lot, for the telephone,” Rinker said.

  “Sorry. I’m kind of excited.”

  “Okay. Ask them, the FBI, about the charge on Gene. Gene never had more than a single doobie in his whole poor life. He never had more than ten dollars. When was the last time you saw somebody dragged from California to St. Louis in orange prison overalls and chains because he had a doobie?”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and something else. The FBI are all over a guy named Andy Levy from First Heartland, because they think I’m going to kill him next. But I’m not going to. Andy used to handle money for me, but he hasn’t for a long time. I just wanted to talk to him.”

  “First Heartland?”

  “Yes. Andy’s a vice president at First Heartland, and he does the banking for the Mafia here in St. Louis. The FBI knows that, and they’ve got him protected because they hope they can catch me. But they’re wasting their time. I’ve got no interest in Andy.”

  “Holy shit. First Heartland.”

  “There you go again.”

  “Sorry, but listen. . . . Who are you going to kill next? I’d like to send a photographer.”

  Rinker laughed—almost like a quick cough. The guy had some balls. “I gotta go.”

  “Let me read this back.”

  “I don’t have time. But you talk to Davenport.”

  “I don’t . . . What, uh . . . why in the hell is a guy from Minneapolis down here?”

  “The FBI brought him down because they think he’s the most likely guy to catch me.”

  “Are they right?”

  “Maybe. But he hasn’t caught me yet, and he’s had his chances.”

  RINKER ARRIVED BACK at Pollock’s in time to see Pollock climb the porch steps and then disappear inside. She pulled her car in a tight U-turn, took it down the dirt driveway to the garage, hopped out, lifted the door, and parked. When she let herself into the house, Pollock was in the kitchen. Pollock leaned into her line of sight and called, “You okay?”

  “I’m good,” Rinker said.

  “Got a hornet’s nest going,” Pollock said.

  Rinker looked at her for a minute, then said, “If you think I should go . . .”

  “I just think you should lay low for a few days,” Pollock said. She came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “I heard on the radio about you calling the FBI. There are cops all over that truck stop, if that was really you.”

  “It’s on TV?”

  “It’s everywhere on TV,” Pollock said. “They’re taking fingerprints, they’re talking to witnesses. They’re making a sketch of you from witnesses.”

  “All right,” Rinker said. “Soon as it gets dark, I’m gonna take off for a while. I’ll be gone two or three days, outa here.”

  “I don’t want to know where you’re going.”

  But she did; and Rinker said, “Anniston, Alabama, the garden spot of the Deep South.”

  “I been there. I don’t remember no garden,” Pollock said.

  “That’s okay, because I’m not going after carrots,” Rinker said. “I’m going to see an old Army buddy.”

  11

  THE DAY WAS DRAGGING ON .<
br />
  Malone had put together an approach to Levy, and one of the feds was doing a PowerPoint presentation on Levy’s connections in the overground banking world and his possible ties with underground money-laundering activities. Levy’s private-client list had turned up a vein of investment by people tied to organized crime. A three-man team had put together a half-hour-long briefing after six hours of financial research.