“I keep thinking about the car,” Carter said. “If the car was on the street, locally, we’d have her by now. I know for a fact that guys are driving up and down every street in the whole metro area looking for the car, and they’re coming up dry. The thing is . . . maybe she took off.”
“The feds have put the make and tag number out all over the Midwest and South, and she can’t have outrun that,” Lucas said. “If she did, there’s nothing we can do about it. But I don’t think she’s gone. I just don’t know how to put my hands on her.”
“Comes back to her friends,” Andreno said. “Somebody’s hiding her. Somebody’s helping her. If we can put our hands on that guy . . .”
LUCAS TALKED TO Mallard on the phone at eight o’clock. “I might run home tomorrow, if you don’t come up with something. Catch a plane out tomorrow afternoon, spend a couple of days at home. I’m out of ideas right now.”
“Lucas, goddamnit, you’re the only one who’s had any ideas that actually panned out. You can’t leave.”
“For a day or two,” Lucas said. “I could be back here in four hours, if something breaks.”
BUT SOMETHING BROKE sooner than that. Mallard called back at 11 o’clock, excited, words tumbling over words. “We spotted her. The guys on Dallaglio’s house are watching her right now. We’re pulling people in all the way around her, tightening up on her. We’re looking at her with night glasses, and we can see her watching the Dallaglio place. She’s in a Volvo, they say.”
“Meet you in the lobby,” Lucas said.
He’d been reading, still dressed, and he slipped on his shoes and got his car keys and ran for the elevator. After a short, impatient wait, the elevator door opened and Malone was there, trying to shove a gun back into her purse.
“Gonna shoot her, huh?” Lucas asked.
Malone grunted. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Weird. She’s been so careful, and now she’s sitting in a car on the street, watching Dallaglio. She pulled Richter out of his shell, she got weird with Levy, something we never even suspected, and now . . .” He shook his head. But it happened sometimes.
DALLAGLIO ’S PLACE WAS twenty minutes out, and they all went together in one of the Suburbans, a flasher working on the front, cutting through traffic like an avalanche, a heavy-footed red-haired FBI man at the wheel, one of the Washington crew. Lucas didn’t like him much, but had to admit that he knew how to run the truck.
Mallard was on the radio the full time. He’d been on it when he ran out of the hotel a minute after Lucas and Malone, stopped using it just long enough to explain that he’d been getting ready to take a shower when the call came from the field, and then got back on it, with brief breaks to pass along what he was hearing.
“I’ve told them to move on her whether or not we’re there. As soon as they’re ready, they go.”
“They gonna rush her?”
“They’re gonna block her, front and back, with trucks. We’ve got people moving up through a yard that she’s parked near, but there’s a dog, and they’re talking to the owner about getting the dog out of there quietly before they go through. When she’s blocked, there’ll be a guy pointing a shotgun through her window before she has time to move. They think they can close up to fifteen feet.”
They kept getting closer, and nothing had happened. The dog was hanging them up, and then Mallard reported that the dog was now locked in the basement of the nearest house, and that the tac squad was moving in, cutting through the dark yards. The red-haired agent took them off the freeway and down a couple of major streets, the tires screeching on the warm asphalt, all of them leaning into the turn, and then suddenly, on a narrow street, surrounded by woods, he slowed, and reached out and killed the flasher.
“Six blocks,” he said. Twenty seconds later: “Four blocks.”
Then up in front of them, a block away, they saw another suburban pull away from the curb, go down another block, and turn a corner. “That’s our guys,” said the redhead.
“Going down,” Mallard said. He couldn’t keep the stress out of his voice. “I’m about to wet my pants.”
“This is a rental,” the redhead said. “Try not to.”
They idled along for a block, paused before the corner, drifting toward the curb. Then Mallard said, “They’re doing it, they’re doing it, let’s GO.”
The red-haired man mashed on the accelerator and the Suburban grunted away from the curb and turned the corner, and, two blocks away, they could see a car in a brilliant slash of light and trucks all around it, and men with long guns and helmets. . . .
“Got her,” Mallard shouted. “We got her.”
AND A HALF hour later, he said, harshly, angrily, to Lucas, “What the fuck is this about, Lucas? What the fuck is this about?”
They had Nina Bennett pressed against a six-year-old Volvo station wagon, frightened, crying, hands cuffed behind her back. And obviously not Clara Rinker.
After some preliminary shouting, the next thought was that Rinker was using Bennett as a diversion to approach Dallaglio’s house, and there was a rush to get a larger squad around the house. But Dallaglio was okay, and there was no sign of Rinker, or of fleeing cars, or anything else.
Which brought up Mallard’s question, “What the fuck is this about, Lucas?”
“I don’t know.” He looked around. “Maybe she’s watching from somewhere, to see what would happen.”
“She had to know that Dallaglio was protected. What would she gain?”
“I don’t know.”
“We don’t even know it was Rinker,” Malone said. “The woman who hired her—if this even happened—didn’t sound like Rinker.”
“Didn’t sound like Mrs. Dallaglio, either,” Lucas said dryly.
“Maybe she’s just pulling our chain,” said the red-haired agent.
That seemed unlikely, Lucas thought, but he couldn’t think of anything better.
An hour later, after taking the cuffed Nina Bennett to the Dallaglios’ house to confront Jesse Dallaglio—both women agreed that they’d never met—they sent Bennett downtown for a formal statement, and pulled everybody else back into position.
“She doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Mallard said, meaning Bennett. “We’re gonna get her statement and cut her loose.”
“Got a story to tell, anyway. Private eye—you don’t see many of them anymore. Not like that,” Lucas said.
“She even had a bottle of booze in her car, and a little on her breath,” Malone said. “And she must’ve smoked like a chimley. The whole car reeked.”
“You said chimley,” Lucas observed.
“Did not. I said chimney. ”
“Chimley,” Mallard said, absently. Then: “But you know what’s really strange when you think about it? She smokes, like a chimley, and she drives a Volvo station wagon. I didn’t think that was allowed.”
“I said chimney, ” Malone said.
After a minute of silence, the red-haired agent said, “Did not. Said chimley. ”
THEY ’D STOPPED TEASING her about when they got back to the hotel, still frustrated from the false alarm. They parked, got out, and started walking for the main entrance, under the orange sodium-vapor lights, when somebody shot at them.
BANG!
They were spread out, walking away from the Suburban, walking in a line side-by-side, like a publicity shot for the Magnificent Seven, when the BANG! echoed off the building front and they all knew what it was and the agents went down and Lucas pivoted and realized in one half-second that the shooter had to be at the far end of the huge empty parking lot, a hundred and fifty yards north, or possibly on the roof of one of the old buildings down to the right, but there was no place else, really, and he ran toward his car, thinking Go-go-go and flashing on the difficulty of hitting a running deer at a hundred and fifty yards, hoping, hoping, looking north as he ran, looking for another muzzle flash, and then he was at his car and inside and fired it up and pulled out of the parking lot,
catching from the corner of his eyes the confused, scrambling huddle of agents in the driveway and then he was on the street and accelerating . . .
He never saw her, he thought later.
He thought he found the place from where she’d fired the shot, a spot beside a big metal-sided building that would allow her to park right there, that would allow her to fire, and then to run back and climb inside her car in a matter of two or three seconds. She was probably moving before Lucas had reached his car, he thought.
He did the neighborhood anyway, gunning up and down the side streets. There was an entrance to a whole nest of interstates right there, and he was sure that was where she’d gone, and if she had, she’d be truly gone. He’d never know what car she was in if he went that way, so he stayed on the down streets, hoping against hope that she’d gotten cute, that she’d tried to drive away slowly, that he might see something.
But he did not.
AFTER TEN MINUTES ,he headed back, paused by the metal building, looking over the spot he thought might have given her the shooting stance. She would have been able to rest her hand against the building, and across the parking lot, now a sea of flashing lights, they would have been perfectly illuminated and silhouetted against the hotel. . . .
“Goddamnit,” he said aloud.
Thiswas the reason for sending Bennett to watch Dallaglio. Rinker had found out where the out-of-town agents were staying, probably by calling around to the main hotels and asking for them by name.
Once she had the hotel, she’d scouted it, picked a place to shoot from. But she couldn’t wait out there all day with a gun, hoping somebody would come along. By sending Bennett out to Dallaglio’s, she’d known that all the big shots would be pulled out of the hotel, and once they found out that it was a false alarm, they’d all be coming back, late at night. She’d be in the dark, and they’d be walking in the bright lights of the parking lot. . . .
As he thought that, he was swept by a sudden, physical chill. He hadn’t even considered the possibility anybody might have been hit. He’d just run. He turned back down toward the hotel. A cop tried to wave him off, but he shouted, “FBI,” and was pointed into the back lot. He got out and started around the hotel, and saw a man running toward him, a big man, flapping his arms like a goose trying to take off, and not getting there.
“She . . . ,” Mallard croaked. “She . . .”
“Whoa, whoa,” Lucas said, and suddenly he was frightened himself. “Whoa, Louis, what happened?”
“She . . . she shot Malone. Malone was shot.”
“Ah, Jesus, how bad? How bad?” Lucas looked past him, but there was nobody on the ground, nothing. She must be on the way to the hospital.
He started past Mallard, but Mallard hooked his arm and closed his eyes and said, “She’s dead.”
20
MALONE HAD BEEN HIT BETWEEN THE shoulder blades, Mallard said. The ambulance had been there in three or four minutes, but she was gone by then. She’d never opened her eyes after she’d gone down, had never made a sound. They put her in the ambulance and rushed her to a critical care unit, but Mallard had been a Marine lieutenant in the last days of Vietnam and had seen people shot, had picked up people hit in the back, and knew she was gone.
“But you’re not right a hundred percent of the time. Let’s get over there,” Lucas said harshly. He was running a little out of control, he knew, but that had happened before, and he recognized it. “Let’s get a car.”
His reaction pumped a gram of hope back into Mallard, and Mallard was suddenly waving his arms at the red-haired agent, and in less than a minute, they were out of the parking lot heading west. Mallard was hoping again, but shaking his head. “I don’t think, I don’t think,” he said over and over again. “I don’t think . . .”
Lucas let him ramble: Mallard was in shock.
Rinker would call him again, Lucas thought. He had to talk to somebody about that—maybe Sally Epaulets. Rinker wouldn’t be calling to crow about the shooting, but she’d call to talk: to make the point that this was tit-for-tat, Malone for Gene Rinker. Lucas couldn’t imagine that she’d let her guard down, but he couldn’t take the chance. As Mallard continued to press against the dashboard, leaning toward the hospital, Lucas took out his phone and called Sally.
She answered, and asked, “Is it true? It can’t be true.”
“She was shot. She’s bad, and Louis thinks she’s dead. We’ll be at the hospital in a minute.”
“Oh, my God. Her parents . . .”
“Listen. Sally. Listen. Are you listening?”
She was crying, Lucas realized, and he really didn’t have time for that. “Stop that shit,” he snapped. “Stop crying. Shut the fuck up.”
That shocked her out of it, and she said, “What?”
“Rinker’s gonna call me. You’ve got to be ready to track her. You’ve got to coordinate with St. Louis and everybody else. Everybody’s got to be ready to roll, as soon as you have a location. Do you understand? You’re monitoring me, just like we did before.”
“But what about Louis . . . ?”
Lucas glanced at Mallard, then said, “Louis is out of it for now. So you’re carrying it, okay? Get this set up. She’s gonna call tonight. And I gotta stay off this phone.”
THEY WERE AT the hospital two minutes later, Mallard hopping out of the truck while it was still rolling into a parking space. There were two agents already there, outside the emergency room doors, but he bulled on past them through the doors and inside. Lucas followed, but stopped and looked at the agents.
“She’s . . .”
“Gone,” said one of the agents. “She was gone when she got here. They put her on a respirator, but there’s nothing to work with, they say.”
“Ah, Jesus.”
“There’s one of the paramedics.”
A paramedic had come out of the building, a black man with a shaved head. He wore a small gold earring and had a cigarette dangling from his lip. Lucas walked over and said, “I’m . . . with the FBI guys. I understand you brought Malone in?”
“Yeah. There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t help her.”
“Where was she hit?”
“In the spine, right between the shoulder blades. The doc could maybe tell you better. I’m not a doctor.”
“Tell me what you think,” Lucas said.
The paramedic took a long drag on the cigarette, blew smoke, then said, “It looked to me like a small-caliber bullet, a .22 probably. Very small entry wound, almost like the end of a pencil. We turned her over to see if she was pumping blood out of her chest, but there were hardly any exit wounds, a couple of little cuts, like. Like shrapnel, or something. I think the bullet clipped through her spine and just exploded, like one of those . . . you know, those guys who shoot prairie dogs.”
“A varmint bullet.”
“Yeah. Varmint bullet. Like it hit her and exploded everything, just pulped her heart and lungs.”
They stood silently for a minute or so, and then the guy said, “I’m sorry.”
Lucas rubbed his nose. “Goddamnit.”
“She a nice lady?”
“Ohhh . . . yeah, in a lot of ways,” Lucas said, not ready for that kind of question. The paramedic looked at him oddly, and Lucas realized that he had been asking a pro-forma question and had expected a pro-forma answer. Lucas nodded his head and said, “Yeah, she was, really. A nice lady.”
• • •
LUCAS WENT INSIDE and found Mallard slumped in a chair, while an uncertain doctor stood a couple of feet away, looking down at him, then at Lucas. “Are you a friend?”
“Yeah.”
“We might want to keep this gentleman around for a little while—he’s got a shock problem.”
“All right. I’ll have somebody sit with him.”
Lucas sat down and looked at Mallard, who had suddenly shriveled. He wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t looking at anything except the tiled floor. Lucas patted him on the shoulder and said, “Just
sit for a while.”
Mallard nodded dumbly, and Lucas got up, found the red-haired agent, and told him to stick with Mallard.
The red-haired guy nodded and said, “I jerked the AIC out of bed. He’s on his way to the scene, so that’s covered.”
“All right. I’m going back to the hotel.”
“Wait for the call?”
“If it comes.”
The agent shook his head. “Gotta get the bitch now. Before it was a sport. Now it’s a war.”