'Somebody tried to be a nice guy at lunch and gave him a can of Coke. He stole the hole punch-out thing, you know, the hole, and hid it, and that's what he used. He covered himself up with a blanket, and by the time they figured things weren't right… he was gone.'
'Okay. Okay, I got a message for you for the feds…'
'Clara, Clara, wait a minute. Listen. Get out of here. Pick up your shit and go to Spain or South America or somewhere, but stop this. You might want to get these guys, but you don't have to get them right now. Right this minute. Stop now, come back some other time.'
'You're giving me friendly advice?'
'It's gotta stop.' Lucas was looking at Andreno, who gave him the keep-rolling sign.
'All right, you're holding me on the phone. Well, good luck with that,' she said. Her voice had gone cold as ice. 'Here's the message: I meant what I said. You got that? I meant what I said.'
'Clara…' But he was talking to himself. He looked at the phone, shook his head, said, 'Gone,' and punched it off.
'We had her for a while,' Andreno said. He was on his own phone; when it was answered, he said, 'Andreno and Davenport-you got her? Yeah. We're rolling.'
'Where?' Lucas asked when Andreno had hung up.
'Right up on I-44. She switched cells going west. Close.'
'So she does live around here-it's not that Patsy works for Anheuser. She wouldn't drive to where Patsy works to make a call. And she was pissed. She called me as soon as she thought she was okay.'
'Sounds good to me. What do you wanna do? Run around Soulard? Doesn't seem like much point of going out on the highway.'
'Yeah-let's just wander. Who knows?'
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Lucas said, 'I'll tell you something-it's one thing to cover the streets, but this is fucking ridiculous. Every single street's got a car with two guys in it, driving at ten miles an hour. It looks like a goddamn Shrine parade.'
Andreno snorted. 'So Mallard talked to our guys, who probably talked to everybody else… We probably got five agencies and fifty cars down here, all looking for Clara.'
'If they find her, I hope to hell they can shoot. I don't think she's gonna go easy,' Lucas said.
'She sounded pissed?'
'She sounded psychotic.'
POLLOCK AND RINKER turned onto Tucker Avenue, and two blocks ahead, Rinker saw two large American cars stopped in the street, the occupants apparently talking to each other. 'Take the next right,' she said to Pollock.
'But… you think those are police?'
'Maybe. Take a right.'
They went right at the corner, up a block, and turned left, back toward Pollock's place. Another block, and Pollock, looking in the rearview mirror, said, 'Another car turned in behind us, end of the block. Going really slow.'
'Keep going.' Rinker slipped down in the foot well, the handbag in her lap.
'Got another car, up at the corner, ahead. There's a stop sign-I'm going to slow down and stop and let him go.'
She slowed down and stopped. A few seconds passed, and then she accelerated away. 'Two guys, and they really looked me over,' Pollock said. 'I think they were police.'
'Any more cars?'
'The one behind us just stopped at the corner. They might be talking to the other guys… Now they're coming again.'
'How far from the house?'
'A block.'
'Pull into the driveway, then get out-get something out of the trunk, let them see you. They'll know you're not me.'
'Dear God,' Pollock said.
But she did it. Bumped up into the driveway, got out, fished around in the trunk, then dropped the trunk lid with a bang. A minute later, she said, 'Nobody coming. You can move now, but I'd hurry.'
In ten seconds, they were inside, watching through a crack in the curtains. Another cop car went by every minute or two. 'They're all over the place,' Rinker said. 'They can't be doing this everywhere-they must know we're here.'
'How?'
Rinker shook her head. 'I don't know. We've got to think about that.'
16
LUCAS AND ANDRENO HOOKED UP WITH Bender and Carter, and they compared maps, and Lucas told the others about the call from Rinker.
'Scary,' Bender said.
'Gotta find her quick,' Lucas said. 'She's outa control.'
They put the maps together and Lucas, comparing the crossed-off houses and eliminating duplicates, said, 'Terrific. We don't have half, but we've got a third or more. If she's down here…'
'I'm worried that she's over on the flats, working for one of those companies or the brewery,' Carter said.
'I don't think so,' Lucas said. 'Because Clara isn't working, and I think Clara was close by when she found out about Gene. I think she came right out of here, somewhere. Could be west a little more, but not as far over as the Hill.'
'Why?'
'Because Clara was freaked when she called.' He explained what he thought that meant, and they all nodded and went back to looking at the maps. 'We oughta get those other letter carriers tonight,' Carter said. 'Me'n Bender could look them up.'
'Do that,' Lucas said. 'I think Andreno and I better get back with the feds. We don't want to leave them alone too long, with nobody but themselves to talk to.'
WHEN THEY GOT off the elevator at the FBI building, they could see the door to the operations center was standing open, and they could hear the feds snarling at each other. Starting to think about blame, Lucas thought.
'… all a goddamn theory,' an agent named Brown was saying when Lucas and Andreno came through the door. Everyone around the table glanced their way, and the discussion died.
'The authors of the theory,' Malone said dryly. She was sitting at the end of the table, legs crossed, looking beat.
'What's the problem?' Lucas asked.
'The problem is, the whole Soulard search and Patsy Hill and cell-phone idea is a stretch, and we've got too much pinned on it,' Brown said.
'It's the only goddamned theory we've got, and it paid off,' Lucas said. 'She called from the right area.'
'She was on the interstate. Everybody's on the interstate. There's a million cars on the interstate.'
'She was going west. Which meant that she had to get on it somewhere east of where you had her, right?' Lucas asked. 'And that means, from where you had her, she either got on in Illinois or she got on in Soulard, or on the edge of it, anyway.'
'So what're we gonna do, sit around and wait for her to call you?' Brown rapped. 'Next time, she'll be up in Florissant.'
'So what're you suggesting?' Andreno asked. 'I mean, we really need something, and if you got, don't be shy.'
