out on bail when he disappeared. His car had been found parked, engine running, behind a Dairy Queen in Tisdale. His checkbook and wallet were on the passenger seat. He was never seen again, and the Bureau believed that Clara Rinker may have paid him a visit.
Rinker's mother had almost nothing useful to tell the Bureau. Her memory of Clara seemed uneven; and when she went to get family pictures, she found that all the photos of Clara were gone.
The Bureau had tracked Roy through a series of minor crime reports, and eventually found him in Santa Barbara, California, where he was involved in a lightweight prostitution ring. Roy and a man named Charles Green ran teenaged hookers around to country clubs. The Bureau report quoted one source as saying, 'You could get your shoes and your knob polished at the same place and time. It was convenient for everybody.'
Roy was two years older than Rinker and had left home two years after she had. He had seen her twice, when she'd stopped in Santa Barbara looking for their younger brother, Gene, who was also someplace in California. Roy didn't know anything about anything, though he said that Rinker appeared to be doing well, and drove nice cars. He had no photographs of her, and denied having sexually abused her. The interviewer thought he was lying.
Rinker's younger brother, Gene, had shown up on three police reports in California, all three for minor drug offenses. He was listed as 'homeless' on the police reports and was apparently living on the beaches between Venice and Santa Monica. The Bureau had been unable to find him. Next to this paragraph, a female hand had scrawled, 'Lucas: ask me-M.'
Lucas reached forward and tapped Malone's arm. 'There's a note here to ask you about Gene Rinker.'
She turned and said, 'Yes. We found him yesterday. He was working for a pool-cleaning company in Pacific Palisades-Los Angeles. We're holding him on a drug charge.'
'Good charge?'
'He was in possession of marijuana.'
'How much?'
'Maybe a gram.'
'A joint? Jesus, is that…?'
'It's more than enough, is what it is. As soon as we get done here, I'm going to L.A. to talk to him. See if he has anything interesting on Clara.'
'Okay.' Malone turned away, and Lucas sank back into the report.
RINKER HAD WORKED for a bar in St. Louis, then for Ross, who was a liquor distributor. She'd also worked off and on as a bookkeeper-secretary for a mobster named Allen Kent, whose mother's family was closely tied to the old Giancana outfit in Chicago. Eventually, Rinker had put together enough money to buy a bar in Wichita, which had done well until she'd fled after her disastrous involvement in a series of killings in Minneapolis. Where she'd gone immediately after Minneapolis was unknown. She'd eventually popped up in Cancъn, where she'd worked illegally as a bookkeeper at a boutique hotel called Passages.
Lucas had danced with her once, not knowing who she was, at her club in Wichita, The Rink. They'd had a good time, for a little time, that night. She'd even chatted with Mallard and Malone. She must've known who they were, although they hadn't known who she was. Later, she'd tried to kill Lucas in his own front yard. She'd missed almost purely by chance… as he'd missed her.
READING ABOUT HIS own encounter with Rinker, Lucas was struck with the strangeness of writerly synthesis. He was in the story, but it didn't sound like him, or feel like him. He felt as though he were looking at himself in an old 8-millimeter movie, something that wasn't quite true, but was undeniably accurate… and he wondered if the entire report was like that, accurate but not especially true.
Rinker came across as Mallard saw her, as the daughter of the devil. At the same time, almost against the will of the writer, another picture was emerging, a kind of Annie Oakley old-timey story of survival.
AFTER COMPLETING THE detailed review of Rinker's life and activities, the report went on to detail what was known of the business and crime activities of her various bosses: Names were named, connections made, possibilities explored. Much was speculative, but all of it was based on the kind of rumor-fabric that Lucas had lived with most of his working life. Not much could be proven, but much could be understood…
He was two-thirds of the way through the report when he heard the flight attendant saying something, but he paid no attention until the plane's attitude changed with an audible clunk that reverberated through the cabin. He sat upright, looked around, and saw that people were packing up briefcases, putting away computers, sticking stuff back into the overhead. He looked at his watch: They'd been in the air for two hours and were coming into Cancъn.
He leaned forward, tapped Malone's arm, and when she turned, passed the report back.
'Finish it?'
'No. Got another hundred pages. And I'll want to read the whole thing over,' he said. 'Good stuff in there. I can see what you meant when you said… inflected. Tough life.'
'Which is not exactly an excuse for all the people she's killed-especially people like Barbara Allen.' Allen had been a rich charity-and-foundation socialite in Minneapolis. Rinker had shot her to death so that her client could get at Allen's husband.
'No. But it was still tough,' Lucas said.
'The thing is, you kinda liked her,' Malone said. 'You went for that whole perky cheerleader teased-hair bar- owner act.'
'What's not to like?' Lucas asked. He said, 'Better buckle up,' and leaned back out of the conversation.
THE PLANE FAILED to crash in Cancъn, but the heat and humidity jumped them as soon as they walked off the plane. They retrieved their luggage and took a taxi from the mainland over to the Island, where Mallard had gotten rooms at the Blue Palms. 'Let's get cleaned up and find something to eat,' he said. 'The hotel restaurant is supposed to be okay.'
'How about the Italian place where Rinker was shot?' Lucas asked. 'Your report says it's pretty good.'
'Saving that for lunch tomorrow,' Mallard said.
The hotel room was a blank-faced off-white cubicle with a TV and a minibar, a too-soft double bed, and a bathroom without a tub. The place smelled faintly of bug spray and salt water, and could have been at any seaside anywhere. Lucas hung his clothes in the closet and washed his face, then walked out onto the narrow balcony and looked down at the water.
Rinker had been here, and not long ago. Had worked within a couple of blocks of the Blue Palms, had probably spent time on the beach ten stories down. She might well be in the same kind of place, somewhere else on the globe, looking for a job, trying to settle in.
Or she might have a hidey-hole in St. Louis, ready to go to war on her lover's killers. If she'd simply run, they'd never find her. But if she'd gone to St. Louis, he thought…
If she'd gone to St. Louis, they'd get her.
4
THEY HAD DINNER TOGETHER, AND caught up with their separate lives. Lucas poked at Malone's new relationship with the Sheetrocker, despite Mallard's efforts to warn him away. Malone had almost nothing to say about her friend, except that he had terrific shoulders from lifting the Sheetrock.
Mallard mentioned that his office had been renamed. It was now called the Special Studies Group, and the last big case had involved the destruction of a bank robbery gang operating out of Toronto, Canada.
'They never did a thing in Canada,' Mallard said. 'They were completely law-abiding truck drivers and auto- parts guys. Then, about once every two months, they'd come down south and hit a bank.'
'How'd you bust them?'
'Computers. They always hit the same kinds of banks at the same times of day with the same techniques, which told us that we were working with one gang. So we got all of the robberies with that signature, and plotted them with a geographical information system. The computer took a while, but one of the statistical clusters it turned up was a drive-time thing-all of the robberies were within a couple hours of border crossings. Different border crossings. Anyway, we ran the dates of the robberies against the names of people coming in, which didn't turn up anything, because they kept switching IDs. But then we ran the incoming license plates, and we found
