"So maybe she won't use a rifle, but the goddamn things scare the shit out of me. Never see it coming. Whack, and you're dead before you know it." They walked along for a minute, and he added, "Man, that must've been something last night. I wish I could've been there, as long as I wouldn't have gotten shot. That FBI guy, they say he could lose a leg."
"That's not the word anymore," Lucas said. "The word is, he's gonna be okay."
"All right. Still, this fuckin' woman ought to be in the CIA or something. They could use her."
Lucas looked up and down the street. "I'd say we could put a squad at the far end, but then… it'd just scare her off, if she's coming. I'd rather have her come."
"And fuck a bunch of Rosses?"
"He knows what he's getting into… And yeah, fuck him."
Andreno shook his head. "That's harsh, man." He looked down the street again. "Just like standing naked in the window."
THEY WENT UP the steps and inside, showed their IDs to a guard, went up the interior steps and out the back, past the lighted fountain. To the left, on the other side of a long, low, redbrick building, a group of waiters were setting up tables and lighting mosquito-repelling tiki torches. They turned that way, down more stairs, up a sidewalk edged with button-sized red and blue flowers.
A woman in a blue dress and matching shoes, pearls, and carefully coiffed blond hair was supervising the waiters. She saw them, said something to a waiter, then hurried over: "I'm sorry, this is a private party."
She had a perfectly sculpted nose, and it was quivering like a rat terrier's.
"We're cops," Andreno said laconically. He snapped his gum. "We're… making sure there's no problem tonight."
"Problem?" She looked from Andreno to Lucas. "What kind of problem?"
"A woman named Sally, from the FBI, will be here in a couple of minutes," Lucas said, looking back at the entry building. "She'll explain it all. We're making a routine security check. We hear one of the cellos could… do something crazy."
SHE WANTED MORE, her nose quivering even more fiercely as they put her off and wandered past a rectangular bed of red and gold chrysanthemums, past a pool, then through a hedge into the rose garden, strolling with their hands in their pockets, looking at the flowers. "Rinker'd have to be thinking about climbing a tree," Lucas said, finally, as they walked out the far side of the rose garden and stopped under a crab-apple tree. There wasn't much contour to the land, but there was some, and the higher ground was to the left, and was covered with trees. "Ross'll be okay as long as he stays in the rose garden. The feds'll have three teams covering out there. They all rented tuxes, they'll come in one at a time, and once they get out in the dark, you won't be able to see them."
"You really think something is gonna happen?"
"I think… I don't know. These things get a rhythm. If I were Rinker, and if I were going after Ross, I'd go after him soon. Not because I had to, but because I couldn't stand not doing it. Getting it over with. Being done."
"But if she's not going after him…"
"Something'll happen. Something to put a period on it. If Ross gets here and he's walking around free as a bird, slapping people on the back, happy-then I'd be inclined to think that Clara's on her way to Paris. But if he's walking around keeping his head down, and his shoulder blades pinched together… it'll be interesting to see."
OFF TO THE RIGHT, they could see the glass-and-steel Climatron dome, with more pools in front of it. They wandered down that way.
"Can't see much from here-too many bushes," Andreno said.
"Other side would be better," Lucas agreed. "From a shooting point of view."
They paused next to a pool. A few feet from the corner, two bronze statues, naked dancing women, hung over the water. "Look at the knockers on that one," Andreno said.
Lucas had to laugh, because the same thought had trickled through his mind. "Look at the knockers on both of them."
They walked. Ambled. Hands in their pockets.
"Rinker's not gonna be here," Andreno said after a minute or two. "A: She doesn't know about it. B: He's too protected."
"She fooled us on Levy, she fooled us on Malone, she fooled us on Dallaglio-she shouldn't have been able to do any of those things. We knew she was smart, but she was a lot smarter than we were ready for," Lucas said. "She doesn't miss anything."
Andreno looked past him. "There's Sally. And Jesus, there's Mallard-he looks like he was hit by a truck."
"Man, I just… I think if somebody killed Weather, my fuckin' head would explode," Lucas said. "Let's go talk to him."
"What is it that the feds kept saying? Showtime. "
MALLARD WAS PHYSICALLY shaky, brutally unhappy. "I'm here for today and tomorrow. The funeral is day after tomorrow."
"Are you up to speed on what we're doing?" Lucas asked.
"Yes. Sally… sort of turned out to be an executive. I hadn't seen that before."
Lucas grinned at him, a small wan smile. "Everybody else did. There wasn't even any discussion-she just took it over."
"Good for her," Mallard said. He was wearing a tuxedo, as were the other agents that Lucas could see, and a few men who weren't agents. He and Andreno were wearing sport coats and slacks and loafers. Lucas felt like a radish at a convention of tulips. "You think she'll show up?"
"I can't figure it," Lucas said. "I'm getting the feeling, from what we've seen so far, that she started planning her moves right after she was shot down in Mexico. She's had a couple of months to think about them, and to have her show up and start blazing away-that's out of character."
"That's what she did last night," Mallard said.
"But we didn't see it coming last night," Lucas said. "The thing about last night-we could only see it later-is that she had a source of information that could feed her the Dallaglios in a hurry, somebody who could actually call her, or who she could call. I actually thought running was a great idea, from the Dallaglios' point of view. Once he was out of sight, she was out of luck. But… she knew where and when he was going. Exactly."
"Sally told me about the phone idea, the calls to Ross."
"And here she comes," Lucas said. Sally was wandering toward them, wearing a tight, deep burgundy dress that started low and ended low-below the collarbones and down to the ankles, slits on the sides. She was carrying a small black purse that Lucas decided must hold her pistol, because she couldn't have gotten a pencil under the dress without it showing. As she came up, Lucas said, "Nice purse."
She smiled at him. "Didn't think I could clean up, did you?"
"I thought you might," he said. "We've been talking about Ross, and what the hell's going on here."
"If she comes in, I think we'll get her. We've got teams moving all through the place."
Lucas looked away, staring at a pink rose, trying to work through it. They looked at him, waiting, and finally he said, "I can't nail it down. Can't figure what she'll do next. I've been stymied before, because I didn't know what I needed to know. But I've never felt stupid. She's got me feeling like a moron."
"We'll see," Mallard said. He patted Lucas on the shoulder and said, with a wan smile, "Dumbass."
MORE PEOPLE WERE arriving, men in tuxedos, women in party dresses. A small pop orchestra set up in front of the brick building that acted as a backstop for the party; a dozen long-haired men and women who started off with an even more orchestrated version of Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All," as if the original weren't bad enough.