"I wish-" Andreno began.

"I gotta get out of here," Rinker said, cutting him off. His eyes were big, and going oily, and he looked around the room, looked for a window or a crack or anything that might let in some air. "I mean I just… I just… I gotta get out of here. I can't breathe, I got dreams…"

"About Clara?" Lucas asked.

"About me. I'm like this big moth, like the moths that come at night when you've got flowers, they're like hummingbirds, but they're moths, and I'm one of them, and these guys catch me and I'm flapping my wings and they keep pulling at me like they're gonna pull my wings off, and my feelers. I got these big feelers like feathers and they're gonna pull them off. And they were all laughing and when I sat up on the bunk last night I thought I was there, that they were pulling my wings off, and I couldn't breathe, I just kept flapping my wings…"

LUCAS CALLED THE jailer, then told Rinker, "We'll try to do something. Gotta be a little patient, though."

Andreno chipped in: "Hold on, son."

When the jailer took him away, Rinker looked back at them and said, "I really gotta get back. All my stuff is in L.A. They're gonna sell it if I don't get back."

MALONE HAD A TAPE."If you want to listen to it again, it's all there," he said, as they took the elevator down.

"I only saw one thing," Lucas said, looking at Andreno. "Clara had a friend or maybe a couple of friends back home. He didn't want to say it."

"Shouldn't be hard to find, if they're still there," Andreno said. "Town's about two blocks long."

"We've had agents out there," Malone said. "Interviewed everybody-nothing. Her mother's a vegetable, barely remembers Clara. We've gone over the whole house, from top to bottom, looked at every scrap of paper."

"Find any friends?"

"Nobody. Not many people even remembered her. The family was sorta… isolated."

"Huh." Lucas thought about it, then asked Andreno, "What do you think?"

"What else have we got?"

"Maybe our friend the phone guy," Lucas suggested.

"We could try him again. If we don't get anything, it's about three hours down to Tisdale. We can go down late tonight, after we talk to Levy, poke around tomorrow morning, stop at the Bass Pro Shops store, and still get back by early afternoon."

"Gotta think about it," Lucas said. To Malone: "And you gotta think about cutting Gene loose. There's nothing there. He could use some… help."

"This whole thing will resolve itself in the next week or so," Malone said. "We've got so many people looking that we'll either turn Rinker up, or she'll leave. When it's resolved… yeah, we'll probably cut him loose. If we don't catch her here, we'll let him go and keep an eye on him for a few months, see if he has any visitors."

THEY DEFLECTED MALONE 'S curiosity about the phone guy. She made a call, talked to Mallard for a few minutes, lifted her face away from the receiver to tell Lucas that they'd rendezvous in Central West End at seven o'clock, and go from there to Levy's. Levy, according to his watchers, usually worked late at his office and got home sometime after six o'clock. "Louis wants to find a place to eat before we go in." She looked at Andreno.

Andreno thought about it for a second, then brightened. "Perfect spot. Tell him there's a place called the Black Lantern, five-minute walk from Levy's place. Steak joint. Good salads. Good martinis. We've got just enough time to eat comfortable."

Malone relayed the information, listened for a moment, then said goodbye and hung up. She told Lucas, "He says you're supposed to call Marcy at your office. She says it's semi-urgent."

When they got out on the sidewalk, Lucas used his cell phone to dial the office in Mineapolis. Black picked up, then switched him over to Marcy. "What's up?" Lucas asked.

"A columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called here, trying to get you. He says that Rinker called him this afternoon and gave you as a reference for some stuff she told him. He says he's pretty sure it's Rinker who called."

"Gave me as a reference?"

"Yeah. Whoever this is, she told him that she talked to you," Marcy said.

"She did. She said she was you."

"What? Tell me…" And in the background, Lucas could hear her say to Black, "She called him. She said she was me." She sounded thrilled to have been touched by a celebrity.

"I'll talk to you later," Lucas said. "What's this news guy's name and number?"

"His name's Sandy White…"

Lucas jotted the name and number in the palm of his hand, rang off, and told Malone and Andreno what had happened.

"Jesus," Andreno said. "Who's running this operation, the FBI or Rinker?"

"There seems to be some disagreement about that," Malone said.

"So do I talk to White?" Lucas asked. "You make the call."

"We'll have somebody else talk to him. I'll call Louis on the way down to Central West End," Malone said. "That way, White can't push you, because our guy can deny knowing too much about it. And we find out what she said."

THE BLACK LANTERN was an old-style steak house, set a few steps below street level and smelling of sizzling beef fat and beer. Mallard had already taken a table, and was reading a menu the size of a wall calendar.

Lucas introduced him to Andreno, and Mallard asked, "Does anybody read this guy Sandy White?"

"Probably not more than half the people in St. Louis," Andreno said. "He's got a job as a TV editorial guy, too, so he'll have that going, along with the column."

"Goddamnit," Mallard grumbled. "I talked to him. Rinker called him, all right. He's running a piece tomorrow, warning us off her brother. White talked to a cop somewhere and got Gene Rinker's arrest record, and they know we're holding him on simple possession."

"One good thing about it," Lucas said, as he studied the menu.

"Tell me, please."

"If somebody gets screwed for this, it's gonna be you, not me," Lucas said.

Andreno nodded and said, "Got that straight."

They ordered wine, and Malone told Mallard about the interview with Gene Rinker, and then Mallard and Malone ordered salads and Lucas and Andreno ordered steaks, and Andreno said, "Gene Rinker is a troubled young man. I don't think it was dope-looked like he was fucked from the git-go."

"And you got nothing from him," Mallard predicted.

"Eh," Lucas said. "Probably nothing. We might run down to Tisdale and poke around."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tonight, if nothing comes up. Get a bed in Springfield."

Mallard shrugged. "We talked to everybody she knew-but hell, if you want to, it's fine with me. Maybe you'll turn something up."

"She didn't make good friends. She was too messed up," Lucas said. "We think she might have had some friends when she was a kid. We keep thinking, she's gotta be staying somewhere. She's not sleeping in her car."

"Whatever…"

The steaks came a few minutes later and they talked about the case a bit, and Lucas thought about the friend that Rinker must be staying with, and said, gesturing with a neatly forked square of rib eye, "You know, if you really don't care how you get her-I mean, dead or alive-you ought to talk to all the local assholes and tell them that she's staying with a friend. Somebody in that whole grapevine would know who her friends were. She worked for them, and somebody would know. Especially if there was some money on the table."

Malone nodded. "There would have been no reason for her to keep her friendships secret back then."

Mallard said, "Except that she's smart. We know she's smart, and this whole thing with this White guy makes me think she's a little smarter than I realized. I mean, she's messing with us. She's gonna have a bunch of civil rights attorneys on our asses in the morning. All that makes me think-she'd know that her old pals might sell her out. She'd be ready for that."