The guard led him to an elevator, while another guard took the desk. The first guy was older, mid-fifties, Lucas thought, with a mildly unfashionable haircut and a nose that might have been broken twice. "You ever a cop?" Lucas asked, as they got in the elevator.

The guard glanced at him. "Twenty-two years, City of St. Louis."

"You let these FBI weenies get on top of you?"

The guard smiled pleasantly, showing his eyeteeth. "That doesn't happen. You a cop, or a consultant, or what?"

"Deputy chief from Minneapolis. I've bumped into Rinker a couple of times, and Mallard thinks I can help."

"Can you?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "She's a problem. You think these guys'll get her?"

The guard considered for a minute, and the elevator bumped to a stop one floor up. "Ah, these guys… aren't bad, for what they do," the guard said, as the door opened. They took a left down the hall. "We used to think, downtown, that they were all a bunch of yuppie assholes, but I seen some pretty good busts come out of here. What they do usually has a lot of intelligence, lot of surveillance. Patience, is what they got. They might have trouble with a street chick… Here's your room."

The conference room was unmarked. Lucas stopped and said, "You ever have a beer when you get off? Bite to eat?"

"Usually," the guard said. "There's a late-night place up on the Hill-get together with some of my old pals."

"I don't know St. Louis."

"If you're out of here by eleven, stop at the desk. I'll give you a map. You driving?"

"Yeah."

"No problem, then."

"What's your name?" Lucas asked.

"Dan Loftus."

"Lucas Davenport." They shook hands. "See you later."

THE GUARD HEADED back to his station, and Lucas knocked once on the conference room door and stepped inside. A dozen people-seven or eight men in ties and long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and four or five women in slacks and jackets-were sitting around two long tables, with Mallard at the front. A white board covered the front wall, and somebody had drawn a flow chart on it with three colors of ink. Five or six laptop computers were scattered down the conference table. Malone sat in a corner, wearing a skirted suit: She lifted a hand.

"Lucas," Mallard said. He stepped over to shake hands and pointed Lucas at a chair. "This is Chief Davenport," Mallard said to the group. "Treat him well." A few of the agents nodded. Most looked him over, then turned back to Mallard.

Like that, Lucas thought. Not a member of the tribe. On the other hand, he had his own tribe. He thought of the guard and leaned back in the chair to listen.

MALLARD HAD SIX names on the whiteboard: six local crime figures who might have been tied into Rinker. They included Nanny Dichter, now dead; Paul Dallaglio, a business partner of Dichter's in the import and dope businesses; Gene Giancati, involved in sex and loan-sharking; Donny O'Brien, improbably a trustee of a half-dozen different union pension funds; Randall Ferignetti, who ran the biggest local sports books; and John Ross, who ran a liquor-distribution business, a trucking company, several lines of vending machines, and an ATM-servicing company.

"We think Rinker's most likely target is Dallaglio," Mallard was saying, tapping the white board. "He and Dichter were like Peter and Paul-the salesman and the organizer. If Dichter was involved enough with Rinker that she killed him, then Dallaglio's got to know her."

"Can we talk to him?" a blue-shirted agent asked.

"I called him this morning, but he wouldn't talk," Mallard said. "He said he'd have an attorney get back to me, but we haven't heard anything. We suspect there's some pretty heavy conferencing going on right now."

"We could put a net around him without asking," the agent said.

Malone chipped in: "We could, if we could keep it light enough that he didn't know. The problem is, he's hired private protection-Emerson Security out of Chicago. We don't know who yet, but Emerson has a whole bunch of ex… Bureau guys. If they put up their own security net, they'd spot us."

"So what?" another agent asked.

"So we want him scared," Mallard answered. "Officially, we're reluctant to get involved in this, unless we get something back. If we do it right, we might do a lot of damage to these guys."

"Maybe he'll just hire Emerson forever."

"No. Good protection from Emerson's gonna cost him between three and five thousand a day. He's got money, but he's not a rock star," Mallard said. "We're gonna let both him and Emerson know that we're watching his banking activity-that the IRS will want to know where the money's coming from, and where it's going to. Probably most of his money is offshore, and getting it back here, in big amounts, won't be easy, especially to pay off a legit company like Emerson. They won't take cash under the table, not in their business, not when they know we're watching."

"Maybe we'll eventually put a net around him," Malone said. She and Mallard were double-teaming the briefing. They were good at it, practiced, coordinated without awkwardness or deference. "Right now, though, we want to put some light tags on the other people. Keep track of them. Maybe somebody will run, and we'll want to know that."

"Do we have anybody on the street?" asked a woman in a square-shouldered, khaki-colored dress that made her look like a tomboy or an archaeologist. "She's not in any hotel within two hundred miles, she's not staying with anybody we've got in our history, her face is all over the place on TV and in the newspapers, but nobody sees her. Where is she? If we can figure that out… What do people do when they come to St. Louis but the cops are looking for them? They still got boardinghouses or something?"

They all thought about that for a few moments, then started making noises like a bunch of ducks quacking, Lucas thought-no reflection on Mallard.

"Lucas… what do you think?" Malone asked finally.

Lucas shrugged. "You guys are always putting up rewards like a million dollars for some Arab terrorist. If she's ditched underground with an old crooked friend… why not offer a hundred thousand and see if you get a phone call?"

"Rewards cause all kinds of subsidiary problems," a gray-shirted agent said. "You get multiple claims…"

"You guys got lawyers coming out of your ears, to be polite," Lucas said. "Fuck a bunch of multiple claims. Bust her first, litigate later. Once you have her chained in the basement, you can work out the small stuff."

"It's an idea," Malone said, without much enthusiasm. "We'd have to get the budget."

A guy in a white shirt said, "We know every place she ever worked here in St. Louis. What if we ran the Social Security records on every place she worked, and got a list of all her coworkers, and cross-matched them."

Thatidea turned their crank. Mallard made notes, and Lucas looked at his watch. When they sorted it out, one of the agents asked, "Is Gene Rinker going to be a genuine resource?"

Mallard looked at Malone, who said, "Two possibilities on that. First, we use him to talk her in. He's resisting. The second is, at some critical point, we throw him out there as a chip. Come in, we guarantee no death sentence, and your brother walks on the dope charge."

Lucas was twiddling a pencil, anxious to get going, but asked, "Where is he? Gene?"

"We're moving him here."

"How're you going to face him off to Clara? How is she even going to find out about him?"

Malone shrugged. "The press. They've been all over the Dichter thing. This is a large story here. There'll be a story on tonight's news that we're bringing Gene here to assist with the investigation, and we've let it be known that we've got him by the short hairs. Rinker'll hear about it. Unless she's in Greenland or Borneo."