Certain Prey (24 page)

“It’s hard for
me,
” Rinker said. “You know, a gal who runs a bar? I never told you about that. What kind of guys am I going to attract?” She answered her own question: “Most of them have got a bottle of Jim Beam in the trunk.”

“Too bad you couldn’t hook up with Davenport,” Carmel said, jokingly.

“He’d be a possibility,” Rinker admitted. “He could be fun, in a big-galoot way.”

“Mean big-galoot,” said Carmel.

“I could see that,” Rinker said. “I could
feel
it.” After a second, “But he sorta . . . handles you. Moves you around. Touches you. Not feeling you up or anything, but he’s just . . . I don’t know. All over the place.”

“If he sees you here, we’re fucked,” Carmel said.

“Unlike when I saw him in Wichita,” Rinker said. Then, “I thought about coming on to him a little, but that
would’ve been . . . too much. Anyway, I don’t expect to see him again the rest of my life.”

She picked up the first of the pistols, jacked a shell into the chamber, set the safety and slipped it into her gun girdle, under the jacket. Rinker looked at Carmel. “You ready?”

EIGHTEEN

Black canceled a date and climbed into the back of Sherrill’s Mazda with a pepperoni pizza and a bag of hot nacho cheese crackers.

Sherrill said, “You’re a cruel fuck. If I ate any of that stuff, it’d go right straight to my thighs.”

“So don’t eat it. Concentrate on other things. Flowers. Small children,” Black said.

“I’m having a hard time concentrating. With my future husband on his way up to . . .”

“. . . slip a little English bacon to Carmel Loan.”

“You’re so crude. And whatever he’s got in there, I doubt that it resembles bacon.”

“You mean, in stripes, or in flatness?”

She giggled: “God, I love talking dirty with you. It’s so jocklike, so . . .”

She couldn’t think of a word; through the plate-glass doors of Carmel Loan’s building, they could see Hale Allen’s back as he signed into the building. Then a short redhead came around the corner from the elevators, into the lobby, and Sherrill said, “Here comes . . . nope.”

The redhead walked past Allen, giving him the once-over, pushed through the glass doors, looked left and right, put her hands deep in the pockets of her black sport coat, and headed down the block. Inside, Allen walked away from the security desk and around the corner to the elevators.

As they watched them, a patrol car pulled in behind the Mazda and the red lights began to flash. “Ah, man,” Sherrill said, looking in her rearview mirror. The loudspeaker on the cop car blared, “Drop your car keys out the passenger window. Now.”

Instead of dropping her keys out of the window, Sherrill held her badge case out. After a minute, the flashing lights stopped, and the driver of the cop car approached from the back, shining a flashlight on the badge case. Sherrill pushed the door open, dropped her feet to the street, looked at the cop and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?”

“I’m on a goddamn stakeout. I
was
on a goddamn stakeout,” Sherrill said. “Now I’m in a goddamn comedy routine.” People had stopped up and down the street to watch.

“Well, jeez, we’re sorry.” The cop looked around at the audience and flapped his arms helplessly. “You shoulda told somebody, instead of just lurking around here. The doorman called. He said you’d been here for hours.”

Sherrill could see the doorman in Carmel’s building peering at them through the lobby window. “Yeah, well: now I’m gonna drive around the block and park again,” she said. “And I’m telling you. Stay away from me or I swear to Christ, I’ll shoot you.”

The cop peered in the back window and said, “Hi, Tom.”

“Hi. Want some nachos?”

“Nah. Give me heartburn. So you’re gonna go around the block?”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Be cool.”

Sherrill started the car, and they rolled away, Black laughing in the back. Then Sherrill started: “God, I love police work.”
T
WO
MINUTES LATER,
they were back on watch, Black still relaxed in the back and even deeper into the nachos. “How you been?” he asked through a mouthful of chips and cheese. “Since you and Davenport?”

“I miss him. A lot,” she said.

“He’s an asshole. Sorta.”

“I miss him anyway,” she said. “Besides, while I agree he’s an asshole, he’s not an asshole like you think he is.”

“Oh, I think I know.”

“Just ’cause you’re queer doesn’t mean you know. You’re still a guy.”

Black contemplated the statement, formulated a reply, ate the chips as he worked at it: carefully formulated replies were necessary in the stakeout business. You could sit for hours, and you didn’t want to run out of stuff to talk about—or piss off your partner—too soon.

“Let me tell you my theory of queerness as relates to the straight male,” Black said. And he did, and after a while— ten minutes—Sherrill said, “I never would have thought of any of that.”

“You’re not gay.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I couldn’t have come up with such an utter crock of shit.”

Black put a final three nachos in his mouth and settled back to formulate another reply. Before he got a good paragraph together, Sherrill said, “Here they come—and Jesus Christ. Look at that dress.”

Black peered over the sill of the back window. Allen and Carmel stepped out through the glass doors. Allen wore a
dark jacket that Black suspected was lightweight cashmere; tan, expensive-looking slacks; and loafers. Carmel was in a shocking, low-cut red party dress and red shoes.

“Nice dress,” Black said.

“Nice? A little gaudy, don’t you think? And her tits are about coming out.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Color is always good in clothing. And skin display is nice, in the summer.”

“Don’t give me the fag act. Look at her. She’s like a billboard.”

“All right. She’s obviously a tart,” Black said.

“Thank you. Not nearly fine enough to aspire after the lovely Hale.”

“And she certainly doesn’t have your tits.”

“You don’t think?”

“Marcy, you’ve probably got the third-best tits in Minneapolis. Davenport says sixth-best, and of course, he would know from firsthand observation, while Sloan says second-best—I don’t know about Sloan’s qualifications . . .”

“He has none, and shut up, we’re going.”

“Let me get my Big Gulp off the floor . . . Ah, shit.”
R
INKER
MISSED
the foul-up with the squad car; she’d already turned the corner, and was headed back to her hotel to pick up her car. She felt heavy as she went. She might have to kill the two of them, the mother and daughter. Might
have
to. And that felt wrong. These were people who’d never had a chance; they weren’t people who’d screwed up somehow, had gotten too stubbornly close to something that was bad for them. It was like all that gang-banger talk years ago, of
mushrooms
popping up in the line of fire. This mother and daughter were essentially mushrooms, and Rinker had always thought of herself more as a surgeon than as a gang-banger.

She’d have to do this right.

• • •

C
ARMEL
AND
H
ALE
A
LLEN
went to a club called the Swan, which had a twelve-piece orchestra and a blond chick singer with a voice like buttermilk, and danced. Old-style dances, cheek to cheek, hand in the middle of the back. Carmel could reach Hale’s earlobe with her tongue, which she did every few minutes, and which had a profound effect on him. After the third dance, he growled, “Let’s get out of here.”

“No,”
she said, in her best cat voice. “You’ve got to be
patient
.”

Sherrill and Black watched from a balcony seat as Allen and Carmel moved around the dance floor, stopping now and then to talk with friends; all of the friends, Sherrill decided, had a certain slickness that she disliked. She mentioned it to Black.

“I think they teach you that in law school,” Black said.

“Hey: I know some pretty nice lawyers.”

“So now we’re gonna be sincere?”

“No, I was just wondering. There’s this subset of people who look
slick.
See? Look at the guy in the white coat, and the woman he’s with. Slick.”

“They spend too much time looking at themselves, without being professionals,” Black said. “Professionals— actors—can look perfect, and look right at the same time. These guys try to look perfect, and they just look slick.”

“Much more of this surveillance chitchat and I’ll throw up.”
R
INKER
SCOUTED
the Davises’ neighborhood, saw nothing at all. Of course, if it were a trap of some kind, the cops might be in an apartment across the street or up the stairs and she’d never know until they were kicking down the doors.

But it didn’t feel that way; it didn’t have the creepy close feeling of movies, when a guy was in hiding. And somehow, she thought, it would feel that way. There’d be that
peculiar stillness of the moment when you hide in somebody else’s house, and they walk in . . . and they
know.
She didn’t feel that here.

Rinker had taken two FedEx boxes from a FedEx stand, and taped them together. She left the car a block from the Davis apartment—she noted the lights under the window shades, so somebody was home—and walked back, carrying the box. A guy was following his dog down the other side of the street, paying no attention to her.

Rinker turned in at the house, jogged up the stoop, and stepped inside the entry and stopped. She could hear a stereo from up the stairs, nothing from the back, from the Davis apartment. She moved closer to the Davis door, listened. The rhythm of voices—or one voice, a woman’s voice. She glanced around, took the pistol out of her belt and stuck it under her left arm, pinned to her side. She knocked once.

The rhythm of the voices stopped, and she heard footsteps. The door opened on a chain, and a woman peeked out. “Yes?”

“We got a FedEx upstairs for you, the guys did. They forgot to bring it down, so I did,” Rinker said cheerfully. She bounced the box in her hand. The woman didn’t hesitate, said, “Oh, thanks. Just a minute,” and pushed the door shut and began to work the chain. Rinker quickly stooped and put the box on the floor, then reached up and pulled the nylon down over her face, pulling it down like a condom.

The woman opened the door and the pistol was there, pointing at her head, and Rinker whispered, harshly, “Step back or I’ll kill you.”

Jan Davis, stricken, hand at her face, eyes wide, stepped back. “Please don’t hurt us.”

Rinker kicked the box into the apartment, pushed the door shut and rasped, “If a cop comes in now, I’ll start shooting and we’ll all be dead. Are the cops watching this place?”

Davis’s head was wagging back and forth, a
no,
and a little-girl called out, “Mom? Who’s that?”

“Get her out here,” Rinker said, flicking the tip of the pistol toward the bedroom door.

“You’re the . . .”

“Yeah. I’ve never killed a kid in my life, and I hope I never have to. But you gotta get her out here. Then I’m gonna ask you two questions, and I’m gonna tell you something—if you answer the questions right—and then I’m gonna leave.”

“You’re going to kill us . . .”

“Mom?”

“If I were gonna kill you, I wouldn’t be wearing a mask,” Rinker said. “Now get her out here.”

Davis stared for another moment, then said, “Heather, honey? C’mere, honey.”

The girl stuck her head out of a bedroom a minute later. She was wearing yellow underpants and a yellow shirt, and was carrying a Curious George monkey doll. “Mom?”

“C’mere, honey.” Davis backed toward her daughter, groping for her hand. The girl looked at Rinker and said, “Did you kill those people?” Her eyes were as wide as her mother’s had been.

Her mother said, “Shhh,” and Rinker said, “Here’s the first question. What did you tell the police about the people you saw in the hallway?”

Davis glanced down at the girl and then back at Rinker: “They had pictures. We didn’t tell them anything, because Heather didn’t see anything. She couldn’t even make one of those drawing pictures.”

“Did the police talk to anybody upstairs?”

“They talked to everybody in the house, but nobody saw anything. Everybody’s been talking to everybody, but nobody even saw you and . . . the other person . . . leaving. Nobody saw . . .”

“Nobody.”

“No.” Davis shook her head, and Rinker was struck with the straightforwardness of it. She looked at the little girl.

“And what did you do, little girl?”

Heather told her: how she went to the police station, how she tried to make a drawing, but she didn’t know any faces. They showed her pictures, but she didn’t know them. As she spoke, she stood up tall, with her feet together, as if she were a Marine standing at attention. And Rinker suddenly knew that the child understood what was happening. That she was talking for her
life.
Rinker suddenly teared up, and said to Davis, “Send her back to the bedroom.”