Certain Prey

looked up at the sky and said, “I’m gonna miss you. Do you think you could get the New York Times wherever you’re going?”
    “I’m sure I could.”
    “Okay. Then listen: I’ll leave a message for Pamela Stone in the New York Times personal column on Halloween, and the days around there. It’ll just say something like, ‘Pamela: Zihuatanejo Hilton, November 24–30.’ Or wherever. That’s where I’ll be, if you feel safe and still want to do Mexico.”
    “I’ll look for it,” Rinker said.
    “Listen, are you gonna need the other gun?”
    “No, probably not. I’ve got a couple more stashed.”
    “Could I have the one you’ve got?”
    “Sure, but it could be dangerous. If you were caught with it.”
    “I’ll hide it out,” Carmel said. “But if anything else comes up . . .”
    “All right.” As they got back in the car, Rinker slipped the gun out of her girdle, pulled the clip, jacked the shell out of the chamber, pushed it back into the clip and handed the pistol to Carmel. “There you go. Be careful.”
    “I will be . . . Are you gone, then?”
    “Yeah. I gotta move: I’ll be out of the country in a week. And I’ve got to make a few stops. I’ve got money stashed all over the place.”
    Back at the parking ramp, Rinker and Carmel shook hands: good friends, who’d been through a lot together. “If I don’t see you again, I’ll remember you,” Carmel said.
    “See you in Mexico, Halloween,” Rinker said. “Hey— and don’t forget to check that phone tape, and erase it, if there’s anything on it.”
    “Top of my list,” Carmel said.
    She walked back through the building, let herself into the office suite, unplugged the answering machine from the phone line and listened to her message. The call from Hale’s house had something on it, but she doubted that anyone could tell what it was. She was taking no chances, though. She replaced the phone tape with a new one, stripped the tape out of the cartridge and burned it. The little fire left a nasty odor in the office and she opened an outside window, to air it.
    She could see three or four cars parked up and down the street. At least a couple of them, she thought, were loaded with cops.
    With the answered phone call, and the watching cops, she had the perfect alibi. She should wait a few minutes, cool out and get back home, she thought.
    And maybe have a good cry. Although she didn’t feel much like crying; she was more excited than saddened.
    Man, that was something else.
    He was right there and Whack! Whack! Whack! Alive, then dead. Something else.

TWENTY-THREE

    Allen’s body was found by his secretary, who first called Carmel to find out if she’d seen him.
    “Well, no, I haven’t,” Carmel said. She felt a crawling sensation on the back of her neck: this was it, the beginning of the endgame. “Not since day before yesterday—I had to work last night. I did talk to him last night, though.
    Sometime about eleven o’clock, I think.”
    “Well, I don’t know what to do,” the secretary said. “He missed a closing this morning, and people are upset. He could miss another one if he’s not here in the next twenty minutes. That’s not like him.”
    “How about his cell phone? That’s permanently attached to him.”
    “It rings, but there’s no answer.”
    “Huh. Well, maybe we ought to check with a neighbor or something,” Carmel said. “I’d go, but I don’t have a key, and I do have a court date.”
    “I’ve got a key,” the secretary said, the concern right on the surface of her voice. “He keeps an emergency key in his desk drawer. I can go over . . .”
    “You don’t think anything’s happened, do you?” Carmel asked. She put concern in her own voice. “I bet he just lost track of time somewhere, he was talking about buying a new sport coat . . .”
    “He was supposed to be here at nine o’clock. That’s a lot of time,” the secretary said.
    “Now you’ve got me worried,” Carmel said. “Keep me posted.” A S THE SECRETARY, whose name was Alice Miller, hung up, it occurred to her she’d just had her most congenial conversation with Carmel Loan, who tended to treat secretaries like unavoidable morons. Allen, she thought, was known for a certain mellowing effect he had on women . . .
    When Allen didn’t show up for the next closing, she apologized for him, told the participants that she was very concerned, that he hadn’t been heard from; that she was going to his house to check on