Certain Prey

t-shirt. The coat emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, and both women watched him as he held the door for a woman coming into the restaurant with a child; the woman said something to Allen, who gave her the great grin, and they had a little conversation in the doorway.
    After a few seconds, Allen continued on his way; and Carmel and Louise had their talk. C ARMEL HAD a king-sized bed with two regular pillows and a five-foot-long body pillow that she could wrap her legs around when she slept. Although she told people that she slept nude—all part of the image—she actually slept in an extra-large Jockey t-shirt and boxer shorts. With the shirt loose around her shoulders and her legs wrapped around the pillow, she lay in bed that night and reran mousy Louise Clark.
    For the most part, Clark’s story was the same ol’ story. She and Allen spent time alone, in their work. They shared a lot of stress. His wife didn’t understand him. They developed a relationship based on mutual respect, blah-blah-blah-blah. They fell into bed at the Up North Motel. Then the Mouse stuck it to Carmel.
    “The first time I saw him naked in the motel there, it was afterwards. Really, after we made love, he was just so . . . beautiful. He’s a beautiful man.” Then her eyes flickered, and she added, girl-to-girl, a little giggle, a half-whisper, “And he’s really large. Beautiful and really, really large. He filled me up.”
    Carmel squeezed the pillow between her legs and tried to squeeze the image out of her head. Hale Allen and the Mouse. Large. T HE ALARM WENT OFF at seven o’clock sharp. Carmel pushed out of bed, slow and grumpy, robbed of her usual sound sleep. Large? How large? She scratched her ass, yawned, stretched and headed for the bathroom. A half-hour later, she was drinking her first cup of coffee, eating her second piece of toast, and checking the Star-Tribune for leaks about Allen and Clark, when the phone rang.
    “Yes.”
    “Miz Loan? This is Bill, downstairs.” Bill was the doorman.
    “What?” Still grumpy.
    “We got a package for you, says Urgent. I was wondering if we should bring it up.”
    “What kind of package?”
    “Small one. Feels like . . . looks like . . . could be a videotape,” Bill said.
    “All right, bring it up.” Bill brought it up, and Carmel gave him a five-dollar bill and turned the package in her hand as she closed the door. Bill was right: probably a video. Plain brown wrapping paper. She pulled the paper off, found a note written with a ballpoint pen on notebook paper. All it said was, “Sorry.”
    Carmel frowned, walked the tape to the media room, plugged it into the VHS player and brought it up.
    A woman’s image came up, and Carmel recognized it immediately. She was looking at herself, sitting in the now-understandably bright light of Rolando’s kitchen, just a little more than a month before. T HE ON-SCREEN C ARMEL was saying, “Only kind I drink.” And then, “So you made the call.”
    A man’s voice off-camera said, “Yes. And she’s still working, and she’ll take the job.”
    “She? It’s a woman?”
    “Yeah. I was surprised myself. I never asked, you know, I only knew who to call. But when I asked, my friend said, ‘She.’ ”
    “She’s gotta be good,” the on-screen Carmel said. The offscreen Carmel decided that the camera must have been in the cupboard, shooting through a partly open door.
    “She’s good. She has a reputation. Never misses,” the man’s voice said. “Very efficient, very fast. Always from very close range, so there’s no mistake.” A man’s hand appeared in the picture, with a mug of coffee. Carmel watched her on-screen self as she turned it with her fingertips, then picked it up.
    “That’s what I need,” she said on-screen, and she took a sip of the coffee. Carmel remembered that it had been pretty good coffee. Very hot.
    “You’re sure about this?” asked the man’s voice. “Once I tell them yes, it’ll be hard to stop. This woman, the way she moves, nobody knows where she is, or what name she’s using. If you say, ‘Yes,’ she kills Barbara Allen.”
    The on-screen Carmel frowned. “I’m sure,” she said. The offscreen Carmel winced at the sound of Barbara Allen’s name. She’d forgotten that.
    “You’ve got the money?” the man asked.
    “At the house. I brought your ten.”
    The on-screen Carmel put the mug down, dug in her purse, pulled out a thin deck of currency and laid it on the table. The