Certain Prey

the bruised lips. You, on the other hand, always look like you just got back from hurting somebody else. Like a woman.”
    “Thanks,” he said.
    “No charge.”

    “I just don’t think you can make that judgment based on a picture.”
    She looked at him closely, then smiled and said, “Ah. I get it. You’ve been reading the Wholeness Report, or the Wellness Thing, or whatever it is. The Otherness Report. You gotta stop reading that shit, it’s putting holes in your brain.”
    “Yeah, it’s . . . I don’t know. But listen, what do you think about this?” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Copycat? Coincidence? I haven’t been that much on top of it.”
    “Not a copycat, I don’t think. We didn’t give the details to the papers—we didn’t tell them it was a twenty-two, we didn’t tell them that the shots were all grouped like that, we didn’t tell them how close it was. You see the same tattooing on the scalp. And it was cold.”
    “Nobody colder’n a wholesaler who’s trying to make a point,” Lucas said. “Maybe he held out on somebody, was trying to get back into the big deals.”
    “Sure, but it’s not just the coldness. It’s all the other stuff that goes with it. It just doesn’t seem like a copycat.”
    “Could be a coincidence,” Lucas said, then admitted, “But it’d be a pretty amazing coincidence.”
    “You know the rule on coincidences.” “Yeah: It’s probably a coincidence unless it can’t be. ” “You gonna jump in now?” She grinned at him. “Come on. We haven’t worked together since old Audrey McDonald tried to take us off.”
    “We have spoken a few times, though.”
    “Is that what you call it?” She was teasing him.
    “I’m thinking of getting in, if you and Black don’t mind,” Lucas said. “The Otherness Commission is driving me nuts. This would give me an excuse . . .”
    “Glad to have you,” Sherrill said. “That’s why I invited you over.”
    “The first thing we gotta do,” Lucas said, “is we gotta get that lawyer in—Allen—and bust his balls a little. Does he know Rolando whatever-his-name-is? Does he use cocaine? Has he ever?”
    “His attorney’ll be on us like a chicken on a June bug.”
    “Like a what?”
    “A chicken on a June bug,” Sherrill said.
    “Jesus, I’d almost forgotten about talking to you,” Lucas said. “Anyway, don’t worry about Carmel. I can handle Carmel.”

    “T HE QUESTION,” Carmel said as Rinker bent over a display case at Neiman Marcus and peered at the Hermès scarves, “is whether whoever has it will look at it, and if he looks at it, if he’ll come to me, or go to the cops.”
    A salesclerk was drifting toward them, and Rinker said, “Whoever it is, I’ll bet the name is in his address book.”
    “Unless he knew him so well that he didn’t have to write down a number,” Carmel said.
    The clerk asked, “Can I help you ladies?” Rinker tapped the case: “Let me look at the gold-and-black one, please. With the eggs.”
    They spent five minutes looking at scarves, and then Rinker took the gold-and-black one, and paid with a Neiman credit card. “You shop at Neiman’s often enough to have a credit card?” Carmel asked while the clerk went to wrap the scarf.
    “I hit one of the stores once or twice a year, spend a few hundred,” Rinker said. “The name on the card’s not really mine, but I have all the rest of the ID to back it up, and I keep the card active and always pay it on time. Just in case. I’ve got a couple of Visas and MasterCards the same way. Just in case.”
    “Just in case?”
    “In case I ever have to run for it.”
    “I never thought of doing that,” Carmel said. “Running.”
    “I’d run before I’d stand and fight. If a cop ever got close enough to look at me, I’d be screwed anyway.”
    “Do you think I could run?”
    Rinker looked at her carefully, and after a minute, nodded: “Physically, it wouldn’t be a problem. The question is whether you could handle it psychologically.”
    The clerk came back with the wrapped scarf and the credit card: “Thanks very much, Mrs. Blake.”
    “Thank you ,” Rinker said. She tucked the card away in her purse.
    “Physically, I’d be okay? But psychologically . . .” Carmel was interested.
    “Sure. You’ve got a hot image. Bright clothes, blond hair, good makeup and perfume, great shoes.” Rinker took a step back and took a long look. “If you dressed way down—got some stuff from a