Certain Prey

secondhand shop, you know, stuff that didn’t go together that well, some kind of scuzzy dark plaid, drab. And if you grew out your hair, and colored it some middle brown color, and slumped your shoulders and shuffled, maybe got some breast prosthetics so you’d have big floppy boobs . . .”
    “My God,” Carmel said, starting to laugh.
    But Rinker was serious. “If you did that, your best friends wouldn’t recognize you from two feet. You could get a cleaning lady job at your law firm, and nobody would know you. But I don’t know if you could stand it. I think you like attention; you need it.”
    “Maybe,” Carmel said. “Maybe everybody does.”
    “I don’t. I don’t want people to look at me. That’s one reason why I’m good at what I do.”
    “I really don’t understand that,” Carmel said.
    “I was a nude dancer for three and a half years, from the time I was sixteen until I was twenty. You get pretty god-damned tired of people staring at you. You want privacy.”
    Carmel was fascinated now. “You were a . . .” Her beeper went off, a discreet low Japanese tone from her purse. “Uh-oh.”
    She glanced at the beeper, dropped it back in her purse, took out a cell phone and dialed. “Maybe a problem,” she said. “My secretary only uses the beeper if there’s some pressure.” And to the phone: “Marcia—you beeped me? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Give me the number. Okay.”
    She clicked off and said, “Cop called. He wants to talk to one of my clients.”
    “Doesn’t it make you nervous, talking to cops all the time?”
    “Why should it?” Carmel asked. “I’m not guilty of anything, I’m just doing my job.”
    “We’ve gotta spend some time looking for the tape, we can’t go running around . . .”
    “Actually, my client’s name is Hale Allen,” Carmel said.
    Rinker frowned: “Any relation to Barbara Allen?”
    “Her husband.”
    “Jesus.” Rinker was impressed. “How’d that happen?”
    “He’s a friend of mine and I’m a good attorney. Actually, I’m one of the best criminal attorneys in the state. The cops think he might’ve done it.”
    “So you’re on the inside,” Rinker said.
    “Somewhat.” Carmel smiled down at Rinker. “Makes it kind of interesting.”
    “Certainly could be useful,” Rinker said. “Is that why you took the job?”
    “Not exactly,” Carmel said. Then her smile disappeared: “But this cop who’s calling—he wasn’t working the case before. He’s a deputy chief of police, Lucas Davenport. A political appointee. He used to be a regular cop, but he was canned for brutality or something. They brought him back because he’s smart. He’s a mean bastard, but really smart.”
    “Well, hell, as long as he thinks her husband did it . . .”
    “But it means we’ve got to get that goddamn tape,” Carmel said. “If Davenport ever got a whiff of that . . . I’ll tell you what, Pamela, he’s the one guy in the world who could run you down. The one guy.”
    “As long as you’re on the inside, he shouldn’t be a problem.” Rinker shrugged. “And if he gets to be a problem, we take him.”
    Carmel gave her a long look, and Rinker asked, “What?”
    “You don’t know him,” Carmel said.
    “Look, if a guy doesn’t know it’s coming, and if you spend some time watching him, and thinking about it—you can take him. You can .” C ARMEL CAME SWINGING down the hall to Homicide, spotted Lucas coming from the other direction, carrying a large clip-bound report. “Davenport, goddamnit, have you been stepping on my client’s rights again?”
    “How are you, Carmel?” Lucas asked.
    “What’s the big book?”
    “Ah, the Perfection Commission.”
    “Oh, my God. I tried to read about it in the Star-Tribune. I felt like I’d been anesthetized.” Carmel presented a cheek, and Lucas pecked it. He took one of her hands, lifted it and stepped back so he could look her over, and said, “You look absolutely . . . wonderful.”
    “Thanks. How come we’ve never slept together? You’ve chased every other woman in town.”
    “I only chase . . . No, that’s not right.”
    “What?”
    “I was gonna say I only chase women who don’t scare me,” Lucas said. “But they all wind up scaring me.”
    “I heard you were dating Little Miss Titsy, the cop, but you broke up.”
    “That would be Sergeant Sherrill?”
    “What happened? She have a bigger gun?”
    “Carmel, Carmel . . .” Lucas held the door for her. Carmel stepped