Certain Prey

through, and saw Hale Allen at the far end of the room, leaning against a green filing cabinet, deep in conversation with Marcy Sherrill. Marcy was standing a couple of inches too close to him, and was looking up into his eyes with rapt attention.
    “Uh-oh,” Carmel said.
    “By the way,” Lucas said, in a tone low enough that Carmel had to turn to catch what he said, “I’m told your client is dumber’n a barrel of hair.”
    “But, God, he’s gorgeous,” she said. She ostentatiously bit her lower lip, sighed, and started toward Allen and Sherrill. Moving like a leopard, Lucas thought. T HEY NEEDED to cover some old ground, Lucas told Allen, because he was new to the case. He hoped it wouldn’t be inconvenient. “I understand your wife has been released by the county . . .”
    “Yes, finally,” Allen said.
    “ That took way too long,” Carmel added. “I don’t understand why they had to do twenty different kinds of chemistry when the woman’s been shot seven times in the brain.”
    “Routine,” Lucas said.
    “Bullshit routine,” Carmel said, now in attorney mode. “You should give a little thought to what it does to the grieving survivors. You’re victimizing the victims.”
    “All right, all right,” Lucas said. “This will only take a couple of minutes.”
    “Where’s the other guy? Black?” Carmel asked.
    “Doing something else,” Lucas said. He looked at Allen. “Tell me about your relationship with your wife.”
    “Ah, Jesus,” Carmel said.
    Ten minutes later, Lucas leaned toward Allen and asked, “How well did you know Rolando D’Aquila?”
    Allen looked puzzled. “Rolando who?”
    “D’Aquila. Also known as Rolo, I understand.”
    “I don’t know anybody by that name,” Allen said.
    “Never bought a little toot from him?” Lucas asked.
    “No, I never.” He shook his head. “Toot?”
    When Lucas mentioned D’Aquila’s name, Carmel slipped back a step and ran the numbers. They’d found the body, obviously. If they looked up D’Aquila’s history—and they would get around to that, if they hadn’t already— they’d find her name. They might wonder why she hadn’t mentioned it.
    “Why are you interested in this Rolando D’Aquila?” she asked Lucas.
    “He was murdered last night,” Lucas said. “He was killed the same way Mrs. Allen was—the method was identical.” He looked back at Allen: “So you never represented him, or one of his friends, either in a criminal court or in a civil legal matter.”
    “No, no, not that I remember. I’ve represented thousands of people in real estate closings, so maybe, but I don’t remember any Rolando.”
    “Get off his case,” Carmel snapped. “He’s never represented Rolando D’Aquila in anything.”
    “How do you know?” Lucas asked.
    “Because Rolo only had one attorney.” Everybody was looking at her now, and she nodded. “Me.” A FTER THE INTERVIEW with Allen, as they got coffee from the coffee machine, Lucas said, “You were strangely quiet. That always makes me nervous.”
    “I was gonna be the good cop, if you were gonna be the bad,” Sherrill said.
    “I agree; he is very good-looking,” Lucas said.
    Sherrill laughed and then said, “He’s got these really amazing brown eyes. They’re like perfect little puppy eyes.”
    “He’s about as bright as a perfect little puppy, too,” Lucas said. “And he’s sleeping with his secretary.”
    “A secretary, not his secretary. Besides, he had a cold marriage, as I understand it,” Sherrill said. “And I think his intelligence might lie in other areas than . . .”
    “Than what?”
    “Than like in, uh, being smart.”
    Lucas choked on the coffee and said, “Goddamnit, you almost made hot coffee go up my nose.”
    “Good,” Sherrill said.

SEVEN

    When Carmel got back to her apartment, Rinker was lying on the couch, a pillow behind her head, reading the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation. “Did you know that the French nudie bar is called the foh-LEE bair-ZHAIR?”
    Carmel shrugged: “Yeah, I guess.”
    “See, that’s what people get when they study French,” Rinker said, tossing the book on an end table. “They learn how to pronounce neat stuff. I had to take Spanish for my B.A., but there’s nothing neat in the pronunciation. Like in French—I always thought it was foh-LEE beer-zhair-AY.”
    “I don’t know, I took Spanish, too,” Carmel said.
    Rinker sat up, dropped her feet to the floor and asked, “What happened with the