Certain Prey

“God, I was trying to get you earlier in the afternoon. Are you coming to the funeral tomorrow?”
    “I was trying to get you, but all I got was your machine,” Carmel said. “We’ve got some things to talk about. I spoke to Lucas Davenport this afternoon . . .”
    “What? What’d he say?” Allen was anxious.
    “I’m in my car, and I hate to talk on this cell phone. Why don’t I just stop by? I could be there in twenty minutes.”
    “Twenty minutes,” he said, with an uncertain note in his voice. “Okay. See you in twenty.”
    Not the most eager lover she’d ever had, Carmel thought as she ended the phone call. On the other hand, he didn’t know they were lovers. Not yet.
    In a couple of hours, he would. A certain kind of man, sharks in the water, attorneys more often than not, alone with Carmel, would produce a pass. Sometimes, depending on her mood and the man, Carmel would receive the pass, and things would proceed. Carmel was far from a virgin, but had never had a long-term sexual relationship. One woman, who was almost a friend, had once confided to Carmel that one of her ex-suitors had said, to a number of people at a party, that Carmel frightened him. He felt like the fly, and she was the spider.
    Carmel pretended to be puzzled by the comment, but wasn’t entirely displeased: fear wasn’t the worst thing to instill in a man, especially the man who made the comment, who was something of a thug himself. Still, after that, she tried to soften her bedroom image, tried to slow down a little. But she really didn’t much care for the weight of a man pressing her down, the trapped feeling gasping over his shoulder, staring at the ceiling while he flailed around on top. And she was a little picky. She didn’t like hairy shoulders—even less, hairy backs. She didn’t like chest hair that connected with pubic hair. She didn’t care for bald men or the untidiness of uncircumcised men; she didn’t care for men who burped, or whose breath smelled of anything cooked, or who peed with the bathroom door open, or farted.
    Orgasms didn’t often happen, not with men; her best orgasms came alone, in the bathtub. Hale would change that, she thought. If not right away, she could train him. H ALE ALLEN LIVED on a quiet, upper-class street off one of the lakes, far enough from the crowds to have a certain peace in the evening, without the constant to-ing and froingof thin young women with headphones and blades; but at the same time, close enough that residents could walk down and enjoy the mix when they wished to. The house was long and white, with lake-green shutters and a yellow bug light over the central door, and a long driveway that curved up a slope past fifty-year-old burr oaks. A small white sign at the edge of the driveway warned burglars that the house was protected by Insula Armed Response.
    Carmel left the Jag under the spreading arms of an oak and rang the doorbell. A moment later, she heard the muffled pounding of stockinged feet on a stairs, and then Hale opened the door, a white terry-cloth towel in his hand. He smiled and backed up and said, “Come on in,” and rubbed his damp hair with the towel. He looked like something off the perfume pages of Esquire.
    She had never been inside his house—Barbara Allen’s house, it turned out, decorated with a cool and discerning eye, a mix of pieces new and old. But nothing fabulous: Carmel felt the instant chill of class inferiority. She moved into the living room, turned and said, “I talked to Davenport.”
    “Yeah?” He was eager.
    “It’s pretty much over with. They’ve got three more shootings by the same person—probably the same person—and you’re an obvious noncandidate in all three of them.”
    “So they’re gonna do what? Talk to the press, tell them . . .”
    “Doesn’t work that way,” Carmel said. She took a slow turn past a small watercolor: no name that she recognized, but she did feel a vibration coming from the work—a simple street scene, probably New York—and understood that it was good. She looked away from the painting: “The way it works is, they don’t say anything to anybody. They just go away. Then, if it turns out that you were involved, they don’t look like dumbshits.”
    “That’s not fair,” Allen protested. Once again, she had to strain to think of him as a lawyer.
    “Of course it’s not fair. But they have the choice of, one: being fair to Hale Allen, or two: taking the chance that they’re