Certain Prey

must be it, she thought, giggling in the middle of the day. She remembered exactly how he’d taken her by the . . .
    Her phone rang, a private outside line, and she started, found herself, took a breath and pulled herself back to the day. “Carmel,” she said. Not many people had this number.
    “You remember me?” the voice asked.
    “Sure.”
    “Why don’t you send me a few bucks?”
    “Whatever you say, pal. At twenty percent?”
    “Carmel Loan-Shark, hey?” He laughed at his own pun. “But I’m selling, not borrowing.”
    “I don’t think I’m in the market for anything right now. But whattaya got?”
    “First of all, ya gotta agree not to do anything about it for a day or two. Not many people know about this, and if you come charging over here, they could figure me out as your source.”
    “Okay. So what is it?”
    “Lucas Davenport, Tommy Black and Marcy Sherrill put together a photo spread for some witness to look at, in those killings over in Dinkytown.”
    “Okay . . .” She was casual, but she felt a chill.
    “Guess whose face was in the spread?”
    “Uh, the Virgin Mary’s.”
    “Very close, but no cigar. Actually, your face was in the spread.”
    “Mine?” She was shocked, and let it show through. The guy on the other end of the line was a cop.
    “Yup. I don’t know why. Maybe because they had a picture, because there were a bunch of other faces in there. The weather girl on Channel Three was in there . . . they were looking for tall blondes.”
    “Maybe that’s it,” Carmel said. “But it pisses me off.”
    “Thought you’d like to know.”
    “Watch your mailbox,” she said.
    “I will,” he said, with a purr of pleasure.
    Some people, Carmel thought when she hung up, get hot at the prospect of cash. Not because of what it can buy, or what it may represent, but just with the pure, smooth, slightly greasy feel of currency. The cop was one of those. She didn’t understand it; but then, she’d never tried very hard. She was grateful the need existed, and that she could fill it. A couple of cops had been useful over the years.
    After she thought about it for a while, she took a walk out to a pay phone, punched in Rinker’s number and left a message.

THIRTEEN

    Bright and early the next morning—a cool morning that promised heat in the afternoon, with pale blue skies that went on forever—Mallard called Lucas from Washington. The call came in an hour before Lucas had planned to get out of bed; he took it in the kitchen.
    “We have some news on the Tennex connection,” he said as Lucas yawned and scratched. “I’ve also got a question. Two questions.”
    “What’s the news?”
    “There is no Tennex Messenger Service, as far as we can tell, and never has been.”
    “That’s nice,” Lucas said.
    “That’s what I thought. The phone number goes into a suite of short-term offices. There’re a couple of receptionists out front from eight o’clock in the morning until seven at night. In the back, there’re a couple more women running a high-tech switchboard. The switchboard works around the clock. The offices are rented by the week or the month, mostly by businessmen here to lobby the government. They’re about two-thirds full at any given time. Each of the offices has an individual number, which the switchboard women answer with the name of whoever is renting it at the moment. The answering service calls come in on separate numbers, which the switchboard women answer with a specific name, depending on which number rings. Tennex only has the answering service. No office.”
    “So who pays the bills? Where do the checks come from?”
    “We don’t know yet. We want to listen on the Tennex line for a couple more days before we talk to the people who run the place. But I’ll tell you what—and this is my question— Did one of your people, a woman, call Tennex from a pay phone yesterday evening?”
    “No.”
    “Somebody from Minneapolis did,” Mallard said. “The only phone call that came in all day.”
    “Huh . . . what time?”
    “Around five-thirty, our time.”
    “Huh. We took a photo spread over to a little girl who actually saw the shooters . . . you probably read about her, in the files.”
    “Yes.”
    “We had a photo spread with the face of our suspect inserted in it. We got nothing, but that wouldn’t have been long before your call. And I’ll tell you what: this woman’s got some contacts inside our department. Probably inside yours, as