Certain Prey

a client. Give the jury something that makes more sense, or seems to . . . If we created exactly the right pageant, even if Davenport knew there was something wrong with it, they couldn’t get out of it.”
    “What are you recommending?” Rinker asked.
    “Number one. Do nothing. Sit and wait. I don’t think anything more will happen. We know the cops are on the phone in Washington, so we never use it again. I’d love to see their file on the case, but that won’t happen unless they make a move on Hale.”
    “All right. So we sit.”
    They rode in silence for a while, then Rinker asked, “What if this car is bugged?”
    “They’re not that smart,” Carmel said. “This is Mom’s car. She even uses it, when I don’t need it, and she wants to haul something—bulbs or plants or something. But I need a car that nobody really knows about, especially when I’ve got a hot case. Sometimes, you don’t want people looking at you.”
    “Your folks get divorced?”
    “No, my dad killed himself,” Carmel said. “He was an endodontist, did root canals all day. He got tired of it, sat down in his chair one afternoon when he’d finished with a patient, wrote a short note to the world and strapped on a nitrous oxide mask.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yup. A good way to go, I guess, but he had to work at it a little. Had to override some safety things, pinch off an oxygen tank and so on. When I go, I don’t want to have to think about it. I just wanna go. ”
    “I don’t wanna go. Not for a while,” Rinker said.
    “What about your folks?” Carmel asked.
    “My dad took off when I was a baby,” Rinker said. “And my good old step-dad used to fuck me once or twice a week until I took off.”
    “Your step-dad still around?”
    “No.” Rinker looked out the window. “He went away one day. He hasn’t been seen since.”
    “Like your dad,” Carmel said.
    “Not exactly, no,” said Rinker.

SIXTEEN

    Sherrill came back from St. Louis with blue circles under her eyes. “Didn’t get any sleep?” Lucas asked. He tried to keep his voice flat, but there might have been a tone to it, he thought.
    “I had to fuck all the guys on their organized crime squad. That kept me up nights,” Sherrill said. They were alone in his office.
    “Hey . . .” He was offended.
    “Hey, yourself . . . the way you asked the question,” she said.
    “I was just trying to . . .”
    “Forget it. Anyway, I didn’t get any sleep. Every night I’d roll around in the bed and the blankets were too heavy and the pillow was too thick and the room smelled bad. And I’d think about you and me.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “I tried not to,” she said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I was wondering if we did the right thing. I was wondering if I ought to get you someplace and screw you blind, just one more time. Or two or three more times, but not forever. Just sort of good-bye.”
    “I had the feeling you’d already done that,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, I did,” Sherrill said. “Besides, sex wasn’t really our problem, was it?”
    “Nah. The sex was pretty wonderful. At least, from my point of view.”
    “So what was it?”
    “I think, uh, you might be a natural upper, and I’m a natural downer . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s what you concluded?”
    “I concluded that I oughta get a new boyfriend, and you oughta get a girlfriend, then we’d be done with it.”
    “I’m too tired to look,” Lucas said. “You get one.”
    “Yeah,” Sherrill said. She nibbled on her bottom lip. “Maybe.” L UCAS SAID, “We’re dead in the water here. The feds are still sitting on their wiretap on Tennex, but nobody’s calling.”
    “Are they tapping Carmel?” “Maybe. They say they’re not—yet—but they could be lying about it.”
    “The FBI? Lying?”
    “Yeah, yeah . . . you get anything?”
    “I got about twenty names,” Sherrill said.
    “Lot of names.”
    “Yeah. But if there’s a Mafia-connected guy in St. Louis who can order these hits, his name is almost for sure on the list.”
    “So what?”
    “I’m getting to that,” she said. “You know how you guys were looking at where all those checks came from? And you figured the person sending them must come from southwest Missouri or eastern Kansas or those other places?”
    “Northern Arkansas or northern Oklahoma . . .”
    “So if we do an analysis of these Mafia guys, who are all like these uptown dudes wearing loafers with no socks and driving Cadillacs . . . and if we