Certain Prey

lights on the dashboard and doors and steering wheel and asked, “How come small-town cops get cars like these, and we get Tauruses?”
    “Because we fight government corruption at every turn,” Mallard said.
    “Minneapolis is bigger than D.C.,” Lucas said.
    Malone made a rude noise, and Mallard said, “Stop it.” On the way downtown, Lucas spotted a Wichita cop car sittingat a corner and pulled in ahead of it. Mallard asked, “What’re you doing?” and Lucas answered, “Research.”
    He got out of the car carrying his badge case and when the cop in the driver’s seat rolled down the window, Lucas flipped open the case and said, “Hey, guys—I’m a cop from up in Minneapolis going through with a couple of friends. We’re looking for a bar or cocktail lounge, you know, something decent?”
    The driver took Lucas’s badge case and studied the ID for a minute, grunted, “Deputy chief, huh?” then handed it back and looked at his partner. “Really aren’t many places to talk . . . What do you think? The Rink?”
    “Be about the best,” the partner said. “Four blocks straight ahead to the second light, take a right, about four or five more blocks down. The Rink.”
    “Great,” Lucas said, straightening up. “Buy you guys one, if we’re still there when you get off.”
    “Thanks, but we’re working the overnight,” the driver said. “Say, let me ask you this. What’s your base pay up there, in Minneapolis?”
    They talked about salary, vacation and sick-leave policy for a couple of minutes, then Lucas walked back to the 740, climbed inside, tripped the hood latch, got out, slammed the hood, got back in and they drove to the Rink. R INKER WAS STANDING behind the bar, reading a register tape, when Lucas walked in. She was so utterly astonished that she showed nothing at all, as though she’d been hit in the forehead with a hammer. When she recovered, after a full five seconds, she noticed that he was with a woman who looked like a lawyer and a dry-faced, thick-necked man who might be an academic, or maybe a college wrestling coach.
    She turned away from them and walked down the bar and into the back, where she could stand behind a pane of one-way glass.
    “Something going on?” one of the kitchen boys asked, picking up her rapt attention.
    “Guy walked in, I thought he might be an old boyfriend from a very long time ago,” Rinker said.
    “Which guy?”
    “Finish the freezer,” she said.
    “Just askin’.” S HE WATCHED L UCAS for ten minutes, and finally decided that he wasn’t interested in the bar: if he’d come here for her—and what other reason could he have for being here?—he certainly wasn’t looking for her. He was putting a little light bullshit on the lawyer woman, Rinker decided, and the lawyer liked it.
    Rinker wondered what would happen if she simply walked out into the bar. Would he jump up and bust her? Were there other cops closing in on the bar, or stationed outside? If he was here on business, why was he drinking beer and bullshitting the woman? Was he that good?
    She broke away from the glass and walked rapidly back through the kitchen to the flight of stairs that went up to her small office. The office had been built under the roof of what had originally been a one-story building, so the ceiling slanted and it had windows going out only one end of the building. Looking out, she couldn’t see anything unusual—nobody in the streets, no cars with men lurking inside.
    But it wouldn’t be that way, anyway, she thought. If they were coming for her, they’d probably wait until they could get her on the sidewalk, alone, or at her home. They wouldn’t walk into a bar and risk a shoot-out in a place full of bystanders.
    Rinker had a long couch at the end of the office, and she sometimes napped on it. Now she lay down, closed her eyes and tried to work it out. She could find only one answer: that somebody had given her up. Somebody who knew where she lived. She’d told Carmel that she went to Wichita State, so Carmel knew where she lived, but not her name, or about the bar. But if Carmel had given her up, then they’d know almost everything, and they would have come in hard.
    She had to call Carmel, she thought. But not from here. And right now, maybe she’d walk out on the floor, talk to some people. If they were planning to jump her, she was dead meat anyway. And if they weren’t, maybe she could learn something.

    R INKER’S BAR HAD two major rooms,