Certain Prey

Rinker said. “And here— you can read this while you’re eatin’ the doughnuts.” She handed him the deed. “This place is worth four, if it’s worth a dime. You might get four and a half.”
    “We’re taking a risk,” he grunted. “Covering for ya.”
    “A lot less risk if you keep wiping the place after I’m gone,” Rinker said. “When the cops show up, if they do, you don’t want to have anything to do with me. I left a note for my landlord saying I was having trouble with my ex, so you might say I told you that.”
    “It’s weak,” Wooden Head said.
    “So what? It’s what I got, and it’s better than nothing. Half the cops’ll figure I’m buried in a cornfield somewhere.” Wooden Head’s eyes slid away from hers. He knew about the two guys at the apartment, she thought.
    “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
    The bar was a quick rerun of the apartment: she wiped everything, Xeroxed critical papers using plastic disposable gloves, dumped everything she didn’t want in plastic garbage bags and cried for a while. When Wooden Head came back, she was ready to go.
    “By the way,” she said. “Give this note to the Guy. It’s private.” She handed him the sealed envelope, picked up her briefcase, took a last look around.
    “You going back to the apartment?” he asked.
    “Yeah. I’ve gotta wipe that, too,” she said. “But who knows? Maybe the cops’ll never find it.” She looked at her watch: almost ten. The pilot would wait until noon. Plenty of time.
    “The money’s clean,” Wooden Head said, as his good-bye. “Enjoy yourself.”
    She stopped at that, peered at him: “You know what I do? For a living?”
    “I’ve got an idea.”
    “Then you’ll take me seriously when I tell you this: if this money’s not clean, I’ll come for you.”
    And she was gone. W OODEN HEAD WALKED out to the main bar and watched through the windows as Rinker climbed into the beat-up van and drove away. Then he picked up a phone, called a number in Los Angeles and was tripped through a switchboard to St. Louis.
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s me. She’s on her way to the apartment.”
    “Okay. You give her the money?”
    “Yeah. She says if it’s not clean, she’ll come for me.”
    “Nothing to worry about, in five minutes,” the Guy said.
    “It’s clean, anyway,” Wooden Head said. “By the way, she gave me an envelope to give to you.”
    “What’s in it?”
    “I don’t know.” He held it up to a kitchen light. “It’s sealed up, and it says ‘Private.’”
    “Open the fuckin’ thing.”
    Wooden Head opened it, shook out the message and the two driver’s licenses. The names on the licenses meant nothing to him.
    “There’s a note that says, ‘I’ll give you this one. Try again, and I’ll come visit.’ And there are two driver’s licenses. The names are . . .”
    “I know the names, you don’t have to say them,” the Guy said.
    After a long silence, Wooden Head said, “You still there?”
    “Yeah.” More silence. Then, “Listen, you sure that money was clean?”
    Wooden Head nodded at the phone. “Yeah, it was clean, it came from the political fund.”
    “Good thing,” the Guy said. He sounded a little shaky. “Goddamn good thing.”

TWENTY-ONE

    Rinker hauled the van full of garbage bags to a trash-transfer station, dumped them, wiped the van and left it at the airport. The pilot, looking a little sleepy, was sitting in the charter lounge reading an old copy of Fortune. He spotted her, helped her carry her three oversized suitcases to the plane, and had Rinker back in Des Moines by midafternoon.
    “Can I give you a ride anywhere?” he asked, when they were on the ground.
    “Thanks, that’d be nice. I’m going to a Holiday Inn . . .” He made a mild pass at her on the way; she was nice about saying no. He left her at the motel, where she checked out, picked up her car and found a store that sold wigs.
    “My mama is getting chemotherapy and her hair is starting to fall out. I need to get a wig for her,” she told the sole saleswoman. The saleswoman looked sad: “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said in a kindly way, patting Rinker’s arm. “It would be better if she were here, though, for a fitting.”
    “Well, she really can’t be,” Rinker said. “She’s almost exactly like me, but her head is a little larger, maybe. We measured and it’s about a quarter-inch bigger round, and also, she’s still got a lot of hair,