Chosen Prey

“What else did she say about him?” Lucas said, leaning forward. “Names or where he lived—”
    “Nothing. He was older than she was. This was like two weeks before she disappeared.”
    “That’s all? She was dating an artist and he was older than her.”
    “Actually, I might have seen the guy . . . .”
    Lucas and Del looked at each other, and then Lucas said, “Where?”
    “I was coming out of Spalonini over in Minneapolis. I went in there for lunch? There’s this diner across the street.”
    “The Cheese-It. She worked there part-time,” Del said.
    “Yeah. I saw her coming out of there with a guy and she had her arm under his. Tough-looking guy, but kind of artistlike. You know, he had a buzzcut and a three-day beard, had this long dark wool coat all the way down to his ankles. Maybe an earring, I think. They walked on up the street.”
    “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Lucas asked.
    Lapp thought for a minute, then said, “Nah. I just saw him for one second, from the side, and then from the back. I remember he was a cocky-looking sonofabitch. You know who he looked like? This stuck in my head. He looked like Bruce Willis in this movie where Willis was playing a boxer? Uh, something Fiction ?”
    “Pulp Fiction,” Del said.
    “Yeah, that’s it. He looked like Willis in that movie, kind of fucked up, big shoulders. Dark like that, but a buzzcut.”
    “But you couldn’t pick him out?”
    “If you had a lineup with Dick and George, here,” Lapp said, waving at the Vikings guy and the baseball cap, “and a buzzcut who looked sorta like Bruce Willis, then I could pick him out. If you had six buzzcuts, then I couldn’t.”
    “Goddamn good memory anyway,” Del said. His voice may have carried a vibration of skepticism.
    Lapp shrugged. “Just between you and me . . . maybe I did have a little thing about her. Nothing serious. Then she went away . . . . I just remembered. I remember remembering, if you know what I mean.”
    “How come you didn’t call this in? We could’ve used the help,” Del said.
    Lapp shook his head. “I didn’t think it would be important. I mean, I heard about it when you were looking for her, but it seemed like she just might’ve, you know, split.”
    “And there’s his old lady,” the baseball cap said, nodding at Lapp. “If he told you, he’d have to tell her.”
    They talked a few more minutes, and Lucas took Lapp’s address and telephone number. Outside, on the sidewalk, Del said, “Lapp is right. Unless we get lucky with those lists, we ain’t got shit.”
    “He’s an artist and he’s got a buzzcut and he takes Lapovorin. We can check pharmacies and make more lists.”
    “Buzzcuts are the fashion right now, and Minneapolis’s got more artists than rats and every second guy on the street takes Lapovorin.”
    “But it’s something. I can see him in my mind’s eye now.”
    “Then you oughta stop down to one of them photo booths and have a picture taken before you forget,” Del said. He yawned, looked up and down the street at the wind-whipped snowflakes slanting through the streetlights like shading in a cartoon. He slapped Lucas on the back and said, “See you in the morning. We’ll look up some artists, or some fuckin’ thing.”

5
    S HE ’ D MADE SOME kind of cheese dish with garlic. Qatar liked garlic when he was eating it, but an hour later, after another rugged round of sex, he could smell it in his own sweat, and in Barstad’s sweat mingled with his; he touched his stomach and found it cool and wet.
    The sexual education of Ellen Barstad might not be the lark that he’d assumed it would be, Qatar thought. He was in her bathroom again, washing. His penis had gone past the tingling stage: It hurt. This was their fourth time together, if the first unsuccessful bedding was counted. He was beginning to feel the pressure.
    The second time together, they had watched a pornographic movie and then tried some of the more modestly deviant practices. The third time, they had moved on. Nothing truly advanced, Qatar thought, though it was as advanced as he’d ever managed.
    This time, Barstad’s wrists were tied to the head of the bed with two of his old, too-wide neckties. “James,” she called. She was waiting.
    “Good God,” he said under his breath. He knew the tone. His face seemed a little pale, a little drawn, in the bathroom mirror. He didn’t have another one in him, he thought. He turned the water