Chosen Prey

like they’d had government design input. The place was not what Qatar expected.
    But Randy answered the door. He was wearing a red silk dressing robe and had a brown-tinted joint stuck in an onyx cigarette holder. His mouth was an angry slash. “Who d’fuck are you?” he asked.
    “Uh, Randy, I called . . .” Qatar stepped back, half turned.
    “Shit you called. What’d you call about?” Randy’s eyes seemed fogged; he was wrong, and it was more than a little hash. Qatar backed away another step.
    Randy took a step after him, and Qatar looked quickly up and down the street. He didn’t need this. “This afternoon I called. I’ve got some jewelry.”
    The fog seemed to lift an inch. “Jim,” he said. “You’re Jim.”
    “I better go. . . . You look like you need some sleep.”
    Randy suddenly laughed, a long, deep rolling peal, as though he were an aged blues singer doing a cameo in a white movie. “Don’t need no sleep. I don’t need no sleep.” He turned angry. “You sayin’ I need sleep?”
    “Listen . . .”
    “C’mon. In.” Randy had stepped close, and he caught Qatar’s arm just above the elbow. His hand felt like a mechanical claw. “Got the slick crib. Wait’ll you see inside. You’re Jim, Jim.”
    Qatar was dragged along, afraid to protest, into the town house and up a flight of stairs. “Mostly garage down there,” Randy said. At the top of the stairs, he said, “Check it out.”
    Qatar whistled, genuinely amazed.
    Scarlet flocked-wallpapered walls were punctuated by three faux-antique mirrors with foam-plastic frames painted to resemble gilded wood. A fifty-two-inch widescreen TV was pushed against one wall, sitting on a black furry rug in front of a white furry couch. On the wall to the left of the TV was a fireplace with a steel surround. Erté graphics hung everywhere.
    Randy must have found a frame shop, Qatar thought. One that was big with faux everything. “Pretty amazing, Randy.”
    Randy backed up to the railing next to the stairs, steadied himself, and studied the room as if suddenly puzzled. Something missing? He took it in for another few seconds, then shouted, “Hey, bitch, get out here.”
    A minute later, a too-thin blond girl padded out of a back hallway. She might have been sixteen, Qatar thought. She was round-shouldered with defeat, and barefoot, and said apologetically, “I just had to pee, Randy.”
    “Yeah, well, get me and my friend a beer. Make it fuckin’ quick. And wash your hands first.”
    “You want it in glasses?” The question came out as a whine.
    “Of course we want it in fuckin’ glasses. And they best be clean.” He said to Qatar, “I ain’t got her fully broke yet.”
    Qatar nodded and tried not to look embarrassed; and in fact, he wasn’t much. “I’ve got some stuff for you.”
    “Let’s see it . . . Jim.” Qatar handed him the little bag of jewelry, and Randy shook it out into his hand; the hand was suddenly steady. “What’s it worth?”
    “I’ve been checking the jewelry stores. I should get three thousand. You should get six from Chicago. Both the diamond and the emerald are real.”
    “Okay. I got no cash right now. I get it to you day after tomorrow.” He put the jewelry back in the bag, slipped the bag into his pocket, and said, “Hey, look at this.” He picked up a T-shaped remote control and pointed it at the fireplace. A fire sprang up. “Just like TV: real fire. Even looks like real logs in there, but it’s gas. But it looks like real logs. You can get some shit that you sprinkle in there, and it smells like burning wood.”
    The woman came out of the kitchen with two glasses of beer and two bottles balanced on a round tray. She did it well enough that Qatar thought she must’ve worked as a waitress somewhere, though she looked too young.
    “Beers,” she said.
    “Look at this,” Randy said. He turned one of the bottles. “ ‘Special Export.’ ”
    “You’re doing well, my friend,” Qatar said.
    “I am doin’ well.” Randy looked at the woman and said, “Sit on the floor.” She sat, and Randy and Qatar both had a sip of beer, and then Randy said, “You got any cash on you?”
    Qatar’s eyebrows went up. “A little, not much.”
    “How much?”
    “Fifty dollars, maybe.”
    “Got a cash card?”
    “Well . . .”
    “What’s your limit?”
    “Four hundred,” Qatar said, mentally kicking himself the moment the words were out of his mouth.
    Randy looked at him for