Easy Prey

wasn’t getting any extra cash here, above the board or below it.”
    He was lying about something, Lucas thought. He’d seen it in Deal’s eyes, the momentary flicker. The office door opened, and they both turned toward it. A moment later, a young woman looked down the aisle to Deal’s cubicle and saw Lucas. “Mr. Deal?”
    Deal stood up and stepped past Lucas. “Yeah, Jean, down here.”
    The woman walked toward them, and Lucas suddenly realized that she was extraordinarily good-looking. She was a little heavy, round, and had soft brown hair spiked with blond strands, a lush face with placid, pale blue eyes, and a slightly rolled underlip. She wore just a dab of lipstick. Her business suit was as conservative as the receptionist’s, but with a difference—hers was cut deeply enough in front to show a soft slice of cleavage. She was, Lucas thought, maternal and sexy at the same time.
    “Yes?” she asked.
    “Would you take this pencil out to India at the front desk?” He handed her a yellow pencil.
    She was puzzled, but compliant. “Yes, sir.”
    When she was gone, Deal sat down again and said, with just a touch of sarcasm, “ That’s why Sandy Lansing wasn’t dating our customers.”
    Looking after the woman, Lucas thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “She wasn’t enough.”
    “Not nearly enough, for this place,” Deal said, comfortably. “And there are a couple more like Jean. Even better than Jean. Not that I’d know anything about private arrangements between staff members and our guests.” He folded his hands across his stomach and leaned back in his office chair. “Anything else, Officer Davenport?”
    Lucas leaned into him, smiled, reached out, and tapped him on the kneecap. “Yeah. Lansing and drugs. Where was she getting them?”
    “I don’t know.” He squealed it; he sounded like a startled pig. “I don’t know anything about any drugs, I don’t do drugs. You know that.”
    “Yeah, right.” Deal was lying about something. “You do assessments.”
    “Well. I would be, if you hadn’t fucked me,” he said. “Now I do hotels.”
    “Like it better?”
    “No,” Deal said. “I don’t. I used to be somebody. Now . . .” He looked up between the rows of cubicles. “I’m in a goddamn rat cage.”

10
    NOT MUCH MORE to do: There were cops out everywhere, working on everybody. Writing biographies on the party people; matching their stories, one against the next. Outside, TV trucks were beginning to pile up at the curb. He called Rose Marie, checked out, and went home.
    Had a sandwich, got a beer out of the refrigerator—the last one; he’d have to run down to the store. He clicked on the TV: The movie people were going crazy, as expected. The local TV news shows crushed sports and weather into a five-minute segment, everything else into two minutes, and spent the rest of the half hour on Alie’e. Then the networks jumped in, with their talking heads. They’d had all day to explore the topic of fashion and dope, and long lines of solemn middle-aged men deplored the relationship.
    Fox and NBC had a stunning Amnon Plain photograph of Alie’e Maison in what looked like men’s underwear. The photo was as sexual as could be broadcast on TV without a fuzzy spot over the good parts, Lucas thought—and while Plain was credited as the photographer, all of the commentators gave credit to The Star for the use of the photo.
    ABC’s news reader said the issue of The Star would hit the newsstands by two o’clock the next day, only thirty-six hours after Alie’e was murdered. He seemed to think it was a technological miracle. Lucas got a few seconds of airtime, the interview cut in over movies of a stunned George Shaw, now in jeans and a sweatshirt, being dragged out to a cop car. They’d bitten on George, but not too hard.
    “While drugs are acknowledged to be a central point of investigation, rumors have surfaced about a number of sexual escapades involving a former model named Jael Corbeau . . .” And the broadcast cut to a shot of Corbeau in a Chinese-collared black dress that emphasized the planes of her face, the jagged jigsaw quality of the scarring.
    After a while, Lucas got tired of it, punched off the TV, and wandered back to the drawing board.
    One idea a night, that was all. His idea tonight was that he might need a full-time game master—or better, he thought, a game mistress, somebody cute and blond with gold-rimmed glasses. But game sales wouldn’t