Naked Prey

the glasses and said, “Guys. You musta heard.”
    “A little while ago, in town,” Ruth said. “Jane and Deon, but people said they were hanged?” Ruth stuffed her mittens in her coat pocket, and unzipped the parka. Ruth Lewis felt like her sister, but didn’t look like her. She was a slender woman, where Katina was round, and she had flinty green eyes behind steel-colored, wire-rimmed glasses, while Katina’s eyes were softer, paler. Ruth’s hair was close-cropped, an ascetic’s ’do; Katina wore her hairfull. Ruth’s cheeks were rosy from the cold, like her sister’s, but unlike Katina, she wore no lipstick or jewelry—a pretty woman determined to do nothing with her looks.
    Ruth was the older sister and the boss, Katina the subordinate.
    Calb said, “Hung in a grove off the ditch road. That Letty kid found them this morning.” He looked at the clock. It was just 11:45. It seemed like the morning had stretched on forever, since he’d heard the news at ten.
    “So what are we doing?” Katina asked. She always reminded Calb of a clucking hen, a busy, mildly overweight woman, but with a sensuous underlip. She was supposedly a member of some Catholic religious group, but apparently one that didn’t have anything against sex: Katina had been sleeping with Loren Singleton, and Singleton was looking as happy as he ever did, if a little peaked. “Do we do anything? ”
    “I’m closing down,” Calb said. “For the time being. Until we find out what’s going on.”
    “That’s not acceptable,” Ruth said.
    “I . . . ” A car went by on the highway, and Ruth and Katina and Calb all turned their heads that way—you always looked at a car on the highway in Broderick. A Highway Patrol car with extra passengers.
    “Ray Zahn,” Ruth said.
    “Loren told me that a couple of big shots flew in from St. Paul, and Zahn’s driving them around,” Katina said.
    Calb shook his head. “I’ll tell you what, guys; they’re gonna hook Deon up with me, and I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.”
    “Tell them as much of the truth as you can,” Ruth suggested. “That you hired Deon to drive for you, on the recommendation of an old army buddy in Kansas City, that you rehab trucks from all over the Midwest, and that he picks them up.”
    “That’s not exactly . . . ”
    “He does that,” Ruth interrupted. “You could give references.”
    “Yeah. He’s done that,” Calb said. “What about you guys?”
    “We can’t stop,” Ruth said. Her chin was set, tough, square. “We need to keep working.”
    “I’m sorry, but we gotta stop, until we find out what’s going on,” Calb objected. “This may be coming out of Kansas City. If that’s what it is, maybe we can give some stuff to the cops, and they can settle it, but before then . . . ”
    “Ray, we can’t,” Ruth said urgently. “We haven’t made enough runs lately. The Ontario net just came back up, since Jeanette died.”
    “I can’t help that,” Calb said. “I talked to Sister Mary Ann yesterday, when she came in—she seemed pretty happy.”
    “She did fine, but the mix wasn’t that good. We can’t stop,” Ruth said.
    “Hey—I’m shipping a load of junkers out right now. George is on his way in with his truck and we’re getting them the fuck outa . . . excuse the language. I’m sorry.” He was genuinely worried that they might be offended. Ruth had once been a nun.
    “I don’t care about the language,” Ruth said. She switched a smile on, and then off. “All I care about is that we keep working—and we won’t stop. If we have to pile up the junkers on your doorstep, that’s what we’ll do.”
    “Ah, Jesus Christ on a crutch,” Calb said, forgetting himself again.
    T HE DEAL WAS complicated, but profitable for everyone.
    A man named Shawn Davis from Kansas City, Missouri, working with old drug-dealing friends in St. Louis,Des Moines, and Omaha, would spot and steal late-model Toyota Land Cruisers, 4Runners, and Tacoma pickups. No Nissans, no Fords, no Chevys. Nothing but Toyotas. That kept parts and paint supply simple.
    The stolen vehicles would be driven, individually, from Davis’s place in Kansas City to Calb’s body shop, in Broderick. Calb had been in the Army with Davis, and they’d done some chickenshit black market stuff in Turkey, selling U.S. government meat. They trusted each other, to a point. The stolen cars were driven north by Deon Cash, who was Davis’s cousin, or Joe