Rules of Prey

painter in St. Paul who’s an awful lot like you in some ways . . . and you’re going to move on to other women. I know it, that’s okay. The thing is, when you do, can we still be friends? Can I still come up here?”
    Lucas laughed. “Nothing like a little honesty to destroy an incipient hard-on.”
    “We can get it back,” she said. “But I want to know—”
    “Listen. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I have had . . . a number of relationships over the years and a lot of the women are still friends of mine. A couple of them come up here, in fact. Not like this, for a month at a time, but for weekends. Sometimes we sleep together. Sometimes we don’t, if the relationship has changed. We just come up and hang out. So . . .”
    “Good,” she said. “I’m not going to fall apart when we break it off. In fact, I’m going to be so busy I don’t know if I could keep a relationship together. But I would like to come back.”
    “Of course you would. That’s why my friends call it a pussy trap—ouch, ouch, let go, goddammit . . . .”
     
    “You got a minute?” Sloan leaned in the doorway. He was sucking on a plastic cigarette substitute.
    “Sure.”
    Lucas had gotten back to Minneapolis so relaxed that he felt as though his spine had been removed. The feeling lasted for fifteen sour minutes at police headquarters, talking to Anderson, getting his notebook updated. He had wandered down to his office, the North Woods mood falling apart. As he put the key in his door, Sloan appeared up the hallway, saw him, and walked down.
    “Remember me talking about this Oriental-art guy?” Sloan asked as he lowered himself into Lucas’ spare chair.
    “Yeah. Something there?”
    “Something. I don’t know what. I wonder if you might have a few words with him.”
    “If it’ll help.”
    “I think it might,” Sloan said. “I’m mostly good at sweet talk. This guy needs something a little harder.”
    Lucas glanced at his watch. “Now?”
    “Sure. If you’ve got time.”
     
    Alan Nester was crouched over a tiny porcelain dish, his back to the door, when they walked in. Lucas glanced around.An Oriental carpet covered a parquet floor. A very few objects in porcelain, ceramics, and jade were displayed in blond oak cabinetry. The very sparsity of offerings hinted at a storehouse of art elsewhere. Nester pivoted at the sound of the door chimes and a frown creased his lean pale face.
    “Sergeant Sloan,” he said crossly. “I told you quite clearly that I have nothing to contribute.”
    “I thought you should talk to Lieutenant Davenport here,” Sloan said. “I thought maybe he could explain things more clearly.”
    “You know what we’re investigating, and Sergeant Sloan has the feeling that you’re holding something back,” Lucas said. He picked up a delicate china vase and squinted at it. “We really can’t permit that . . . Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make that sound so severe. But the thing is, we need every word we can get. Everything. If you’re holding back something, it must have some importance or you wouldn’t hold it back. You see where we’re coming from?”
    “But I’m not holding back,” Nester cried in exasperation. He stood up, a tall man, but thin, like a blue heron, and stepped across the rug and took the vase from Lucas’ hand. “Please don’t touch anything. This is delicate material.”
    “Yeah?” Lucas said. As Nester replaced the vase, he picked up a small ceramic bowl.
    “All we want to know,” he said, “is everything that happened at the Rice house. And then we’ll go away. No sweat.”
    Nester’s eyes narrowed as he watched Lucas holding the small bowl by its rim.
    “Excuse me for a second.” He crossed to a glass case at the end of the room, picked up a telephone, and dialed.
    “Yes, this is Alan Nester. Let me speak to Paul, please. Quickly.” He looked across the room at Lucas as he waited. “Paul? This is Alan. The police officers came back, and one of them is holding a S’ung Dynasty bowl worth seventeen thousand dollars by its very rim, obviously threatening to drop it. I have nothing to tell them, but they won’t believe me. Could you come down? . . . Oh? That would be fine. You have the number.”
    Nester put the receiver back on the hook. “That was my attorney,” he said. “If you wait here a moment, you can expect a phone call either from your chief or from the deputy mayor.”
    “Hmph,” Lucas