Wicked Prey

tell,” Letty said. “You can make something up.”
    “What if he asks me what the guy was like?” Briar asked.
    “Well . . . make something up. See that guy walking across the street?” Letty pointed through the windshield and they all looked at a guy wearing a blue seersucker suit with a white shirt and a red bow tie. “The bow tie guy was your date.”
    “He has a southern accent,” Lois said.
    “He has a southern accent and he took you to a hotel room at the Radisson, on the twelfth floor, but he wouldn’t let you look at the number, and then he took you back out and wouldn’t let you look at the number when you were leaving,” Frank said.
    “Randy doesn’t care about that,” Briar said.
    “But it’s a good detail, and it makes it sound more real,” Letty said.
    “He only gave you seventy-five dollars,” Lois said. “But he went in the bathroom and you stole the rest.”
    “You don’t understand,” Briar said. “Randy might make me tell the truth.”
    “ You don’t understand,” Letty said. “You fib.”
    She was insistent, and Briar looked away and bobbed her head and said, “Okay.”
    Frank looked back from the driver’s seat and said to Letty, “We need to get out and have a secret talk where Lois and Juliet can’t hear us.”
    Letty frowned. “What?” He repeated himself and she asked, “Why?”
    “Because.” He pulled over to the curb, said to Lois, “I’ll leave everything running, be back in a minute.”
    He got out and Letty followed, and they walked a way down the street, where they could see a bunch of cops in riot gear, apparently waiting for something to happen that was out of sight. Two more cops, on horses, were riding slowly toward the riot cops.
    “Listen, you know about the problem I had,” Frank said. “Everybody in town does.”
    “I heard something about it,” Letty admitted.
    “I’ve known a few of these girls . . . sometimes, a lot of times, with the younger ones . . . they don’t think for themselves. They’re so . . . screwed up . . . that they think what they’re told to think. When Juliet says that Randy will make her tell—she knows that if Randy pushes her, she’ll tell the truth. Then, maybe, she gets beat up. I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of deal you got going . . .”
    “But she’s got the money,” Letty protested. “All she has to do is tell a little lie . . .”
    “She can’t,” Frank said. He looked desperately embarrassed. “She does exactly what people tell her, because when she doesn’t, she’s learned that she’ll get beat up. So, back there in the car, you got a little sharp with her, and she agreed. Because you made her agree.”
    “I didn’t . . .”
    “Yes, you did,” Frank said. “These people, sometimes, they can’t resist a push. When she gets alone with Randy, if he smells a rat and pushes her, she’ll tell the truth.”
    Letty scuffed along, then looked back at the truck. “Poop.” She turned, and started back, and then said, “Frank, thank you. You’re a great guy for telling me this. You know, after, your problem.”
    Frank blushed and when they got back to the van, Letty popped the back door and said, “Juliet, let’s walk.”
    * * *
    THEY GOT OUT of the van and started walking up the hill and generally back toward the Radisson hotel. Juliet asked, “Do you want the money back?”
    Letty, surprised, said, “No, of course not. That’s your money. You got it from a fat guy named Stan with a southern accent who was wearing a blue-striped suit and a red bow tie.”
    Briar’s head bobbed and Letty continued: “Frank told me that you might have a little trouble lying to Randy.”
    Juliet looked away. “I can’t do it. Or maybe, I can, if he doesn’t find out. But if he guesses, he can make me tell.”
    Letty said, “How much trouble have you had with the cops?”
    Briar shook her head. “I’ve never had any trouble.”
    “You’ve never been arrested?”
    She shook her head and then smiled, proud to show off her expertise. “Randy told me how to do this. Taught me. It’s not hard. You gotta watch out for the undercover, but the undercover usually operates up where all the whores hang out. I ask . . . guys on the street. I pick them . If somebody picks me, I’m supposed to get pissed . . . Keeps off the undercover. Randy, if Randy gets arrested for two more years, they’ll put him back in prison.”
    “Okay. Well. I asked you because I’ve been in trouble with the