Certain prey

'I don't know. I've got a contact in the police department, and nobody knows what's going on. But apparently, the kid failed to identify me. Nothing came out of it.'

'But why would they take your picture over in the first place?' -'That's the question,' Carmel said.

Rinker had a room on the seventh floor. Inside, Rinker opened the mini-bar, took out two cans of Special Export. 'I got glasses,' she said.

'Can's fine,' Carmel said, popping the top. 'I really didn't expect you to come all the way back from… wherever. I just wanted to talk.'

'Yeah, well, I got a little problem of my own,' Rinker said. She sat on the bed and Carmel pulled the chair out from the tiny desk and sat down. 'The day before you called me, I got another call, at the answering service. A guy who was supposedly trying to get in touch with Tennex. But when the receptionist asked if he wanted to leave a message, he said no. Then two days later, the cops showed up. That's all I know -cops were asking questions. I don't have any easy way to find out more.'

'Huh.' Carmel thought about it for a minute, then took a cell phone out of her purse, and her address book. She checked a number, as Rinker watched, and punched it in. 'Calling my guy,' Carmel said to Rinker. Then, into the phone:

'This is Carmel. Anything else happen?' She listened for a moment, then said, 'I stopped by to see Davenport a couple of times. He's never in… Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I'll probably stop and see him tomorrow, then. Okay. And listen, I'll send along another envelope. Keep your eyes and ears open; this thing is starting to scare me. I'm afraid they're setting me up on something. Uh-huh. Well, you know Davenport. Uh-huh. Talk to you tomorrow.'

'What'd he say?' Rinker asked.

'He said Davenport was out of town, and the rumor was, he was at the FBI headquarters. In Washington.'

'Shit.' Rinker said it sharply, expelling breath. 'What's going on? They're on to you and me? How could that happen?'

'I called you once from my apartment,' Carmel said. 'This last time, I called from a pay phone, but I did call Tennex that one time, the first time, about

Rolo, from my apartment. If they're looking at my long-distance billing, if they're checking everything…'

'Even if they were, how did they pick out Tennex? It's a goddamn messenger service.'

'Maybe they picked on it because they couldn't find anything behind it. Maybe just luck. What does Tennex mean? Would that mean something to somebody?'

'No. When we were setting this up, we were talking in the kitchen of this guy's restaurant down in St. Louis, and we were wondering what to call the company, and I saw this name on this air-filter thing he had there. Tennex. It sounded like something, so I said, "How about Tennex?" '

'So that's not it.'

'I don't see how,' Rinker said.

'All right. So we've got to do some prospecting.'

'Very carefully.'

'Very. And there's something else,' Carmel said. 'If it looks like I'm in trouble, why wouldn't you just shoot me and walk away? I mean, that's something we ought to talk about.'

'Well, I sorta think of you like… well, almost a friend,' Rinker said. 'I mean, we've done some stuff together, and we get along, and we're probably going to Mexico together, pick up some guys. So… I could ask you the same thing.'

'I don't know how to find you,' Carmel said. 'So I couldn't, even if I wanted to. Which I don't.'

'If you need some other reason, I can give you one,' Rinker said, swallowing beer. 'I gotta find out why I'm in trouble. These guys I work with – if the feds start snooping around, or your pal Davenport, all they've got to do is dump me, and they're safe. They have a couple more people like me out there, and I'd walk out the front of my apartment someday and boom, that'd be it. So I gotta find out. If the feds start bugging my guys, I gotta know, and take some precautions.'

'These guys are… Mafia?'

Rinker shrugged. She looked like a slightly over aged cheerleader, bouncing softly on the hotel bed. 'Yeah, I guess. If you're gonna put a label on them. I mean, they're Italian, most of them. Except Freddy, he's Irish, or his grandfather was. And I guess Dave is like a Polack, they're always giving him shit about it. They're sorta the Mafia, but they're more like a bunch of guys who watch NFL Monday Night Football and pick up stuff that falls off trucks. Some of them are pretty mean, though. Like Italian bikers.'

'Huh.' Carmel showed a small grin. 'I thought it'd be more dignified than that.'

'Maybe back East. Not in St. Louis,' Rinker said.

'So are you gonna be around?'

'In and out of town, until we figure out what's going on,' Rinker said. 'I'm going to Washington tomorrow. I want to talk to this woman who runs the answering service.'

'What if they're watching her?'

'Then I won't talk to her,' Rinker said.

'I'm gonna try to get in touch with Davenport tomorrow, if he's back. I'll see what he has to say for himself.'

'Be careful.'

'Always.'

Rinker gave Carmel the name she was using at the hotel, and as Carmel was leaving, said, 'Hey – this Davenport. Do you know where I could get a picture of him?'

Carmel shook her head. 'No. I mean he's probably been in the paper any number of times, but I don't

… wait a minute. I bet I do know. He also ran a company called Davenport

Simulations, computer simulation-things for cops. If you check the library, the business section, the local business magazines, I bet you'd find something.'

'Cut the page out with a razor…'

'Don't get caught,' Carmel said. 'The library people can be mean pricks when it comes to people cutting up their magazines.'

Chapter Fifteen

Lucas was sitting in his office, pushing deeper into the Equality Report.

Reading the perfect, politically correct prose had become a Zen-like exercise.

The words flowed softly and without meaning through his brain, an unending stream of nonsense syllables that eventually metamorphosed into a cosmic hum, and allowed other ideas to bubble up.

He was on page ninety-four when Carmel knocked. He thought it was Sloan: 'Yeah, for Christ's sakes, come in.'

Carmel opened the door and stuck her head in. Surprised, Lucas stood up. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'I thought it was somebody else.'

'A little mistake like that is nothing compared to what you're gonna get into,'

Carmel said, stepping into the office, pushing the door closed. She put one fist on her hip and said, 'A little birdie told me you stuck my face into a photo spread on that Dinkytown murder. The Blanca chick and the other guy. I want to know why'

'We were looking for photographs of long-legged blondes, and you were available,' Lucas said, his voice flat.

'Bullshit, 1 she said. Her mouth was like a short stretch of barbed-wire. She dropped into the visitor's chair opposite him, and stretched her legs out, but didn't really settle in: she was like a spring, all squeezed down and about to explode. 'So why? You are fucking with me, and if I don't get a good reason,

I'll see you in court and let the judge ask you why.'

Lucas nodded: 'It'd be an interesting lawsuit. I don't know what you could possibly sue us for…'

'Some of the best civil lawyers in the U.S. fuckin' A. sit down the hall from me, and I don't doubt that they could find ten reasons that a judge would like,' she said, her voice glassy-edged. 'For one thing, I represented Rolando D'Aquila and several of his associates in the past, and now you're hauling my picture around and showing it to people around this crime. Are you trying to discredit me as an attorney? It might seem so…'

'All right, you're smarter than I am, Carmel,' Lucas said. 'You want the real reason? The reason is that a witness who probably saw the killers described one of the women in a way that you resemble. And you admitted to several people that you knew and represented Rolando D'Aquila, and not only that, that you were representing a man suspected of hiring somebody to kill his wife – a murder committed by the same person or persons who committed the D'Aquila killing. So far, you are the only connection we can find between the killing of Barbara