Certain prey

Carmel would be wearing a slinky bloody-red dress with spangles, matching red shoes and lipstick. 'How do I look?' she asked.

'You look terrific,' Rinker said, admiration riding in her voice. 'God, if I could look like that…'

'You're beautiful,' Carmel said.

'No, I'm not,' Rinker said. 'I'm cute. I look like I should be in the Playboy college issue, Duke University's Miss Perky Nipples.'

'Does Miss Perky Nipples carry. 22 Colt Woods-mans… would it be Woodsmans, or Woodsmen?'

'No, she probably wouldn't. I don't know the correct grammar, but I got two of them, and they were stolen fourteen years ago from a gunstore in Butte, Montana, and haven't seen the light of day since. I'm cool,'

Carmel nodded, 'You are cool.' She took a last look at herself in a full-length mirror, twirled and said, 'When I get that boy home tonight, I am going to fuck him rudely. Rudely.'

'Good luck,' Rinker said. 'I sorta wish I was… involved with somebody. It's been a while.'

'Is it hard to meet guys in Wichita?' Carmel asked, screwing on an earring clasp.

'It's hard for me,' Rinker said. 'You know, a gal who runs a bar? What kind of guys am I going to attract?' She answered her own question: 'Most of them have got a bottle of Jim Beam in the trunk…'

'Too bad you couldn't hook up with Davenport,' Carmel said, jokingly.

'He'd be a possibility,' Rinker admitted. 'He could be fun, in a big-galoot way.'

'Mean big-galoot,' said Carmel.

'I could see that,' Rinker said. 'I could feel it.' After a second, 'But he sorta… handles you. Moves you around. Touches you. Not feeling you up, or anything, but he's just… I don't know. All over the place.'

'If he sees you here, we're fucked,' Carmel said.

'Unlike when I saw him in Wichita,' Rinker said. Then: 'I thought about coming on to him a little, but that would've been… too much. Anyway, I don't expect to see him again the rest of my life.'

She picked up the first of the pistols, jacked a shell into the chamber, set the safety and slipped it into her gun girdle, under the jacket. Rinker looked at

Carmel. 'You ready?'

Chapter Eighteen

Black canceled a date and climbed into the back of Sherrill's Mazda with a pepperoni pizza and a bag of hot nacho cheese crackers.

Sherrill said, 'You're a cruel fuck. If I ate any of that stuff, it'd go right straight to my thighs.'

'So don't eat it. Concentrate on other things. Flowers. Small children,' Black said.

'I'm having a hard time concentrating. With my future husband on his way up to. ..'

'… slip a little English bacon to Carmel Loan.'

'You're so crude. And whatever he's got in there, I doubt that it resembles bacon.'

'You mean, in stripes, or in flatness?'

She giggled: 'God, I love talking dirty with you. It's so jock-like, so…'

She couldn't think of a word; through the plate glass doors of Carmel Loan's building, they could see Hale Allen's back as he signed into the building. Then a short redhead came around the corner from the elevators, into the lobby, and

Sherrill said, 'Here comes… nope.'

The redhead walked past Allen, giving him the once-over, pushed through the glass doors, looked left and right, put her hands deep in the pockets of her black sport coat, and headed down the block. Inside, Allen walked away from the security desk and around the corner to the elevators.

As they watched them, a patrol car pulled in behind the Mazda and the red lights began to flash. 'Ah, man,' Sherrill said, looking in her rear-view mirror. The loudspeaker on the cop car blared, 'Drop your car keys out the passenger window.

Now.'

Instead of dropping her keys out of the window, Sherrill held her badge case out. After a minute, the flashing lights stopped, and the driver of the cop car approached from the back, shining a flashlight on the badge case. Sherrill pushed the door open, dropped her feet to the street, looked at the cop and said, 'What the fuck are you doing?'

'What are you doing?'

'I'm on a goddamn stakeout. I was on a goddamn stakeout,' Sherrill said. 'Now

I'm in a goddamn comedy routine.' People had stopped up and down the street, to watch.

'Well, jeez, we're sorry.' The cop looked around at the audience and flapped his arms helplessly. 'You shoulda told somebody, instead of just lurking around here. The doorman called. He said you'd been here for hours.'

Sherrill could see the doorman in Carmel's building peering at them through the lobby window. 'Yeah, welclass="underline" now I'm gonna drive around the block and park again,' she said. 'And I'm telling you. Stay away from me or I swear to Christ, I'll shoot you.'

The cop peered in the back window and said, 'Hi, Tom.'

'Hi. Want some nachos?'

'Nah. Give me heartburn… so you're gonna go around the block?'

'Yeah.'

'Well. Be cool.'

Sherrill started the car, and they rolled away, Black laughing in the back. Then

Sherrill started: 'God, I love police work.'

Two minutes later, they were back on watch, Black still relaxed in the back and even deeper into the nachos. 'How you been?' he asked through a mouthful of chips and cheese. 'Since you and Davenport?'

'I miss him. A lot,' she said.

'He's an asshole. Sorta.'

'I miss him anyway,' she said. 'Besides, while I agree he's an asshole, he's not an asshole like you think he is.'

'Oh, I think I know.'

'Just 'cause you're queer doesn't mean you know. You're still a guy.'

Black contemplated the statement, formulated a reply, ate the chips as he worked at it: carefully formulated replies were necessary in the stakeout business. You could sit for hours, and you didn't want to run out of stuff to talk about – or piss off your partner – too soon.

'Let me tell you my theory of queerness as relates to the straight male,' Black said. And he did, and after a while – ten minutes – Sherrill said, 'I never would have thought of any of that.'

'You're not gay.'

'It's not that. It's just that I couldn't have come up with such an utter crock of shit.'

Black put a final three nachos in his mouth and settled back to formulate another reply. Before he got a good paragraph together, Sherrill said, 'Here they come – and Jesus Christ. Look at that dress.'

Black peered over the sill of the back window. Allen and Carmel stepped out through the glass doors, Allen wore a dark jacket that Black suspected was lightweight cashmere; tan, expensive-looking slacks; and loafers. Carmel was in a shocking, low-cut red party dress and red shoes.

'Nice dress,' Black said.

'Nice? A little gaudy, don't you think? And her tits are about coming out.'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Color is always good in clothing. And skin display is nice, in the summer.'

'Don't give me the fag act. Look at her. She's like a billboard.'

'All right. She's obviously a tart,' Black said.

'Thank you. Not nearly fine enough to aspire after the lovely Hale.'

'And she certainly doesn't have your tits.'

'You don't think?'

'Marcy, you've probably got the third-best tits in

Minneapolis. Davenport says sixth best, and of course, he would know from first hand observation, while Sloan says second best – I don't know about Sloan's qualifications…'

'He has none, and shut up, we're going.'

'Let me get my Big Gulp off the floor… Ah, shit.'

Rinker missed the foul-up with the squad car; she'd already turned the corner, and was headed back to her hotel to pick up her car. She felt heavy as she went.

She might have to kill the two of them, the mother and daughter. Might have to.

And that felt wrong. These were people who'd never had a chance; they weren't people who'd screwed up somehow, had gotten too stubbornly close to something that was bad for them… It was like all that gang-banger talk years ago, of mushrooms popping up in the line-of-fire. This mother and daughter were essentially mushrooms, and Rinker had always thought of herself more as a surgeon than as a gang-banger… She'd have to do this right.