Certain Prey

by John Sandford

Malone glanced at him, a thin line forming between her eyes; it disappeared in a half-second, and she said, 'So why don't we meet back here in a half hour?'

  Lucas got back to Mallard's room a few minutes before Malone; when she got back she was wearing black slacks and a soft black jacket over a sheer blouse. Beneath the blouse, Lucas thought, she was wearing a frilly black bra; and to the left, under the jacket, he could still pick out the slightly lumpy form of the semi-auto. Going out the door, Malone went first, and Lucas got the finest possible whiff of something exotic; something cool and icy.

  Malone got to the front passenger door first;

  Mallard got in the back. Malone looked at all the lights on the dashboard and doors and steering wheel and asked, 'How come small-town cops get cars like these, and we get Tauruses?'

  'Because we fight government corruption at every turn,' Mallard said.

  'Minneapolis is bigger than D.C.,' Lucas said.

  Malone made a rude noise, and Mallard said, 'Stop it.' On the way downtown, Lucas spotted a Wichita cop car sitting at a corner and pulled in ahead of it. Mallard asked, 'What're you doing?' and Lucas answered, 'Research.'

  He got out of the car carrying his badge case and when the cop in the driver's seat rolled down the window, Lucas flipped open the case and said, 'Hey guys - I'm a cop from up in Minneapolis going through with a couple of friends. We're looking for a bar or cocktail lounge, you know, something decent?'

  The driver took Lucas' badge case and studied the ID for a minute, grunted, 'Deputy chief, huh?' then handed it back and looked at his partner. 'Really aren't many places to talk...What do you think?The Rink?'

  'Be about the best,' the partner said. 'Four blocks straight ahead to the second light, take a right, about four or five more blocks down. The Rink.'

  'Great,' Lucas said, straightening up. 'Buy you guys one, if we're still there when you get off.'

  'Thanks, but we're working the overnight,' the driver said. 'Say, let me ask you this. What's your base pay up there, in Minneapolis?'

  They talked about salary, vacation and sick-leave policy for a couple of minutes, then Lucas walked back to the 740, climbed inside, tripped the hood latch, got out, slammed the hood, got back in and they drove to the Rink.

  Rinker was standing behind the bar, reading a register tape, when Lucas walked in. She was so utterly astonished that she showed nothing at all, as though she'd been hit in the forehead with a hammer. When she recovered, after a full five seconds, she noticed that he was with a woman who looked like a lawyer and a dry-faced, thick-necked man who might be an academic; or maybe a college wrestling coach.

  She turned away from them and walked down the bar and into the back, where she could stand behind a pane of one-way glass.

  'Something going on?' one of the kitchen boys asked, picking up her rapt attention.

  'Guy walked in, I thought he might be an old boyfriend from a very long time ago,' Rinker said.

  'Which guy?'

  'Finish the freezer,' she said.

  'Just askin'.'

  She watched Lucas for ten minutes, and finally decided that he wasn't interested in the bar: if he'd come here for her - and what other reason could he have for being here? - he certainly wasn't looking for her. He was putting a little light bullshit on the lawyer woman, Rinker decided, and the lawyer liked it.

  Rinker wondered what would happen if she simply walked out into the bar. Would he jump up and bust her? Were there other cops closing in on the bar, or stationed outside? If he was here on business, why was he drinking beer and bullshitting the woman? Was he that good?

  She broke away from the glass and walked rapidly back through the kitchen to the flight of stairs that went up to her small office. The office had been built under the roof of what had originally been a one-story building, so the ceiling slanted and it had windows going out only one end of the building. Looking out, she couldn't see anything unusual -nobody in the streets, no cars with men lurking inside.

  But it wouldn't be that way, anyway, she thought. If they were coming for her, they'd probably wait until they could get her on the sidewalk, alone, or at her home. They wouldn't walk into a bar and risk a Shootout in a place full of bystanders...

  Rinker had a long couch at the end of the office, and she sometimes napped on it. Now she lay down, closed her eyes, and tried to work it out. She could only find one answer: that somebody had given her up. Somebody who knew where she lived. She'd told Carmel that she went to Wichita State, so Carmel knew where she lived, but not her name, or about the bar. But if Carmel had given her up, then they'd know almost everything, and they would have come in hard.

  She had to call Carmel, she thought. But not from here...

  And right now, maybe she'd walk out on the floor, talk to some people. If they were planning to jump her, she was dead meat anyway. And if they weren't, maybe she could learn something.

  Rinker's bar had two major rooms, one for drinking and talking, and the second for drinking and dancing. The dance floor was polished maple, taken from a bankrupt karate studio, and probably the best dance floor in any bar in Wichita; all surrounded by deep-backed booths upholstered in naugahyde. When Davenport and his friends arrived, the band - live music on weekends - had been taking a break. They were setting up for their third and final set when Rinker cruised through.

  She worked all the booths around the dance floor, talking with people she knew or had often seen in the bar, mostly under-40s white-collar; the band played soft rock and cross over country. She bought a beer for a guy who'd walked away from a car wreck earlier in the day, and for a couple who were out for the first time since a kid was born. She listened to a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke:

  Guy walks into a bar, and the bartender says, 'Boy, I didn't expect to see you today, after last night - you were really bummed out'And the guy says, 'I was so bummed out that I went home and looked in my medicine cabinet. I had a big bottle of a thousand aspirins in there, and I decided to kill myself by taking them all at once.' The bartender says, 'So what happened?'And the guy says,

  'Well, after the first two, I didn't feel so bad.'

  She laughed and tracked Davenport between the heads of the dancers, who were just moving out on the dance floor again as the band cranked into a country dance piece. Davenport was in a front-room booth, facing her through the smoky atmosphere. He was paying no attention to her at all, or to anybody else in the bar, as far as she could tell. He was a good-looking guy, in a hard way, just starting to get a little grey around the temples. She drifted toward him.

  Lucas was laying a very mild hustle on Malone, while Mallard tried to steer the conversation back to police work. Malone didn't want to know about police work, but when Lucas suggested that they dance, she said, 'I don't dance like that.'

  'Is that a philosophical position?'

  'I just don't dance to rock or country. I never learned. I can foxtrot; I can waltz. I can't do that kind of boppity... you know.'

  'Too self-conscious,' Lucas said. He was about to go on when a woman stopped at the table and said, 'You all doing all right here?'

  'All right,' Lucas said, looking up at her. She wasn't a waitress. 'Who're you?'

  'I'm the owner, Clara. Making sure that everybody's being treated right.'

  'Good bar,' Lucas said. 'You oughta open another one like it, up in Minneapolis.'

  'You're from Minneapolis?'

  'I am,' Lucas said. 'These folks are from back east.'

  'Glad to have you in Wichita/ Rinker said. She started to step away, but Malone, who'd perhaps had one more beer than she was accustomed to, said, 'Your band doesn't play waltzes, does it?'

  Rinker grinned and said, 'Why, no, I don't believe they do, honey. You wanna waltz?'

  'This guy's got the urge to dance,' Malone said, pointing at Lucas with her long-neck, 'And I can't dance to rock. Never learned.'

  'Well, you oughta,' Rinker said. She looked quickly around the bar and then said to Lucas, 'I'm not doing anything at
the minute, and I like dancing. You want to?'

  They were dancing for five seconds and Lucas realized he was out of his depth.

  'You're a dancer, a professional,' he said, and Rinker laughed and said, 'I used to be, kinda.'

  'Well, slow down, you're making me look bad. And I'm a lot older than you are.'

  'Ah, you dance fine,' Rinker said, 'For a Minneapolis white guy.'

  Lucas laughed and turned her around; she was good-looking, he thought, one of those tough-cookie smart blondes who'd been around a bit, liked a good time, and could run a spreadsheet like an accountant. Maybe was an accountant.

  'Are you an accountant?' he asked.

  'An accountant?'They were shouting at each other

  over the music. 'Why would you think that?' 'I don't. Just making up a story in my head.' 'A story? You're not a reporter, are you?' 'Nah, I'm a cop. Just going through. I stopped to

  talk to some friends.'

  'You don't look like a cop.You look like a... movie

  guy, or something.'

  'Flattery will get you everywhere,' Lucas shouted

  back.

  She laughed, and they danced.

  But late that night, an hour after the bar closed, Rinker climbed in her car and headed for Kansas City. She would not break the routine: she would not make a business call from Wichita. She arrived in KC in the early morning hours, pulled into a convenience store and started dropping coins in a pay phone. When she had enough, she dialed Carmel; and Carmel, sleep in her voice, answered on the second ring. The cell phone, Rinker thought, must have been on the bed stand.

  'We've got another problem,' Rinker said.

  'What's that?'

  'I just gaily danced the night away with your friend and mine...' She let it hang.

  'Who?'

  'Lucas Davenport. Right here in River City.'

  'Goddamnit,' Carmel said. She ripped off a piece of thumbnail, snapped at it; she could hear her own teeth grinding in the telephone earpiece. 'He's

  working on some kind of information. I don't know enough about you or your friends to know where it might be coming from...'

  'It's more complicated than that,' Rinker said. 'He had no idea who I was. He must be there for something - I mean, what are the chances of a coincidence? Zero? Less than zero, I'd say...'

  'So would I.'

  'He had no idea who I was,' Rinker repeated. 'I was hoping you might get something from your sources in the police department.'

  'Not much chance,' Carmel said. 'My guy thinks of himself as a kind of harmless leaker of information that's gonna get out anyway. He really wouldn't tell me anything that he thought might get somebody hurt...'

  'So maybe we need to put some pressure on him.'

  'Listen to this: he did tell me that they keep coming back to me. Even my source is getting a little strange with me. He thinks Davenport's got something, and I think it has to do with that kid.'

  'Damnit. Even if the kid told him something... oh, shit.'

  'What?'

  'Just had a thought. If the kid for some reason got the tag number on that rental car... I told you that I use fake credit cards and IDs to rent them. I told you about that?'

  'Yeah. You keep the cards good by using them...'

  'I've paid them from Wichita. I've been careful,

  but I've gotten bank drafts here to pay those bills.'

  'You think?'

  'I don't see how the kid could have gotten the number. It was dark, and she was back inside when we left, and we were way down the block.'

  'Maybe it wasn't the kid. Maybe... wasn't there a guy on a bike?'

  'From upstairs? Why would he take our tag number?' Rinker asked.

  'I don't know. But that would explain a few things. Can you come up here?'

  'Yeah. I'm in KC now. I'll be up there tomorrow.'

  'Bring your... tools,' Carmel said. 'We may have to talk to somebody. And I gotta think about this. Maybe by the time you get here, I'll have some ideas.'

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucas stayed in Wichita for two days, tracking 'Lopez and listening to the FBI taps. The longer he listened, the more convinced he became that Lopez was a small-time dealer, supplementing the flower shop take with a little side money. The side money, Lucas decided, was going straight into his arm.

  A woman named Nancy Holme, carried on Lopez' state tax forms as an employee, did virtually all the work, showing up early to take deliveries of fresh-cut flowers, staying late over a hot computer. Lopez would arrive sleepy, nod off at midday, and leave sleepy. The Feebs couldn't decide whether Holme was in on the game or not. She never took delivery of drugs. Lucas suggested that they look at her as the killer. They did, and rapidly concluded that she wasn't.

  The night before he left for Minneapolis, Lucas, Malone and Mallard went back to the Rink. The woman he'd danced with, the owner, wasn't working, he was told. 'She's got to travel on business a couple of times a year, and this is one of those times. Too bad, she liked you,' a waitress told them, her over-active eyebrows semaphoring a tale of two ships passing in the night.

  'A tragedy,' Malone said, when the waitress left with their orders. 'Davenport leaves another broken heart in a dusty western town.'

  Rinker was in the Twin Cities. Carmel met her at the hotel, and at Rinker's direction, had ridden up three extra floors on the elevator, and had taken the stairs down to Rinker's floor. Rinker, when she let Carmel in, was wearing a black wig.

  'How do I look? Mexican?' Rinker asked as she closed the door.

  'You're too pale,' Carmel said. 'You could maybe make Italian.'

  'I'll go back to the redhead, then,' Rinker said.

  Carmel had been thinking about Davenport: 'Somehow, they're tracking you. And for some reason, they're pushing on me. I thought about your car, and the possibility that they're tracking it, but that doesn't seem likely. That would mean that they had to have two pieces of luck: to get onto Tennex, and to get the tag number. I don't believe it. What I'm wondering is, could they have found a connection with your St. Louis friends? Could they be squeezing somebody?' 'Only one guy in St. Louis knows exactly who I am and what I do, and there are maybe two more who suspect - a couple brothers who run a bar down there. And the brothers wouldn't know who you are. The one guy would... he knows your name. He's the guy Rolo called.'

  'My contact in the PD says that another detective, a woman named Sherrill, went down to St. Louis for a couple of days last week, and the word around the department is that she was talking to the St. Louis organized-crime guys,' Carmel said.

  'I don't know why my guy would be dealing me,' Rinker said, thinking about it for a moment. 'He takes a lot of power off me: you know, he's the guy who knows the finger of God, as you put it. The guy who can hook you up. And if I go down, he goes down.'

  Carmel took a short turn around the hotel room, checked herself in a bureau mirror, turned back and said, 'Let me tell you something I learned as a lawyer: everybody will deal. Everybody. Have you ever heard of this new federal lockup in the Rockies?'

  'No...'

  'You gotta cement cell about half the size of this hotel room. It has a concrete bed platform and stainless steel sink and toilet fixtures in concrete stands. No bars, just a steel door and an unbreakable window that shows nothing but a rectangle of sky -you can't even see the sun. There's a black-and-white TV bolted in a corner. That's it.You're in there twenty-two to twenty-three hours a day, and you're monitored every minute. I've had a couple of clients try to commit suicide in there, and neither one made it -although one made it when they put him in a hospital after his second try. He tried to kill himself by standing against one wall and running full speed into the wall across the room, with his head down. He cracked his

  skull. He finally managed to kill himself in the hospital - this was his third try - rather than go back. You hear what I'm saying?'

  'I'm not sure,' Rinker said.

  'What I'm saying is, torture is alive and well in the Uni
ted States of America,' Carmel said. 'It just doesn't involve physical pain. It involves isolation, year after year of solitary... They could take your Mafia friend out there, show him through the place, let him talk to a couple of inmates, and he'd give you up.'

  'But he hasn't,' Rinker said. 'Because if he had, they'd be on me like a hot sweat. But they're not. I swear to God, Davenport didn't have any idea who I was, and neither did the other cops. We danced, for God's sake.'

  'That wasn't too great a move,' Carmel said.

  'I had to find out if they were there for me - I couldn't stand it,' Rinker said. 'To tell you the truth...'