Certain Prey (22 page)

“Not the best career move,” Mallard said. “We were all still wearing white shirts.”

“You got number five figured out yet?” Lucas asked.

“Not yet,” Malone said. “But I’m looking around.”

“This is what it is,” Mallard said, breaking into the dialogue. “We’ve got nine guys here, and we’re watching Lopez twenty-four hours a day. He’s got three phones, we’re listening to all of them, and we’ve already gotten a couple of ambiguous calls. I mean, people talking in circles about something besides flowers. Nothing that would implicate him, but something’s going on.”

“Could I hear them? Your tapes?”

“Sure. I’ve got an edited tape you can listen to tonight. Tomorrow, when he moves, we’ll hook you up with him.”

“Good enough,” Lucas said. “I don’t want him to see me, though, not if he’s been in and out of the Cities. I’ve
been on TV a couple of times with this stuff . . . he might’ve caught it.”

“You must be sort of a celebrity, then,” Malone said. “A local hero.”

“Come on, guys,” Mallard said. “Please? Malone?”
M
ALLARD
SPRAWLED
on the bed in his motel room while Lucas sat in the single easy chair and Malone perched against a credenza. They listened while voices said, “I thought I’d stop by today . . . Not much point . . . Really? Then when do you think would be a good time? . . . Gotta be by tomorrow, unless something happened on the way down. I haven’t heard anything—I could give you a ring if you want . . . That’d be good, I’m getting, you know . . .”

Lucas said, “He’s peddling dope.”

“I already suggested that,” Malone said. “It sorta made people unhappy.”

“Can’t be sure that it’s dope,” Mallard said defensively.

“Sure it is,” Lucas said. “I can even tell you what kind.”

“Heroin?” suggested Malone.

“Yup.” Lucas nodded.

“Maybe that’s the old Chicago system working,” Mallard said.

“I don’t see a murder contractor trusting a junkie to kill people,” Lucas said.

“Maybe
he’s
not a junkie.”

“That was a small retail sale you were listening to,” Lucas said. “If he’s a small retail dealer, chances are he’s a junkie.”

“On the other hand, since he had somebody coming in from a long way off . . . maybe not,” Malone said. “He seems to be buying wholesale.”

Lucas shrugged. “Could be—but it’s strange behavior for a guy who’s supposed to be a paranoid superkiller. I could see a killer buying cocaine or maybe speed from a good, tight retail connection, but I can’t see one actually
selling
the stuff. That means he’s dealing with all kind of craphead junkies who’d sell him out for a dime.”
W
HEN
THEY FINISHED
with the tapes, they all sat around for a few minutes and then Mallard said, “The Yankees are on cable.”

“I gotta get outside,” Lucas said. “I’ve been sitting in a car all day.”

“Where’re you going?” asked Malone.

“Maybe find a bar,” Lucas said. “Have a couple beers.”

“I could do that,” Malone said. “I’d like to change into something a little more relaxed.”

Mallard sighed and said, “All right. I guess it’s better than staring at a TV.”

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?”
L
UCAS
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’s 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.
R
INKER
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’.”
S
HE
WATCHED
L
UCAS
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 shoot-out 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 find only 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.

R
INKER’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-forties white-collar; the band played soft rock and crossover 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 gray around the temples. She drifted toward him.

L
UCAS
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 fox-trot; 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 longneck. “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?”
T
HEY
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.

• • •

B
UT
L
ATE THAT NIGHT,
an hour after the bar closed, Rinker climbed into 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 bedstand.