“Excellent,” Rinker said. She cocked her head. “Listen, if we go to Cancún, what about my hair? I’ve always had the feeling that it’s a pretty small-town cut, you know, like I’m already middle-aged or something. I thought . . .”
Carmel did a cartoon breath-intake, and held her fingers to her breast: “There’s this woman down there. I’ve had my hair done every time I’ve gone down, she’s a genius . . .”
TALKING ABOUT MEXICO, they almost forgot the guns. With the door open and Rinker’s suitcase in the hall, Carmel snapped her finger and whispered, “The guns.”
She went back to get them, and fumbled the box of shells. There were still thirty-odd shells in the box, and they flew everywhere. Carmel hastily scooped them up, pushed them back in the box and hurried to the door.
Before going to the airport, Carmel took Rinker to the flats below Fort Snelling on the Minnesota River. “The fort’s just a relic,” Carmel said as they looked up the bluff at the revetments. “The first thing ever built here, that’s still around, anyway. The Army had a death camp for Indians right where we’re standing. This was after the big revolt . . . they hanged thirty-eight Indians in a single drop, down in Mankato. This area, this is where they kept the survivors, especially the women. Half of them died during the winter; most of the women were raped by soldiers.”
“Happy story,” Rinker said.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I got raped, but it’d be something unpleasant if I got my hands on the guy,” Carmel said.
“I bet,” Rinker said. She didn’t mention the guy named Dale-Something. They found a quiet path along the river, checked to make sure there was nobody watching and pitched the guns into a deep spot.
“That’s it,” Rinker said. “We’re all done.”
ON THE WAY BACK from the airport, Carmel called Hale Allen.
Allen said, “God, I was trying to get you earlier in the afternoon. Are you coming to the funeral tomorrow?”
“I was trying to get you, but all I got was your machine,” Carmel said. “We’ve got some things to talk about. I spoke to Lucas Davenport this afternoon . . .”
“What? What’d he say?” Allen was anxious.
“I’m in my car, and I hate to talk on this cell phone. Why don’t I just stop by? I could be there in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes,” he said, with an uncertain note in his voice. “Okay. See you in twenty.”
Not the most eager lover she’d ever had, Carmel thought as she ended the phone call. On the other hand, he didn’t know they were lovers. Not yet.
In a couple of hours, he would. A certain kind of man, sharks in the water, attorneys more often than not, alone with Carmel, would produce a pass. Sometimes, depending on her mood and the man, Carmel would receive the pass, and things would proceed. Carmel was far from a virgin, but had never had a long-term sexual relationship. One woman, who was almost a friend, had once confided to Carmel that one of her ex-suitors had said, to a number of people at a party, that Carmel frightened him. He felt like the fly, and she was the spider.
Carmel pretended to be puzzled by the comment, but wasn’t entirely displeased: fear wasn’t the worst thing to instill in a man, especially the man who made the comment, who was something of a thug himself. Still, after that, she tried to soften her bedroom image, tried to slow down a little. But she really didn’t much care for the weight of a man pressing her down, the trapped feeling gasping over his shoulder, staring at the ceiling while he flailed around on top. And she was a little picky. She didn’t like hairy shoulders—even less, hairy backs. She didn’t like chest hair that connected with pubic hair. She didn’t care for bald men or the untidiness of uncircumcised men; she didn’t care for men who burped, or whose breath smelled of anything cooked, or who peed with the bathroom door open, or farted.
Orgasms didn’t often happen, not with men; her best orgasms came alone, in the bathtub. Hale would change that, she thought. If not right away, she could train him.
HALE ALLEN LIVED on a quiet, upper-class street off one of the lakes, far enough from the crowds to have a certain peace in the evening, without the constant to-ing and froing of thin young women with headphones and blades; but at the same time, close enough that residents could walk down and enjoy the mix when they wished to. The house was long and white, with lake-green shutters and a yellow bug light over the central door, and a long driveway that curved up a slope past fifty-year-old burr oaks. A small white sign at the edge of the driveway warned burglars that the house was protected by Insula Armed Response.
Carmel left the Jag under the spreading arms of an oak and rang the doorbell. A moment later, she heard the muffled pounding of stockinged feet on a stairs, and then Hale opened the door, a white terry-cloth towel in his hand. He smiled and backed up and said, “Come on in,” and rubbed his damp hair with the towel. He looked like something off the perfume pages of Esquire.
She had never been inside his house—Barbara Allen’s house, it turned out, decorated with a cool and discerning eye, a mix of pieces new and old. But nothing fabulous: Carmel felt the instant chill of class inferiority. She moved into the living room, turned and said, “I talked to Davenport.”
“Yeah?” He was eager.
“It’s pretty much over with. They’ve got three more shootings by the same person—probably the same person—and you’re an obvious noncandidate in all three of them.”
“So they’re gonna do what? Talk to the press, tell them . . .”
“Doesn’t work that way,” Carmel said. She took a slow turn past a small watercolor: no name that she recognized, but she did feel a vibration coming from the work—a simple street scene, probably New York—and understood that it was good. She looked away from the painting: “The way it works is, they don’t say anything to anybody. They just go away. Then, if it turns out that you were involved, they don’t look like dumbshits.”
“That’s not fair,” Allen protested. Once again, she had to strain to think of him as a lawyer.
“Of course it’s not fair. But they have the choice of, one: being fair to Hale Allen, or two: taking the chance that they’re going to look like dumbshits. Which choice do you think a bunch of City Hall bureaucrats is gonna choose?”
“By golly, that really makes me mad.” He hurled the terry-cloth towel at a couch.
“Hey. Unless something new comes up, it’s over,” she said. “About Barbara—the funeral is at two?”
“Yes, at Morganthau’s.”
“I won’t be able to make the service; I’ll be at the cemetery, though.”
“Thanks. I . . .” He plopped on the couch, picked up the damp towel, turned it in his large hands. “I have some questions that I want to ask Barbara, and I’ve got some things I want to talk over, but I can’t, ’cause she’s dead. I can’t get around that.”
“Like what do you want to tell her?” Real curiosity.
“Like, I want to tell her about Louise.”
Now Carmel was puzzled: “Why? You’d only hurt her.” “I wouldn’t only hurt her; I think it’s more complicated than that, don’t you?”
“All right,” Carmel said. She sat on the couch next to him. “Tell me about it. Tell me about Louise.”
Louise liked sex, and so did Hale. Barbara liked it better than, say, a fried egg sandwich, but not as much as a good soft back rub. “When we were having sex, I always had the feeling that she was taking care of me, not making love with me. She was always waiting for me to finish. She always wanted it to be good for me, but then she always wanted to round out the night with a book . . .”
“Uh-huh, I know the feeling,” Carmel said.
The room was closing around them, getting tighter, the walls moving in, until there was nothing in the house but the two of them. He talked about Barbara, about Louise; laughed a little about some of Louise’s excesses; cried a little about Barbara’s idiosyncrasies. Carmel patted him on the shoulder blades, then rubbed his back a little. He held one of her hands, tur
ned it over, fondled it.
The room closed in and Carmel tipped back and there he was: a perfect little spread of hair on his chest; a tidy circumcision.
Unfortunately, she thought afterward, he didn’t have the best of bathroom habits.
She sighed. So much to do.
TEN
Sloan was wearing khaki shorts, a black faux-leather fanny pack pulled around to his stomach and a pink golf shirt. His legs were the color of skim milk, and so bony they might have been attached to a short ostrich. “My wife made me wear them,” he said, looking down at the shorts. “She said I was gonna get heatstroke, and there’s no point in getting heatstroke on a vacation day.”
Lucas was peering over the top of his desk. “You got your gun in the fanny pack?”
“Yeah. I got the pack from Brinkhoff. It’s all Velcro, it’s not really zipped up. See?” He stood up, pulled on the front of the fanny pack, and the entire cover came away. The revolver inside was attached by a single tab over the barrel, which tore away when Sloan pulled the gun out.
“Pretty slick,” Lucas said. He settled back. “But it looks stupid.”
“My wife says . . .”
“Your wife has the fashion sense of a cockroach.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
“If you do, I’ll have to kill you.”
There was a tentative knock at the door. Lucas called, “Come in.”
The door opened and Hale Allen stepped halfway inside, stopping when he saw Sloan with his khaki shorts, pink shirt and the pistol in his hand. “You need to talk to Lucas?” Sloan asked.
“If he’s not busy,” Allen said.
“I was just about to shoot him,” Sloan said. “Could it wait until after that?”
“Well . . . Do you think he’d be better by lunchtime?”
“Go away,” Lucas told Sloan. To Allen, politely, with curiosity, “Come in, sit down.”
“IS THERE ANYTHING new with the case?” Allen asked. He looked uneasily around the office as he asked the question; crossed and recrossed his legs.
“We’re still working on it, but we’re kind of stuck,” Lucas said.
A week had gone by since Lucas had spoken to Carmel Loan. All the crime-scene evidence had been exhaustively reviewed, but nothing was coming out. In the meantime, a Ferris wheel at a neighborhood carnival had collapsed, two children had been killed and seven more badly hurt. The execution killings had disappeared from the media, as reporters and state safety inspectors chased down every carnival in the state. The lack of both progress and outside attention had taken pressure off the investigation. Lucas had the feeling that the whole thing was headed for the dead-letter file.
“You heard about Barbara’s parents?” Allen asked.
“Just rumors.”
“They were going to sue me—for wrongful death, claiming I was involved in killing Barbara, like that O.J. lawsuit,” Allen said indignantly. “They were gonna try to keep me from inheriting, so they’d get her money. Then it turned out that ninety percent of the money goes to the foundation, not to me. If they sued me, and won, a hundred percent would go to the foundation. They wouldn’t get a dime.”
“Ho,” Lucas said.
“Yeah. They said screw that, we aren’t suing if there isn’t any payoff. They dropped the whole thing.”
“Hum,” said Lucas.
“Exactly.”
Allen was indignant, but his eyes kept wandering away from Lucas. Lucas had seen it before in somebody who felt guilty about something and was about to confess. Allen, Lucas thought, wasn’t here to talk about his in-laws.
“So what else is going on?” Lucas asked, leaning back, trying to sound kindly. He wished Sloan were back. Sloan was a master at this. “How are you doing? Are you okay? We were pretty rough on you for a while.”
“Well . . .” Allen smiled, and Lucas thought, Here it comes. “I came to see you because you know about the case, and you seemed like a pretty good guy, and everybody says you’re pretty smart and you’ve been around . . .”
“Okay . . .” Keep him rolling.
“I’ve been feeling kind of weird about something. About the case.”
“You mean, psychologically troubled? I . . .”
“Not exactly,” Allen said. He leaned forward, intent now. “You know, I really did love Barbara. She was fun, in a quiet way. But we were different, and this affair—you know that I had an affair?”
“Yes,” Lucas said. He gestured with one hand, as if to say, So what? Haven’t we all?
The tentative smile flickered over Allen’s face again. “When Barbara got killed, I felt terrible about it. Your guys found out about the affair, and I hadn’t told Carmel. When she found out, she hit the roof. She went and talked to Louise, and now everybody’s in an uproar . . .”
Lucas nodded: “I can see why Carmel would be unhappy. Facing the possibility of defending you in court.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Allen said, brushing the comment away. So that wasn’t where he was going, Lucas thought. “The day you told her that you weren’t so interested in me anymore . . .”
Lucas glanced at a wall calendar. “A week ago today . . .”
“Exactly a week ago,” Allen said, “Carmel came over to my house to give me the news. And we had a drink, yadaya-dayada, and then she comes on to me.”
“Yeah?” Lucas’s eyebrows went up.
“Yeah. Really hard. Really hard. And you know Carmel. She gets what she wants.”
Lucas allowed a faint man-to-man smile to slip onto his face: “The next thing you knew, you were working closely with your attorney.”
“What she did was fuck my brains loose. And she’s been back three more times since then. Does that sound bad? Does that sound crazy? I can’t sleep thinking about it, but I really can’t talk to any of my friends, either. They’d go bat-shit if I told them. Most of them are Barbara’s friends, too, out at the club.”
Lucas shook his head: “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I’ve seen all kinds of reactions to spousal deaths, and believe me, you’re not the first guy to fall in bed with another woman after his wife’s been killed. Maybe there’s a drive for intimacy.”
“You think so?” Allen said. He seemed to brighten momentarily. Relief? Lucas wasn’t sure.
“It’s something like that,” Lucas said. “Listen, as long as you’ve told me all this . . . why Carmel? She doesn’t seem like your type. Detective Sherrill told me that you were a pretty relaxed guy. Carmel, on the other hand . . .”
“Detective Sherrill, she’s the one . . .” He made a figure with his hands.
“Yeah.”
“She seemed nice.” His eyes wandered away again, and he hunched forward in his chair: “Carmel . . . pillow talks. She told me that she’s been in love with me for two years, and hid it, because she thought it was hopeless, because I was married to a rich woman. She told me that Louise— that’s the woman I was having an affair with—was a miserable gold-digger and a loser. She gets really violent about it.”
“Really?” Keep him rolling. “I’m serious. Once she grabbed me by the dick and said she’d cut it off if I ever put it back in Louise.”
“Whoa . . . And she said she was in love with you for two years?”
“Yeah, ever since a little thing in a restaurant. I couldn’t even remember it.”
“Do you believe her? That she’s been in love?”
“I know it sounds vain, but I do. You’d have to hear her talk. She remembered me saying things, doing things, places she’d bumped into me, times we’d just had a word or two.”
Lucas thought for a moment, and then said, “Are you seeing her tonight?”
“Of course. Every night now. She says we’re gonna get married in a couple of years.”
“Huh.” Lucas turned in his chair to face his window, his fingers steepled at his mouth, and looked out at the street. He hoped he looked like Sherlock Holmes. Then he swiveled back to face Allen. “Do you think if you suggested that
you go out to Penelope’s, that she’d go?”
“Penelope’s? Oh, heck yes, she loves that kind of scene, Minnetonka, the lake, all that. Trendy, expensive . . .”
“Call her. She lives downtown, right? She’s got some kind of fabulous apartment that was in the Star-Tribune?” Lucas knew exactly where she lived. He’d joked about it with a banker friend who lived in the same building.
“Right. And it is fabulous,” Allen said.
“Call her, suggest Penelope’s, and when she gets to your place, suggest that she drive. Make up some kind of excuse. Sprained your gas pedal ankle or something. Nothing serious, so you have to limp. Just get her to drive.”
“She drives most of the time anyway,” Allen said. “She doesn’t like my car. I got a brown-and-cream Lexus, she calls it a Jap car. She’s got this red Jag.”
“Good. Don’t tell her any of this, by the way,” Lucas said. “Don’t tell her you talked to me. Just get her out there and have a nice long meal.”
“I will. What are you going to do?”
“Observe,” Lucas said. “Not me, another guy.”
“Observe what?” Allen asked.
“This whole thing sounds a little bit off tome. Remember, whether you think like this or not, you are a rich guy. And you’re good-looking. Women are going to come after you, and it’s hard to tell who’s sincere and who isn’t. So I got a guy on the staff who specializes in . . . mmm. . . what would you call it? Emotional readings, I guess. I’ll have him take a look at the two of you, and tell me what he thinks. He’ll look at her body language, stuff like that. I’ll pass it along to you.”
“He’s gonna eat with us?” Allen asked dimly.
“No, no. He’ll just be there,” Lucas said. “Don’t go looking around for him or anything—just enjoy yourself and make sure that you stay long enough that my guy can get a reading.”
“An emotional reading?”
Lucas spread his hands: “Hey, it’s what I got.”
When Allen had gone, Lucas leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, thinking about Carmel Loan. He ran through everything she’d said to him since the Allen killing, and in running through the various conversations they’d had, he stumbled over one small gemstone.
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