'You can tell from a picture?'
'Sure. Look at this guy.' She showed him a photo of a slender, shirtless, sweat covered biker with a shock of dark hair falling carefully over his moody black eyes. 'He's either gay, or he wants you to think he is. They're all like that.
Mountain climbers, canoeists… and look at the clothes. You see a guy walking along the street dressed like this and you say…'
'I coulda looked like that when I was a kid,' Lucas said.
She made a face, rolled her eyes up: 'Lucas, believe me, you did not look like this. He looks like he's been hurt by somebody. They all look like they've been hurt by somebody. Look at the bruised lips. You, on the other hand, always look like you just got back from hurting somebody else. Like a woman.'
'Thanks,' he said.
'No charge.'
'I just don't think you can make that judgment based on a picture
…'
She looked at him closely, then smiled and said, 'Ah. I get it. You've been reading the Wholeness Report, or the Wellness Thing, or whatever it is. The
Otherness Report. You gotta stop reading that shit, it's putting holes in your brain.'
'Yeah, it's… I don't know. But listen, what do you think about this?' He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. 'Copycat? Coincidence? I haven't been that much on top of it.'
'Not a copycat, I don't think. We didn't give the details to the papers – we didn't tell them it was a. 22, we didn't tell them that the shots were all grouped like that, we didn't tell them how close it was. You see the same tattooing on the scalp. And it was cold.'
'Nobody colder'n a wholesaler who's trying to make a point,' Lucas said. 'Maybe he held out on somebody, was trying to get back into the big deals.'
'Sure, but it's not just the coldness. It's all the other stuff that goes with it. It just doesn't seem like a copycat.'
'Could be a coincidence,' Lucas said, then admitted, 'But it'd be a pretty amazing coincidence.'
'You know the rule on coincidences.'
'Yeah: It's probably a coincidence unless it can't be.'
'You gonna jump in, now?' She grinned at him. 'Come on. We haven't worked together since old
Audrey McDonald tried to take us off.'
'We have spoken a few times, though.'
'Is that what you call it?' She was teasing him.
'I'm thinking of getting in, if you and Black don't mind,' Lucas said. 'The
Otherness Commission is driving me nuts. This would give me an excuse…'
'Glad to have you,' Sherrill said. 'That's why I invited you over.'
'The first thing we gotta do,' Lucas said, 'Is we gotta get that lawyer in -
Allen – and bust his balls a little. Does he know Rolando whatever-his-name is?
Does he use cocaine? Has he ever?'
'His attorney'll be on us like a chicken on a June bug.'
'Like a what?'
'A chicken on a June bug,' Sherrill said.
'Jesus, I'd almost forgotten about talking to you, 'Lucas said. 'Anyway, don't worry about Carmel. I can handle Carmel.'
'The question,' Carmel said, as Rinker bent over a display case at Neiman
Marcus, and peered at the Hermes scarves, 'Is whether whoever has it will look at it, and if he looks at it, if he'll come to me, or go to the cops.'
A sales clerk was drifting toward them and Rinker said, 'Whoever it is, I'll bet the name is in his address book.'
'Unless he knew him so well that he didn't have to write down a number,' Carmel said.
The clerk asked, 'Can I help you, ladies?' Rinker tapped the case: 'Let me look at the gold-and-black one, please. With the eggs.'
They spent five minutes looking at scarves, and then Rinker took the gold-and black one, and paid with a Neiman credit card. 'You shop at Neiman's often enough to have a credit card?' Carmel asked, while the clerk went to wrap the scarf.
'I hit one of the stores once or twice a year, spend a few hundred,' Rinker said. 'The name on the card's not really mine, but I have all the rest of the ID to back it up, and I keep the card active and always pay it on time. Just in case. I've got a couple of Visas and Mastercards the same way. Just in case.'
'Just in case?'
'In case I ever have to run for it.'
'I never thought of doing that,' Carmel said. 'Running.'
'I'd run before I'd stand and fight. If a cop ever got close enough to look at me, I'd be screwed anyway.'
'Do you think / could run?'
Rinker looked at her carefully, and after a minute, nodded: 'Physically, it wouldn't be a problem. The question is whether you could handle it psychologically.'
The clerk came back with the wrapped scarf and the credit card: 'Thanks very much, Mrs. Blake.'
'Thank you,' Rinker said. She tucked the card away in her purse.
'Physically, I'd be okay? But psychologically…' Carmel was interested.
'Sure. You've got a hot image. Bright clothes, blonde hair, good makeup and perfume, great shoes.' Rinker took a step back and took a long look. 'If you dressed way down – got some stuff from a secondhand shop, you know, stuff that didn't go together that well, some kind of scuzzy dark plaid, drab. And if you grew out your hair, and colored it some middle-brown color, and slumped your shoulders and shuffled, maybe got some breast prosthetics so you'd have big floopy boobs…'
'My God,' Carmel said, starting to laugh. But Rinker was serious. 'If you did that, your best friends wouldn't recognize you from two feet. You could get a cleaning lady job at your law firm, and nobody would know you. But I don't know if you could stand it. I think you like attention; you need it.' 'Maybe,' Carmel said. 'Maybe everybody does.' 'I don't. I don't want people to look at me.
That's one reason why I'm good at what I do.'
'I really don't understand that,' Carmel said. 'I was a nude dancer for three and-a-half years, from the time I was sixteen until I was twenty. You get pretty goddamned tired of people staring at you. You want privacy.'
Carmel was fascinated now. 'You were a…' Her beeper went off, a discreet low
Japanese tone from her purse. 'Uh-oh.'
She glanced at the beeper, dropped it back in her purse, took out a cell phone and dialed. 'Maybe a problem,' she said. 'My secretary only uses the beeper if there's some pressure.' And to the phone:
'Marcia -you beeped me? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Give me the number. Okay.'
She clicked off and said, 'Cop called. He wants to talk to one of my clients.'
'Doesn't it make you nervous, talking to cops all the time?'
'Why should it?' Carmel asked. 'I'm not guilty of anything, I'm just doing my job.'
'We've gotta spend some time looking for the tape, we can't go running around.. .'
'Actually, my client's name is Hale Allen,' Carmel said.
Rinker frowned: 'Any relation to Barbara Allen?'
'Her husband.'
'Jesus.' Rinker was impressed. 'How'd that happen?'
'He's a friend of mine and I'm a good attorney. Actually, I'm one of the best criminal attorneys in the state. The cops think he might've done it.'
'So you're on the inside,' Rinker said.
'Somewhat.' Carmel smiled down at Rinker. 'Makes it kind of interesting.'
'Certainly could be useful,' Rinker said. 'Is that why you took the job?'
'Not exactly,' Carmel said. Then her smile disappeared: 'But this cop who's calling – he wasn't working the
