jail, which was the time it took for Carmel to organize the one-point-three-million dollars in bail money.
And later, when they walked away from the courthouse after the acquittal, Rolo told her that if she ever needed a really serious favor – really serious – to come see him. Because of previous conversations, they both knew what he was talking about. 'I owe you,' he said. She didn't say no, because she never said no.
She said, 'See ya.'
On a warm, rainy day in late May, Carmel drove her second car – an anonymous blue-black Volvo station wagon registered in her mother's second-marriage name – to a ramshackle house in St. Paul's Frogtown, eased to the curb, and looked out the passenger-side window.
The wooden-frame house was slowly settling into its overgrown lawn. Rain water seeped over the edges of its leaf-clogged gutters, and peeling green paint showed patches of the previous color, a chalky blue. None of the windows or doors were quite level with the world, square with the house, or aligned with each other. Most of the windows showed glass; a few had black screens.
Carmel got a small travel umbrella from the back seat, pushed the car door open with her feet, popped the umbrella and hurried up the sidewalk to the house. The inner door was open: she knocked twice on the screen door, which rattled in its frame, and she heard Rolo from the back: 'Come on in, Carmel. I'm in the kitchen.'
The interior of the house was a match for the exterior. The carpets were twenty years old, with paths worn through the thin pile. The walls were a dingy yellow, the furniture a crappy collection of plastic-veneered plywood, chipped along the edges of the tabletops and down the legs. There were no pictures on the walls, no decoration of any kind. Nailheads poked from picture-hanging spots, where previous tenants had tried a little harder. Everything smelled like nicotine and tar.
The kitchen was improbably bright. There were no shades or curtains on the two windows that flanked the kitchen table, and only two chairs, one tucked tight to the table, another pulled out. Rolo, looking smaller than he had five years ago, was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that said, enigmatically, Jesus. He had both hands in the kitchen sink.
'Just cleaning up for the occasion,' he said. He wasn't embarrassed at being caught at house-cleaning, and a thought flicked through Carmel's lawyer-head: he should be embarrassed.
'Sit down,' he said, nodding at the pulled-out chair. 'I got some coffee going.'
'I'm sort of in a rush,' she started. 'You don't have time for coffee with
Rolando?' He was flicking water off his hands, and he ripped a paper towel off a roll that sat on the kitchen counter, wiped his hands dry, and tossed the balled-up towel toward a waste basket in the corner. It hit the wall and ricocheted into the basket. 'Two,' he said.
She glanced at her watch, and reversed herself on the coffee. 'Sure, I've got a few minutes.' 'I've come a long way down, huh?' She glanced once around the kitchen, shrugged and said, 'You'll be back.'
'I don't know,' he said. 'I got my nose pretty deep in the shit.'
'So take a program.'
'Yeah, a program,' he said, and laughed. 'Twelve steps to Jesus.' Then, apologetically, 'I only got caffeinated.'
'Only kind I drink,' she said. And then, 'So you made the call.' Not a question.
Rolo was pouring coffee into two yellow ceramic mugs, the kind Carmel associated with lake resorts in the north woods. 'Yes. And she's still working, and she'll take the job.'
'She? It's a woman?'
'Yeah. I was surprised myself. I never asked, you know, I only knew who to call.
But when I asked, my friend said, 'She.' '
'She's gotta be good,' Carmel said.
'She's good. She has a reputation. Never misses. Very efficient, very fast.
Always from very close range, so there's no mistake.' Rolo put a mug of coffee in front of her, and she turned it with her fingertips, and picked it up.
'That's what I need,' she said, and took a sip. Good coffee, very hot.
'You're sure about this?' Rolo said. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, and gestured with his coffee mug. 'Once I tell them 'Yes,' it'll be hard to stop. This woman, the way she moves, nobody knows where she is, or what name she's using. If you say, 'Yes,' she kills Barbara Allen.'
Carmel frowned at the sound of Barbara Allen's name. She hadn't really thought of the process as murder. She had considered it more abstractly, as the solution to an otherwise intractable problem. Of course, she had known it would be murder, she just hadn't contemplated the fact. 'I'm sure,' she said.
'You've got the money?'
'At the house. I brought your ten.'
She put the mug down, dug in her purse, pulled out a thin deck of currency and laid it on the table. Rolo picked it up, riffled it expertly with a thumb. 'I'll tell you this,' he said. 'When they come and ask for it, pay every penny. Every penny. Don't argue, just pay. If you don't, they won't try to collect. They'll make an example out of you.'
'I know how it works,' Carmel said, with an edge of impatience. 'They'll get it.
And nobody'll be able to trace it, because I've had it stashed. It's absolutely clean.'
Rolo shrugged: 'Then if you say 'Yes,' I'll call them tonight. And they'll kill
Barbara Allen.'
This time, she didn't flinch when Rolo spoke the name. Carmel stood up: 'Yes,' she said. 'Do it.'
Rinker came to town three weeks later. She had driven her own car from Wichita, then rented two different- colored, different-make cars from Hertz and Avis, under two different names, using authentic Missouri driver's licenses and perfectly good, paid-up credit cards.
She stalked Barbara Allen for a week, and finally decided to kill her on the interior steps of a downtown parking garage. In the week that Rinker trailed her, Allen had used the garage four times, and all four times had used the stairs to get to the skyway level. Once in the skyway, she'd gone straight to an office with the name 'Star of the North Charities' on the door. When Rinker knew that Allen was not at Star of the North, she'd called and asked for her.
'I'm sorry, she's not here…'
'Do you expect her?'
'She's usually here for an hour or two in the morning, just before lunch…'
'Thanks, I'll try again tomorrow.'
Barbara Allen.
On the last of the three unluckiest days of her life, she got out of bed, showered, and ate a light breakfast of Raisin Bran and strawberries – with Hale for a husband, it paid to watch her figure. As the housekeeper cleared away the breakfast dishes, Allen turned on the television to check the Dow Jones opening numbers, sat at her desk and reviewed proposed charitable allocations from the
Star of the North Charities trust, then, at nine-thirty, gathered her papers, pushed them into a tan Coach briefcase, and headed downtown.
Rinker, in a red Jeep Cherokee, followed her until she was sure that Allen was heading downtown, then passed her and hurried ahead. Allen was a slow, careful driver, but traffic and traffic lights were unpredictable, and Rinker wanted to be at least five minutes ahead of her by the time they got downtown.
Rinker had picked out another parking garage, also on the skyway system, a little less than a two-minute fast walk from the killing ground. She wheeled into the garage, parked, walked to her own car, which she'd parked in the garage earlier that morning, and climbed into the back seat. She glanced up and down the ramp, saw one man leaving, heading toward the doors. She reached down, grabbed the carpeting behind the passenger seat, and popped open a shallow steel box, which held two Remington. 22 semiautomatic pistols, silencers already attached, on a bed of Styrofoam peanuts.
Rinker was wearing a loose shift, with a homemade elastic girdle beneath it. She pushed the. 22s into the wide pockets of the shift, through another slit cut through the insides of the pockets, and into the girdle. The. 22s were held tight against her body, but she could get them out in a half-second. With the guns tucked away, Rinker hopped out of the car and headed for the skyway.
Barbara Allen, a sturdy, German blonde with short, expensively cut hair, a dab of lipstick, a crisp white cotton blouse, a navy skirt and matching navy low heels, went into the stairwell of the Sixth Street Parking Garage at 9:58
