“How you doing?” he said.

I shrugged, studying him from behind my mask of pallid makeup. His age was hard to judge. Mid-thirties, maybe. I’d read it off his driver’s license when I made the bust.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sarah,” I said.

“Sarah,” he repeated. “My name’s Gareth. You can call me Gary. Most people do.”

The sound of the Ozarks in his voice was disarming, but I went forward with business. “What’s on your mind tonight, Gary?”

He didn’t take the hint. “I’m staying in town tonight, on my way up north, to do some fishing.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw your pole in the back.”

He gave me a small smile. “I designed that pole,” he said. “That’s what I do for a living. Well, I do a couple of things. That’s one of them. You want a smoke?”

“No, thanks,” I told him.

“Well, I’m gonna have one,” he said.

Usually the men are nervous, and in a hurry. This man acted like we’d just sat down together at a lounge for cocktails. He was entirely at ease, rolling down his window to exhale with almost lordly pleasure. “Yeah,” he said reflectively, “I heard you’ve got some of the best fishing in America, up in your lake country. Is that true?”

“I don’t fish,” I said lamely. I’d never had to make small talk with a john before. This really was not going well at all.

“Some friends told me I should come,” he went on. “My wife died a few years ago. I haven’t taken any vacation time since then.”

His eyelashes were black, much darker than the rest of his fair coloring would have indicated, when his gaze flicked downward as if he were shy about saying that last part. I wondered if he’d been with another woman in those years he’d referred to, or if he was trying to work up to making me the first. And I imagined myself standing before a judge someday, not long from now, and explaining that in a world full of men who beat up prostitutes, spent the milk money on sex, and brought diseases home to their wives, I had gone out on the streets on Hennepin County’s behalf and caught a courteous, widowed fishing pole designer.