"How old are you?" he asked.
"Thirty-six."
"Any fatherhood prospects on the horizon?"
"Not at the moment," she said. "All I meet are cops and crooks, and I don't want a cop or a crook."
"Hard to meet people?"
"Meeting them isn't the problem. The problem is, the guys I like, don't like me. Eventually. Like five years ago, I was going out with this lawyer dude. Not a big-time lawyer, just a guy. Divorced. Long hair, did a lot of pro bono. And pretty hip. You know."
"Yeah. Exactly. Nice neckties."
"Yeah. He was looking around to get remarried. I mighta. But then one day I was out decoying and this big asshole comes onto me really hard, gets me on a wall, whacks me-he's getting off on whacking me. And I go down and I've got this little hideout piece on my leg, this.25 auto, and he's just bending over to pick me up and I stick the piece in his teeth and his eyes get about the size of dishpans and I back him off, he's saying, 'Hold it, hold it…' "
"Where's your backup?"
"They're just running up. They put the guy on the wall and one of them says, 'Jesus, Fell, you're gonna have a mouse bigger'n Mickey'-the asshole'd whacked me right under the eye, right on the eye-socket bone, you know?" She rubbed her eye socket, and Lucas nodded. "Hurt like hell. And I say, 'Yeah?' And they got the guy leaning on the wall with his legs apart, and I say, 'Say good-bye to your nuts, shitbag,' and I punted the sonofabitch so hard his balls had to take a train back from Ohio."
"Yeah?" Lucas laughed. Cop stories were the best stories, and Fell looked positively merry.
"So I tell this story to my lawyer friend and he freaks out. And he's not worried about my eye," she said wryly.
"He's worried about the guy on the wall?"
"No, no. He knew that happened. He didn't mind if somebody did it, he just didn't want me to do it. And I think what really bothered him was my quote: 'Say good-bye to your nuts, shitbag.' I shouldn't have told him that. It really bothered him. I think he wanted to join a country club somewhere, and he could see me sitting out on the flagstone terrace with a mint julep or some fuckin' thing, telling the other country club ladies this, 'Say good-bye to your nuts, shitbag.' "
Lucas shrugged. "You ever tried a cop?"
"Yeah, yeah." She nodded, with a small smile, eyes unfocusing. "A trouser snake. We were hot for a while, but… You want a little peace and quiet when you're home. He wanted to go out cruising for dopers."
Lucas took a bite out of a slice of pepperoni, chewed a minute and then said, "A couple of years ago, Lily and I were involved. This is between you and me?"
"Sure." The curiosity was wide on her face, unhidden.
"We were getting intense, this was back in Minneapolis, her marriage was falling apart," Lucas said. "Then this Indian dude shot her right in the chest. Goddamn near killed her."
"I know about that."
"I freaked out. Man. So then we saw each other a few times, but I'm afraid to fly, and she was busy…"
"Yeah, yeah…"
"Then last year…"
"The actress," Fell said. "The one that Bekker killed."
"I'm like a curse," Lucas said, staring past Fell's head, eyes and voice gone dark. "If I'd been a little smarter, a little quicker… Shit."
After lunch, they went back to the paper, working through it, finding nothing. Fell, restless, wandered down to the team room as Lucas continued to read. Kennett brought her back a half-hour later.
"Bellevue," she said, plopping down in the chair across from Lucas.
"What?" Lucas looked at Kennett, leaning in the door.
"Bellevue lost some monitoring equipment from one of its repair shops. We never found out because it wasn't too obvious-everything was accounted for, on paper. But when the stuff didn't come back from repair, somebody checked, and it was gone. The repair people have receipts, they thought it was back on the floor. Anyway, it's been gone for more than a month, and probably more like six or seven weeks. From before the time Bekker killed the first one," Kennett said.
"They lost exactly what Bekker's been using in his papers," Fell said.
"He could've gotten the halothane there, too, and probably any amount of drugs," Lucas said. "All from one source, if it's a staffer."
"Sounds like him," Fell said.
"I'd bet on it," Kennett said. He ran a hand through his hair, straightened his tie. Pissed. "God damn it, we were slow pulling this in."
"What're you going to do?"
"Move very quietly: we don't want to scare anybody off," Kennett said. "We'll start processing Bellevue staffers against criminal records. And we'll touch all the dopers we know, see who knows who on the inside. Then we do interviews. It'll take a few days. Maybe you guys could get back to your fences? See if you could find somebody who handles Bellevue."
"Yeah." Lucas looked at his watch. Almost three. "Let's get back to Jackie Smith," he said to Fell.
Smith met them in Washington Square. The afternoon was oppressively hot, but Smith was cool: he arrived in a gray Mercedes, which he parked by a hydrant.
"I don't want to talk to you. You want to talk to somebody, talk to my lawyer," Smith said as Lucas and Fell walked up. They stood just off the boccie ball courts, under a gingko tree, hiding from the sun.
"Come on, Jackie," Lucas said. "I'm sorry about the goddamn putting green. I got a little overheated."
"Overheated, my ass," Smith snarled. "You know how long it'll take to fix it?"
"Jackie, we really need to make an arrangement, okay?" Lucas said. "Something new came up on this Bekker guy, and you're in a position to help. Like I said last night, it's personal with me. No bullshit. I just need a little information."
"I don't know fuckin' Bekker from any other asshole," Smith said impatiently.
"Hey, we believe you," Lucas said. "And I had to do the green. I had to get your attention-you were blowing us off. Isn't that right?"
Smith stared at him for a long beat, then said, "So what do you want? Exactly?"
"We need the names of guys who can get stuff out of Bellevue."
"That's all you want? Then you'll get off my back?"
"We can't promise," Lucas said. "I can't talk for Barbara-but I'd be a hell of a lot friendlier."
"Jesus Christ, I'm dealing with a fuckin' fruitcake," Smith said. Then: "I don't handle deals at that level. That's small-time."
"I know, I know, but we need a guy who does handle that kind of action. A couple of names, that's all."
"You gonna fuck them over?"
"Not if they talk to me. But if they fuck me over, I'll be back to you."
Fell jumped in with a sales pitch: "Jesus, Jackie, this'd be so easy if you just ride along. It's no skin off your ass. You're actually not helping the cops. You're helping some poor woman who's gonna get her heart cut out, or something."
"Yeah, you're the one who poured my coffee on the street," Smith said, apropos of nothing at all. He looked across the plaza, where a group of black kids were working through a dance routine to rap music from a boombox. "All right," he said. "Two guys. Well: a guy and a woman. They're not actually inside the hospital, but they can put you onto guys who are inside."
"That's all we were asking for…"
"Yeah, yeah. Jesus, you're both full of shit…" Then he started toward his car and said, "I'll be a minute."
"Making a call," Fell said as Smith disappeared into the Mercedes.
He was back in two minutes, with two names and addresses. Lucas wrote the names in his notebook. Smith, with a snort of disgust, turned back to his car, shaking his head.
"Angela Arnold and Thomas Leese," Lucas said to Fell. "Where're these addresses?"
Fell looked and said, "Lower East Side. Never heard of them, though. Want me to run them?"
"Yes. Or just drop them off, get them run overnight," Lucas said, looking at his watch. "Kennett wants to be careful, and I don't want to step on him. Let's not worry about talking to them until tomorrow."
F
ell dropped him at the hotel, then went on to Midtown South. Lucas cleaned up, ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, went back to his room and watched the Twins and Yankees through the seventh inning, then caught a cab for Lily's apartment. She buzzed him up and came to the door in her bare feet.
"You're late," she said.
"Got hung up," Lucas said, stepping inside. He'd stayed in her apartment almost two years earlier, when she'd just moved in: the furniture then had a temporary, scrounged look. Boxes had been stacked in the living room, a television had sat on two short metal file cabinets. The kitchen wallpaper had been a bizarre bamboo design, with monkeys; the countertops a well-chipped plastic. Now the place had a careful, colored look: warm rugs over a beige carpet; bright hand-printed graphics on the walls; sparse, but carefully chosen chairs and a broad leather couch. The kitchen was a subtle gold with hardwood counters. He'd stopped by the night before to drop off the key impressions, but hadn't stayed long enough to look around. Now he took a few minutes. "The place looks good," he said finally. He felt a pressure: when he'd been there two years before, they'd spent a lot of time in bed, Lily intent on exploring, feeling, desperate for the intensity of the sex. Now they were polite.
"That's what happens when your marriage splits up. You work on the apartment," she said. She stood close to him, but not too close, one hand just touching the other at her waist, like a hostess. Polite and something else. Wary?
"Yeah, I know."
"I made the back bedroom into an office, everything's stacked up in there. Go on back. Want a beer?"
"Sure." He wandered back to the office, yawned, sat down at the desk, pushed the chair back far enough that he could get his heels on a half-open drawer, picked up the first file. He'd been reading files all day; a million facts floating around free-form.
"Kays, Martin." He flipped the file open. Kays had been arrested twice for rape. Served two years the first time, acquitted the second time. He was suspected in as many as thirty attacks on the Upper West Side. He had had it down to a science, attacking women at night in locked parking garages. He apparently entered when a car exited, ducking under the descending door, then waited until he caught a woman alone in the dark. Half-dozen busts on drug-possession charges, assault, theft, drunkenness.
"Kays," Lily said, looking over his shoulder. "He should've gotten it five years earlier."
"Wrong thinking, mon capitaine, " Lucas said, looking up at her. She handed him a Special Export.
"Yeah, but it's part of the problem: with the exception of the three killings I told you about, including Walt, which they can deny, most people in town would be rootin' for these guys if they knew about them. Especially when they're doing guys like Kays. I doubt we could find a jury that'd convict them."
"You mean it was all right, as long as they were hitting dirtbags?"
"No. Just that if you kill somebody who deserves to die, and will anyway, someday, but maybe fuck up a hundred people's lives before then… hurrying the due date along doesn't seem that terrible. Compared to killing innocent people. But these guys aren't hitting criminals anymore, they're attacking… freedom."
"I can't operate at that kind of rarefied theoretical level," Lucas said, grinning at her.
"It does sound like wimpy-ass bullshit, doesn't it?" she said.
"It does."
"But it isn't," she said.
"All right."
"If you don't feel it… why'd you sign on?" she asked.
He shrugged. " 'Cause you're a good friend of mine."
"Is that enough?"
"Sure. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the few good reasons for doing anything. I'd hate to kill somebody out of patriotism or duty; I could never be a warden and throw the switch on somebody. But in hot blood, to protect family or friends… that's all right."
"Revenge?"
He thought for a minute, then nodded. "Yeah, revenge is in there. I like hunting Bekker. I'm gonna get him."
"You and Barb Fell."
"Yup. Speaking of whom…" He dug in his jacket shirt pocket. "Look at these. The guy looks like a cop and she's tight with him, or was." He handed her two of the Polaroids he'd taken at Fell's.
"Oh, Barbara," Lily muttered, looking at them, shaking her head. "I know this guy. Vaguely. He's a lieutenant in Traffic. We'll run him against the killings and see what we get."
"And I've got some names for you. Friends of hers. I don't know how many are cops, but if you could run them…"
"Sure."
Lucas stayed until two o'clock, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, when Lily came in and asked, "Find anything?"
"No. And you were right. These guys were the scum of the scum. How many people could put together a list like this?"
"Hundreds," she said. "But Barb Fell was at the intersection of a lot of possibilities."
Lucas nodded, ripped the sheets off the legal pad, folded them and stuck them in his jacket pocket. "I'll keep working her."
Lily's apartment was on the second floor of a converted townhouse. Lucas left at ten after two, the night just beginning to find the soft coolness that lay between the tropical days. He was a little tired, but still awake; at home he might have gone for a walk along the river, smoothing down for bedtime. In New York…
The street was reasonably well lit; a taxi loitered in the next block. He turned that way and started walking, hands in his pockets.
There were two of them.
They were big, quick, like professional linebackers.
The cars along the street were parked bumper-to-bumper. The guy behind the Citation got Lucas to turn toward him by dragging something metallic across the bumper, a chilling, ripping sound, like a knife dragged down a washboard.
Lucas instinctively stepped away and half-turned, pivoting toward the sound. Something was happening: a sound like that had to be intentional. His hand dropped to the small of his back, toward the weight of his.45.
And as he turned, the second guy, the guy who'd hidden behind the stoop, charged onto the walk, slashed at Lucas' elbow with a sap, hit him in the spine with a shoulder, and drove him into the Citation.
The pain from the sap was like an explosion, as clear as a star on a cold night, separate from the impact, standing by itself: a skillful, debilitating cop-pain. It began at his elbow and exploded up his arm to his shoulder, and Lucas screamed, thinking he might have been shot, his arm flopping uselessly as he was smashed into the car. He tried to swing the arm back, to clear out to the right, but it wouldn't move.
He saw the other man's hand coming down, and partially blocked it with his left, then was hit in the cheekbone with a fist and rocked back against the car.
The second man, coming over the car's fender, hit him, leather gloves, the second punch in a quick one-two-three combo, and Lucas, back hunched, tried to cover.
Thought: Clear out, clear out…
He was hit again, across the ear, but this time it didn't hurt: it was stunning and he started down, rolling. A gloved hand struck at him and he grabbed it with his good left hand, pulled it under him, pinned it against his chest, let his weight fall on it. He heard what seemed to be a faraway screaming as they hit the concrete walk, felt a snap; he'd broken something. He felt a dim, distant satisfaction, because he was losing this, they were killing him…
Heard glass breaking, registered it, didn't know what it was, but felt the pressure change.
Thought: Clear out, clear out. Let go of the gloved hand, felt it wrench away, and the other man screaming… Tried to roll under the car, but it was too close to the curb. Tried to cover his head with his good arm…
The.45 was like a thunderbolt.
The muzzle-flash broke over them like lightning, freezing everything in a strobe effect. The attackers wore nylon ski masks and gloves, long-sleeved shirts. The one who'd hit him from behind was pivoting, already running. A sap dangled from his hand, long, leather-bound, with a rounded bulge at the business end. The one whose arm Lucas had broken scrabbled to his fe
et and screamed, "Jesus…" and ran.
The.45 struck down again as Lucas sat down on the curb, his legs gone, trying to roll under the car and away from the lightning, not knowing where it came from, groping in the small of his back with his good arm, but the holster was too far around, trying to free his pistol as the attackers faded like ghosts, without a word, down the sidewalk…
Then silence.
And Lily was there in a cotton nightgown, the.45 in her fist, a ludicrous combination, the soft white human cotton and the dark steel killer Colt.
"Lucas…" She maneuvered toward him, controlling the.45, not really looking at him, her eyes searching for targets. "Are you okay?"
"Fuck no," he said.
CHAPTER
8
Bekker was first astonished, then swept away. When he returned to the bookstore, he glanced at the counterman with a sigh.
"Are you okay?" The counterman was concerned. He had a long neck and a narrow head with small features, like an oversized thumb sticking out of his shoulders. His face was cocked to one side and the store lights glittered off the right lense of his spectacles, lending him a Strangelovian menace.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Bekker squeaked. He shuffled his feet and looked away, down the store.
The store was fifteen feet wide and forty deep. Vinyl paneling sagged away from the walls behind rough shelving; the linoleum floor was cracked and holed. The narrow aisles smelled of moldy paper, disintegrating bookcovers and the traffic of the unwashed. An obese man stood at a sale table halfway back, under a round antishoplifting mirror, a hardcover Spiderman anthology propped on his gut, feeding a nut-covered ice cream bar into his face. Bekker hadn't even seen him come in.
He looked down at the book in his hands, the book that had taken him away. He'd dug it out of a pile of crap in the Medicine/Anthropology section…
"You didn't move for so long, I thought maybe, I don't know…" thumb-face said, his Adam's apple bobbing like a toy boat.
He's trying to pick me up,Bekker thought. The notion was flattering, but unwanted. Nobody was allowed too close. Before the Minneapolis cops had beaten him with their pistols, Bekker had been beautiful, but now Beauty was dead. And though he wore heavy Cover Mark makeup to hide the scars, they were visible in bright light. The Post had carried the pictures, with every cut and scar for the world to see…
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