Silent Prey

by John Sandford

  "Mmmm. A week," Lucas said. "That's a long time, in ward-heeler years."

  "Anxious to get home?" Kennett asked.

  "Nah. I'm enjoying myself. I want to be there for the bust."

  "Or the kill," said Kennett.

  "Whatever..."

  Lily pushed herself out of the chair, stretched, and tousled Kennett's hair. "Let's go look at the river," she said.

  "Jesus Christ, the woman's indefatigable, and me with this heart," Kennett complained.

  Lucas, vaguely embarrassed, stood and drifted toward the door. "See you guys tomorrow...."

  A message from Fell was waiting at the hotel: "Call when you get in, until one o'clock." He held the slip in his hand as he rode the elevator to his floor, dropped it on the bedstand, went into the bathroom, doused his face with hot water, and looked up in the mirror, the water trickling down his face.

  He'd had a long relationship with a woman, the mother of his daughter, that now, when he looked back, seemed to have been based on a shared cynicism. Jennifer was a reporter, with too much time on the street, edging toward burnout. A baby, for her, had been a run at salvation.

  He'd had a shorter, intense relationship with Lily, who had been struggling with the end of her own marriage; that might have been something, if they'd been in the same town, from the same emotional places. But they hadn't been, and some of the guilt of their affair still stuck to their relationship.

  He'd had any number of other relationships, long and short, happy and unhappy. Most of the women he'd gone with still liked him well enough, in a wary, once-burned way; but he tended to think of them as others, not Jennifer, not Lily.

  Fell was one of the others. A wistful, lovely, finally lonely woman. In a permanent relationship, they would drive each other crazy. He wiped his face with one of the rough hotel towels and wandered back to the bed. He sat down, picked up the phone, looked at the receiver for a moment, then smiled. He'd felt for a year as though he were under water: quiet, placid, out of it. The New York cops were bringing him up, and Fell was fixing him in other ways. He tapped out her number. She picked it up on the second ring.

  "This is Lucas," he said.

  "Kennett knew it was you, but I got good mileage out of the cross-dressing thing," Fell said, without preamble. "My name was on the TV news, and it's in the Times and the Post. That never hurts."

  "I saw it...."

  "I'd like to find a way to thank you. Oral sex comes to mind, if I get my share," Fell said.

  "Women are so forward these days," Lucas said. "How quick can you get here?"

  Fell brought a change of clothes with her, and they spent the evening laughing and making love. The next morning, when they were dressed, Lucas asked, "How would we find Jackie Smith?"

  "Call his office," she said.

  "That easy?"

  "He's a hustler," Fell said. "Getting found is part of his business."

  "So call him."

  Smith called back in five minutes. "Aren't you guys ever going away? Can't you find out anything on your own?" he complained. "I've done everything you wanted...."

  "All we want to do is talk," Lucas said.

  "I gave you what you wanted," Smith said again. He was angry.

  "Jackie... ten minutes, please? Have breakfast with us or something. We'll buy."

  Smith would meet them at a caf‚ outside the St. Moritz hotel, he said. They caught a cab, struggling north through the midmorning traffic, the driver with his arm out the window, whistling. The day would be hot again; already the sky was showing a whitish haze, and when they got out of the cab across from Central Park, Lucas could see the leaves on the park trees were curling against the heat.

  Smith was sitting at a metal table, eating a cream cheese croissant and drinking coffee. He didn't get up when they arrived.

  "Now what?" he asked, a sullen look on his face.

  "We wanted to thank you-those names you gave us started a chain reaction. We've maybe got the asshole pinned down."

  "No shit?" Smith looked surprised. "When'll you get him?"

  "Some of the guys are betting a couple-three days. Nobody gives him more than a week," Lucas said. "But we do have something we need from you. All the small-time fences who buy from the junkies-they need to tell the dopers that Bekker'll be out looking for angel dust, ecstasy, speed. Maybe acid. And he'll kill. The guy we got to, with your help, was boosting stuff out of Bellevue, but he was also dealing dope. Bekker killed him. Cold blood. Walked up and bam. Killed him."

  "I saw that on TV. I wondered..."

  "That was him," said Lucas.

  Smith nodded. "Okay. No skin off my butt. I'll tell everybody I know and ask them to pass the word."

  "He's probably around the Village, but could be anywhere between the civic center and Central Park. That's about all we know. That's where the word's got to be," Lucas said.

  "That's my territory," Smith said. "Is that all?"

  Lucas glanced at Fell, then said, "No. I gotta ask you something else. You might not want to talk about it with another witness here." He tipped his head at Fell. "But if you don't mind if she stayed..."

  Fell frowned at him, and Smith said, "What's the deal?"

  "Back when I first got here, I banged up your place. Tried to get your attention..."

  "Well, that worked," Smith said ruefully.

  "Yeah. A couple of days later, I got the snot beat out of me when I was coming out of a friend's place. I need to know if that was you. Off the record. If it was, it's no problem, I swear it."

  Smith dropped his croissant on the plate and laughed. "Jesus Christ, it wasn't me. I read about it, though-but it wasn't me."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. And if you don't mind me saying so, you're the kind of guy that shit happens to, getting beat up," Smith said.

  Lucas looked at Fell. "Could you hike down to the end of the block for a minute?"

  "I don't know," she said, studying him.

  "C'mon," Lucas said.

  "Are you Internal Affairs?"

  "Fuck no, I told you," Lucas said impatiently. "C'mon, take a hike."

  Fell pushed back her chair, picked up her purse and stalked away.

  "She's pissed," Smith said, looking from Fell to Lucas and back to Fell. "Are you screwing her?"

  Lucas ignored the question: "There's a big-dog shoot-out going on. Inside the department. And I'm tangled up in it. Now. The people who jumped me might be one set of those big dogs. That's why I really need to know."

  "Listen..."

  "Just a minute," Lucas said, putting up a hand. "I want to put it to you as simple as I can. If you tell me no, it wasn't you, and I find out that it was, I'll come back and hurt you. All right? I really will, because I've gotta know the truth of this. Not knowing the truth could get me killed. On the other hand, if you say yes, it was you, there's no problem. I'll take the lumps."

  Smith shook his head in disbelief, a half-smile fixed on his face. "The answer is still no. I didn't do it. I wasn't even particularly happy to see the story in the paper, because I thought you might come back on me."

  Lucas nodded, and Smith spread his hands, lifted his shoulders: "I'm a businessman. I don't want any shit. I don't want any muscle around. I hate people with guns. Everybody's got a fuckin' gun." He stared off across Sixth Avenue, the traffic waiting for the light at Central Park South, then looked back at Lucas. "No. Wasn't me."

  "All right," Lucas said. "So get the word out to the junkies on Bekker. You might also point out that there's a twenty-five-thousand-dollar crime-stoppers award for his capture."

  Lucas turned away from Smith and walked down the street to Fell. "I wish I could read lips," she said. "I'd give a lot to know what you just told him."

  "I told him why I wanted to know if those were his guys who came after me," Lucas said.

  "Tell me," she said.

  "No. And I'm not Internal Affairs."

  They spent the day walking through the Village and SoHo, drifting in and out of sh
ops, talking to Fell's contacts on the street, chatting with uniform cops in Washington Square, watching the street action on Broadway. They found the bookstore where Bekker had been spotted, a long, narrow shop with a narrow front window and a weathered, paint-peeled door three steps up. A sign in the door said "Open All Night, 365 Nights a Year."

  The clerk who had talked to Bekker wasn't working, but happened by on his bike a few seconds after they asked for him. A thin man with a goatee and a book of poetry, he looked like a latter-day Beat, his face animated as he told them about the encounter.

  "He's a good-looking woman, I'll tell you that," the clerk said. "But you can look at somebody and know what kind of book they're going to buy, and I never picked her-him-out for the one he found. Torture and shit. I thought maybe he was, like, an NYU professor or something, and that's why he bought it...."

  Down the sidewalk, Fell said, "I think he's real."

  "So do I," said Lucas. "He saw him." He looked up at the red-brick buildings around him, with their iron stoops and window boxes full of petunias. "And he's somewhere close, Bekker is. He didn't drive any distance to get to a small bookstore. I can smell the sonofabitch."

  He took her to the restaurant where Petty had been killed, sat and had Cokes, and almost told her about it.

  "Not too bad a place," he said, looking around.

  "It's all right," she said.

  "You ever been here? Your regular precinct is around here, right?"

  "Ten blocks," Fell said, poking a straw in her Coke. "Too far. Besides, this is sort of a sit-down place, not the kind of place you come to for lunch if you're a cop."

  "Yeah, I know what you mean."

  Late in the afternoon, while Fell browsed a magazine rack, Lucas stopped at a pay phone, dropped a quarter, and got Lily in O'Dell's car.

  "Where are you?"

  "Morningside Heights."

  "Where's that?"

  "Up by Columbia."

  "I need to see you. Tonight. By yourself. Won't take too long."

  "All right. How about nine, at my place?"

  "Good."

  When he hung up, Fell looked up from a copy of Country Home and said, "So. Are you up for dinner?"

  "I'm talking to Lily tonight," he said. "I'd like to come around later, though."

  "I hate to see you hanging around with that woman," Fell said, dropping the magazine back on the rack.

  "This is purely business," Lucas said. "And look, could you stop by Midtown and pick up those file summaries? We've been floating around all day, listening to bullshit... maybe something'll come out of the files."

  "All right. I'll haul them over to my place...."

  Lily was sitting in a living room chair, her high heels in the middle of the carpet, her bare feet up on a hassock. The hassock was covered with a brocaded throw that seemed to Lucas to be vaguely Russian, or Old World. She was sipping a Diet Coke, tired smudges under her eyes.

  "Sit down. You sounded tense," she said. "What happened?" Her head was back, her dark hair a perfect frame around her pale oval face.

  "Nothing happened, not today, anyway. I just need to talk to you," he said. He perched on the edge of her other overstuffed chair. "I need to know about you and Walter Petty-your relationship."

  She leaned farther back in the chair, wiggled once to settle in, laid her head back, and closed her eyes. "Can I ask why you need to know?"

  "Not yet."

  She opened her eyes and looked at him carefully and said, "Robin Hood?"

  "I'm not sure. What about Petty?"

  "Walt and I went back as far as you can go," Lily said, her eyes unfocusing. "We were born on the same block in Brooklyn, sort of middle-class brownstones. I was exactly one month older, to the day. June first and July first. His mother and mine were friends, so I suppose I first laid eyes on him when I was five or six weeks old. We grew up together. Went to kindergarten together. We were both in the smart group. Someplace along the way, sixth or seventh grade, he got interested in math and science and ham radio in that geeky way boys do, and I got interested in social things. After that we didn't talk so much."

  "Still friends, though..."

  She nodded. "Sure. I'd talk to him when I saw him around the block, but not at school. He was in love with me for most of his life. And I guess I loved him, you know, but not sexually. Like a handicapped brother, or something."

  "Handicapped?"

  She carefully set the glass on the table and said, "Yeah, he was socially handicapped. Walked around with a slide rule on his belt, his table manners went from bad to worse, he got weird around girls. You know the type. Sort of ineffectual, nonphysical. Really nice, though. Eager... too eager."

  "Yeah. A dork. A nerd. The kind of kid that gets shredded by girls."

  "Yes. Exactly. The kind that gets shredded," she said. "But we were friends.... And whenever I needed something done-you know, get an apartment painted, or help fixing something-I could call him up and he'd drop everything and be there. I took him for granted. He was always there, and I assumed he always would be."

  "Why'd he become a cop?"

  " 'Cause he could. It was a job you could get with a test and with family connections. He was brilliant on tests and had the connections."

  "Was he a good cop?"

  "He was terrible in uniform," she said. "He didn't have that... that... cold spot. Or hot spot. Or whatever it is. He couldn't get on top of people-you ought to know about that."

  "Yeah." Lucas grinned. "I don't know if it's hot or cold, though. Anyway, Petty..."

  "So he was terrible on the street and they moved him inside. He was working guard details and so on. Then they tried him on dope. And Jesus, he was something else. I mean nobody, nobody would believe he was a cop. He'd make a buy and the backup would drop on the dealer, and they still wouldn't believe it. This dork couldn't be an undercover cop. Sometimes even the judges didn't believe it. Anyway, that's about the first job he ever did really well at; he was a bit of an actor. Then he got interested in investigation, in crime-scene processing. He was good at that, too. The best. He'd go into a crime scene and he'd see everything. And he could put it together, too. Then computers came along, and he was great with computers." She laughed, remembering. "Suddenly, the guy who fucked up everything, the nerd as big as the moon, was a hot item. And he was still good old Walt. When you needed your apartment painted, there he was. He had this great open smile, completely... geeky, but honest. When he looked happy to see you, he was happy to see you; he'd just light up. And if he got angry, he'd go off and start yelling, and then he'd maybe start crying or something; or you thought he would...."

  Lily's lip was trembling, and she dropped her feet off the hassock and dropped her head.

  "How'd he get the job looking for Robin Hood?"

  "He knew computers and he'd worked with O'Dell, and we swung it for him. He could help us, and it was a chance for him to break out. And maybe I had something to do with it-he'd be working with me. Like I said..."

  "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

  "Sounds like arrogance, or vanity."

  Lucas shook his head. "Not really. Just life... You think he got close to Robin Hood?"

  "He must have. Jesus, when he was killed, I couldn't stop crying for a week. I really... I don't know. There was no sexual impulse at all, but when I thought of him over all those years, that puppy-dog quality, that he loved me... It was like... I don't know. I loved him. That's what it came to."

  "Huh." He was watching her, his elbow on the arm of the chair, one finger at his chin.

  "So what's this all about?" she asked. The weariness had slipped from her voice, and she looked up, intent.

  "You and O'Dell are running me as some kind of lure," Lucas said. "You're dragging me out in front of whoever your targets are. I need to know who you think they are."

  After a long moment of silence, she said, "Fell. As far as I know, that's it."

  "Bullshit."

  "It's not bullshit," she
said. "She's all we've got."

  "That can't be right."

  "It is."

  "You know everything that O'Dell is doing?"

  "Well, yes, I mean I schedule for him... I suppose he could run something on the side...."

  There was another moment of silence, then Lucas said, "I'm afraid you're betraying me."

  She was offended, angry. "God damn it."