Silent Prey

CHAPTER
7

Lily called the next morning, "Got them," she said. "We're going to breakfast…"

Lucas called Fell, catching her just before she left her apartment.

"O'Dell called," he said. "He wants me to have breakfast with him. I probably won't make it down until ten o'clock or so."

"All right. I'll run the guy Lonnie told us about, the guy with the Cadillac in Atlantic City. It won't be much…"

"Unless the guy's into medical supplies. Maybe the syringes weren't his only item."

"Yeah…" She knew that was bullshit, and Lucas grinned at the telephone.

"Hey, we're driving nails. I'll buy you lunch later on."

The Lakota Hotel was old, but well-kept for New York. It was close to the publishing company that produced Lucas' board games, convenient to restaurants, and had beds that his feet didn't hang off of. From this particular room, he had a view over the roof below into the windows of a glass-sided office building. Not wonderful, but not bad, either. He had two nightstands, a writing table, a chest of drawers, a window seat, a color television with a working remote, and a closet with a light that came on automatically when he opened it.

He went to the closet, pulled out a briefcase and opened it on the bed. Inside was a monocular, a cassette recorder with a phone clip, and a Polaroid Spectra camera with a half-dozen rolls of film. Excellent. He closed the briefcase, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and rode back down to the street. A bellhop, loitering in the phone-booth-sized lobby, said, "Cab, Mr. Davenport?"

"No. I've got a car coming," he said. Outside, he hurried down the street to a breakfast bar, got a pint of orange juice in a wax carton, and went back outside.

After leaving Fell the night before, he'd gone to Lily's apartment and given her the key impressions. Lily knew an intelligence officer who could get them made overnight, discreetly.

"Old friend?" Lucas asked.

"Go home, Lucas," she'd said, pushing him out the door.

And now she called his name again: a black town car slid to the curb, a cluster of antennas sticking out of the trunk lid, and when the back window slid down, he saw her face. "Lucas…"

O'Dell's driver was a broad man with a Korean War crew cut, his hair the color of rolled steel. A hatchet nose split basalt eyes, and his lips were dry and thick; a Gila monster's. Lucas got in the passenger seat.

"Avery's?" the driver asked. The front seat was separated from the back by an electric window, which had been run down.

"Yeah," O'Dell said. He was reading the Times editorial page. A pristine copy of the Wall Street Journal lay between his right leg and Lily's left. As he looked over the paper, he asked Lucas, "Did you eat yet?"

"A carton of orange juice."

"We'll get you something solid," O'Dell said. He'd not stopped reading the paper, and the question and comment were perfunctory. After a moment, he muttered, "Morons."

Lily said to the driver, "This is Lucas Davenport next to you, Aaron-Lucas, that's Aaron Copland driving."

"Not the fuckin' piano player, either," Copland said. His eyes went to Lucas. "How are ya?"

"Nice to meet you," Lucas said.

At Avery's, Copland got out first and held the door for O'Dell. Copland had a wide, solid gut, but the easy moves of an athlete. He wore a pistol clipped to his belt, just to the left of his navel, and though his golf shirt covered it, he made no particular attempt to conceal it.

A heavy automatic, Lucas thought. Most of the New York cops he'd seen were carrying ancient.38 Specials, revolvers that looked as though they'd been issued at the turn of the century. Copland, whatever else he might be, was living in the present. He never looked directly at Lucas or Lily or O'Dell as they were getting out of the car, but around them, into the corners and doorways and window wells.

In the closest doorway was a solid oak door with a narrow window at eye height, and below that, a gleaming brass plaque that said AVERY' S. Behind the door was a restaurant full of politicians: they had places like this in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Lucas had never seen one in New York. It was twenty feet wide, a hundred feet deep, with a long dark mahogany bar to the right side of the entrance. Overhead, wooden racks held hundreds of baseball bats, lying side by side, all of them autographed. A dozen flat Plexiglas cases marched down the left-hand wall opposite the bar, like stations of the cross, and each case held a half-dozen more bats, autographed. Lucas knew most of the names-Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Maris, Mays, Snider, Mantle. Others, like Nick Etten, Bill Terry, George Stirnweiss, Monte Irvin, rang only faint bells in his memory. At the end of the bar, a double row of booths extended to the back of the restaurant; almost all of the booths were occupied.

"I'll be at the bar," Copland said. He'd looked over the occupants of the restaurant, decided that none of them was a candidate for shooting.

O'Dell led the way back: he was an actor, Lucas realized, rolling slowly down the restaurant like a German tank, nodding into some booths, pointedly ignoring others, the rolled copy of the Wall Street Journal whacking his leg.

"Goddamn town," O'Dell said when he was seated at the booth. He dropped the papers on the seat by his leg. Lily sat opposite him, with Lucas. He peered at Lucas across the table and said, "You know what's happening out there, Davenport? People are stringing razor wire-you see it everywhere now. And broken glass on the tops of walls. Like some goddamned Third World city. New York. Like fuckin' Bangkok." He lowered his voice: "Like these cops, if they're out there. A death squad, like Brazil or Argentina."

A balding waiter with a pickle face came to the table. He wore a neck-to-knees white apron that seemed too neatly blotched with mustard.

"Usual," O'Dell grunted.

Lily glanced at Lucas and said, "Two coffees, two Danish."

The waiter nodded sourly and left.

"You got a reputation as a shooter," O'Dell said.

"I've shot some people," Lucas said. "So has Lily."

"We don't want you to shoot anybody," O'Dell said.

"I'm not an assassin."

"I just wanted you to know," O'Dell said. He groped in his pocket and pulled out a strip of paper and unfolded it. The Times story. "You did a good job yesterday. Modest, you give credit to everyone, you stress how smart Bekker can be. Not bad. They bought it. Have you read the files? On this other thing?"

"I'm starting tonight, at Lily's."

"Any thoughts so far? From what you've seen?" O'Dell pressed.

"I don't see Fell in it."

"Oh?" O'Dell's eyebrows went up. "I can assure you that she is, somehow. Why would you think otherwise?"

"She's just not right. How did you find her?"

"Computer. We ran the dead guys against the cops who busted them. She came up several times. Repeatedly, in a couple of cases. Too many times for it to be a coincidence," O'Dell said.

"Okay. I can see her nominating somebody. I just can't see her setting up a hit. She's not real devious."

"Do you like her?" asked Lily.

"Yeah."

"Will that get in the way?" O'Dell asked.

"No."

O'Dell glanced at Lily and she said, "I don't think it will. Lucas fucks over both men and women impartially."

"Hey, you know I get a little tired…" Lucas said irritably.

"Fell looks like another Davenport kill," Lily said. She tried for humor, but there was an edge to it.

"Hey, hey…" O'Dell said.

"Look, Lily, you know goddamned well…" Lucas said.

"Stop, stop, not in a restaurant," O'Dell said. "Jesus…"

"Okay," said Lily. She and Lucas had locked up, and now she broke her eyes away.

The waiter returned with a plate piled with French toast and a small tureen of hot maple syrup. A pat of butter floated on the syrup. He unloaded the French toast in front of O'Dell, and coffee cups in front of Lucas and Lily. O'Dell tucked a napkin into his collar and started on the toast.

"There's something more going on here," O'Dell said, when the waiter had gone. "These three hits we're most worried about, the lawyer, the activist, and Petty himself-I believe these guys may be coming out. The shooters."

"What?" Lucas glanced at Lily, who stared impassively at O'Dell.

"That's my sense, my political sense," O'Dell said. He popped a dripping square of toast into his mouth, chewed, leaned back and watched Lucas with his small eyes. "They're deliberately letting us know that they're out there and that they aren't to be fooled with. The word is getting around. Has been for a couple of months. You hear this shit, 'Robin Hood and his Merry Men,' or 'Batman Strikes Again,' whenever some asshole is taken off. There are a lot of people who'd like the idea that they're out there. Doing what's necessary. Half the people in town would be cheering them on, if they knew."

"And the other half would be in the streets, tearing the place apart," Lily said to Lucas. She turned her head to O'Dell. "There's the other thing, too, with Bekker."

"What?" asked Lucas, looking between them.

"We're told that this is real," she said. She fished in her purse, took out a folded square of paper and handed it to him. A Xerox copy of a letter, addressed to the editor of the New York Times.

Lucas glanced down at the signature: Bekker. One word, an aristocratic conceit and scrawl. … taken to task for what I consider absolutely essential experiments into the transcendental nature of Man, and accused of crimes; so be it. I will stand on my intellectual record, and though accused of crimes, as Galileo was, I will, like him, be vindicated by a future generation.

Though accused of crimes, I am innocent, and I will have no truck with criminals. It is in that spirit that I write. On Friday night last, I witnessed an apparent gangland shooting…

"Jesus Christ," Lucas said, looking at Lily. "Was this one of the killings you were talking about?"

"Walt," she said.

Lucas went back to the letter. Bekker had seen the two killers clearly. … would describe him as white, thick, square-faced with a gray, well-trimmed mustache extending the full length of his upper lip, weighing two hundred and twenty pounds, six feet, two inches tall, sixty-one years old. As a trained forensic pathologist, I would wager that I am not wrong by more than five pounds either way, or by more than an inch in height, or two years in age.

The description of the other one, the one I have called Thin, I will hold to myself, for my own reasons…

"This never ran in the paper?" Lucas asked, looking at O'Dell.

"No. They've agreed to hold it at our request, but they've reserved the right to print it if it seems relevant."

"Do you have any idea who it is? This Thick guy?"

He shook his head: "One of four or five hundred cops-if it's a cop at all."

"You could probably narrow it more than that," Lucas said.

"Not without going public," Lily said. "If we started checking out five hundred cops… Christ, the papers would be all over us. But the main thing is, you see…"

Lucas picked up her thought: "Bekker can identify two cop killers and he's willing to do it…"

"And for that reason, we think these guys'll make a run at Bekker."

"To shut him up."

"Among other things."

"If they are coming out, they're more likely to go for Bekker," O'Dell said. "They might have to go for him anyway, if they think he can identify two of them. But there's more than that: Killing Bekker would be one way to make their point, that some people have to be killed. Bekker's a nightmare. Who can object to killing him? He's made to order for them, if they can find him."

"This is getting complicated," Lucas said. "I worry about Lily. She's close to this thing, funneling stuff around. What happens if they come after her?"

"They won't," O'Dell said confidently. "Two dead cops would be unacceptable…"

"I'd think one dead cop would be unacceptable."

"One dead cop can be finessed. Denied. Two is a pattern," O'Dell said.

"Besides, I'm not exactly a pushover," Lily said, patting the purse where she kept her.45.

"That'll get your ass killed," Lucas said, anger in his voice. They locked up again. "Anyone's a pushover when the shooters are using a fuckin' machine gun from ambush. You're good, but you ain't bulletproof."

"All right, all right…" She rolled her eyes away.

"And there's always Copland," O'Dell said. "When Lily's outside working, she's usually with me in the car. Copland's more than a driver. He's tough as a nail and he knows how to use his gun. I'll have him take her home at night."

"Okay." Lucas looked at Lily again, just for a second, then shifted back to O'Dell. "How'd you get onto Fell? Exactly?"

"Exactly." O'Dell mopped up a river of syrup with a crust of the toast, looked at it for a minute, then popped it in his mouth and chewed, his small eyes nearly closing with the pleasure of it. He swallowed, opened his eyes. Like a frog, Lucas thought. "This is it, exactly. Once or twice a semester I go up to Columbia and lecture on Real Politics, for a friend of mine. Professor. This goes way back. So a few years ago-hell, what am I saying, it was fifteen years ago-he introduced me to a graduate student who was using computerized statistical techniques to analyze voting patterns. Fascinating stuff. I wound up taking classes in statistics, and a couple in computers. I don't look like it"-he spread his arms, as if to display his entire corpulent body-"but I'm a computer jock. When these guys in intelligence found what they thought was a problem, I sorted the killings. There was a pattern. No mistake about it. I called in Petty, who specialized in computer searches and relational work. We turned up almost two hundred possibles. For one reason or another, we eliminated a lot of them and got it down to maybe forty. And twelve of those, we were just about sure of. I think Lily told you that…"

"Yeah. Forty. That's a pretty unbelievable number."

O'Dell shrugged. "Some of the killings are probably just what they seem to be-thugs getting killed on the street by other thugs. But not all of them. And I'm sure we missed some. So balancing everything out, I think forty, fifty aren't bad numbers."

"How does Fell fit in?" Lucas asked.

"Petty ran the bad guys against cops who'd know them-a lot of complicated name sorts here, but I've got total access."

"And Fell's name came up…"

"Way too much."

"I hate statistics," Lucas said. "The newspapers were always fuckin' with them back in Minneapolis, drawing stupid conclusions from bad data."

"That's a problem, the data," O'Dell agreed. "We'd certainly never get Fell in court, based on my numbers."

"Mmmph." Lucas looked at Lily and then O'Dell. "I need some heavy time to dig through this…"

"Don't," said O'Dell. He pointed a fork at Lucas' nose. "Your first priority is to find Bekker and to provide a diversion for the media. We need a little air. You've got to do that for real. If this gang is out there, these killers, they won't be easily fooled. Bringing you to New York was supposed to be like bringing in a psychic from Boise: to keep the Boises in the newsroom happy. Everybody's buying it so far. They've got to keep buying it. This other thing has to be way, way in the background."

"What happens if we catch Bekker too soon?" Lucas asked. "Before we identify these guys?"

Lily shrugged. "Then you go home and we find some other way to do it."

"Mmm."

"So. We're in a position where we're hopin' a goddamn psycho holds out for another few weeks and maybe butchers somebody else's kid, so we can run down our own guys," O'Dell mumbled, half talking to himself, staring into the half-eaten sludge pile of toast and syrup. He turned to Lily. "We're really fucked, you know that, Lily? We're really and truly fucked."

"Hey, this is New York," Lucas said.

O'Dell slogged through the rest of the French toast, filling in background on Petty's computer search for the killers.

"Is there any possibility that he turned up something unexpected with the computer?" Lucas asked.

"Not really. Things don't work that way-with a computer, you grind things out, you inch forward. You don't get a printout that says 'Joe Blow Did It.' I think something must have happened with this witness."

When they left the restaurant, O'Dell walked ahead, again nodding into some booths, pointedly ignoring others. Lily grabbed Lucas' sleeve and held him back a step.

"Here." She handed him three keys on a ring.

"That was quick," Lucas said.

"This is New York," she said.

Lucas took a cab from Avery's to Fell's apartment building. The cabdriver was a small man with a white beard, and as soon as Lucas settled in the backseat, he asked, "See Miserables?"

"What?"

"Let me tell you, you're missing something," the driver said. He smelled like a raw onion and was soaked with sweat. "Where're you going? Okay-listen, you gotta see Miserables, I mean why d'ya come to New York if you ain't gonna see a show, you know what I mean? Look at the crazy motherfucker over there, you should excuse the language, you think they should let a jerk like that on the streets? Jesus Christ, where'd he learn to drive?" The driver stuck his head out the window, leaning on the horn. "Hey, buddy, where'd you learn to drive, huh? Iowa? Huh? Hey, buddy." Back inside, he said, "I tell you, if the mayor wasn't black…"

Lucas called Fell at the office from a pay phone mounted on the outside wall of a parking garage. The garage paint, covered with indecipherable graffiti, was peeling off, to reveal another layer of graffiti. "Barb? Lucas. I gotta run back to my place, just for a minute. Are we still on for lunch?"

"Sure."

"Great. See you in a few minutes," Lucas said. He hung up and looked across the street at Fell's apartment building. A thousand apartments, he thought. Maybe more. Ranks of identical balconies, each with a couple of plants, most with bicycles. Yuppie-cycles, the mountain bikes, in case the riders encountered an off-trail situation in Central Park. Some of them, as high as he could see, were chained to the balcony railings.

The lobby of her building was a glass cage surrounding a guard. At the back were two ranks of stainless-steel mailboxes. The guard, in an ill-fitting gray uniform, was stupidly watchful.

"Where's the sales office?" Lucas asked. A light flickered in the guard's eyes. This situation was specifically covered in his orders. "Second floor, sir, take a right."

"Thanks." Apartment security; it was wonderful, if you had it. Lucas walked back to the elevators, punched two. The second floor had several offices, all down to the right. Lucas ignored them, took a left. Found the stairs, walked up a floor, went back to the elevators and punched sixteen.

The telephone call assured him that Fell was still at Midtown; he didn't have to worry that she'd slipped back home for a snack or to pay bills, or whatever. She lived alone, she'd said. He'd gotten her apartment and home phone numbers from an office roster sheet.

He rode up alone, got out in an empty corridor, took a left, got lost, retraced his steps past the elevators. Her door was green; the others were blue, a tomato-red and beige. Other than that, they were identical. He knocked. No answer. Looked around, knocked again. No answer. He tried a key, hit it the first time, popped the door. The silence inside seemed laced with tension.

Gotta move, move, move…

The apartment smelled lightly, inoffensively, of tobacco. The living room had a sliding glass door that led out to the balcony; the doors were covered by off-white curtains, half-drawn. She had a view of a similar building, but if he looked sideways, across the street, Lucas could see another rank of buildings across a gap. The gap was probably the Hudson, with Jersey on the other side.

The apartment was neat, but not compulsively so. Most of the furniture was good, purchased as matched sets. Two green overstuffed La-Z-Boy chairs faced a big color television. A low table sat between the chairs, stacked with magazines. Elle, Vogue, Guns amp; Ammo. More magazines lay on the table, and under it he found a pile of novels. Beside the television was a cabinet with a CD player, a tuner, a tape deck and a VCR. A second table held more magazines, four remote controls, an oversize brandy snifter full of matchbooks-Windows on the World, the Russian Tea Room, the Oak Room, The Four Seasons. They were pristine, and looked as though they'd come from a souvenir packet. Other matchbooks were more worn, half-used-several from the bar they'd visited the night before, one with a crown, one with a chess knight, one with an artist's palette. An ashtray held four cigarette butts.

On the walls around the television were photo portraits: a woman standing on a pier with two older people who might have been her parents, and another picture of the same woman in a wedding veil; a square-shouldered young man on a hillside with a collie and a.22, and another of the young man, grown older, dressed in an army uniform, standing under a sign that said, "I know I'm going to heaven, because I served my time in Hell: Korea, 1952." Something wrong with the young man… Lucas looked closer. His upper lip was twisted slightly, as though he'd had a harelip surgically repaired.

Her parents? Almost certainly.

A hallway broke to the left out of the living room. He checked it, found a bathroom and two bedrooms. One bedroom was used as an office and for storage; a small wooden desk and two file cabinets were pushed against one wall, while most of the rest of the space was occupied by cardboard boxes, some open, some taped shut. The other bedroom had a queen-sized bed, unmade, with a sheet tangled by its foot, and two chests of drawers, one with a mirror. An oval braided rug lay underfoot, just at the side of the bed, and a pair of underpants lay in the middle of the rug. A thigh-high woven-bamboo basket with a lid half-hid behind one of the chests. He opened it. Soiled clothes: a hamper.

He could see it. She sleeps in her underpants, sits up, still tired, yawns, gets out of beds, drops her pants for a shower, figures to toss them in the hamper when she gets back, forgets…

He went back through the living room to the kitchen, which looked almost unused-a half-dozen water glasses sat in a drying rack in the sink, along with a couple of forks, but no dishes. A Weight Watchers lasagna package lay inside a wastebasket. A bottle of Tanqueray gin sat on the cupboard, two-thirds full. He looked in the refrigerator, found bottles of lime-flavored Perrier and Diet Pepsi, a six-pack of Coors, a bottle of reconstituted lime juice and four bottles of Schweppe's Diet Tonic Water. A sack of nectarines lay on top of the fruit drawer. He touched the stove-top. Dust. A freestanding microwave took up half the counter space. No dust. She didn't cook much.

He did the kitchen first: women hide things in the kitchen or the bedroom. He found a set of dishes, inexpensive, functional. Rudimentary cooking equipment. A drawer full of paper, warranties for all the appliances and electronics in the place. He pulled the drawers out, looked under and behind them. Looked in tins: nothing, not even the flour and sugar that was supposed to be there.

In the bedroom, he looked under the bed and found a rowing machine and dust bunnies the size of wolverines; and in the bedstand drawer, where he found a Colt Lawman with a two-inch barrel, chambered for.38 Specials. Swung out the cylinder: six loaded chambers. He snapped the cylinder back, replaced the weapon as he'd found it.

Looked through the chest of drawers. Bundles of letters and postcards in the top drawer, with cheap jewelry and a sealed box of lubricated Trojans. He looked through the letters, hurrying.

Dear Barb, Just back from New Hampshire, and you should have come! We had the best time!

Dear Barb: Quick note. I'll be back the 23rd, if everything goes right. Tried to call, but couldn't get you, they said you were out, and I was afraid to wake you during the day. I really need to see you. I think about you all the time. I can't stop. Anyway, see you on the 23rd. Jack.

The letter was in an envelope, and he checked the postmark: four years old. He made a mental note: Jack.

Not much else. He pulled out the drawers. Ah. More paper. Polaroid photos. Barbara Fell, sitting on a man's lap, both holding up bottles of beer. They were naked. She was thin, with small breasts and dark nipples.

He was as thin as she, but muscular, dark-haired, and looked at the camera with a practiced lack of self-consciousness. Another shot: the two of them sitting on what looked like a zebra-skin rug, both nude, their eyes red pinpoints. In the background, a mirror, with a brilliant flash reflecting back at the camera. The camera in the mirror was on a tripod, unattended. No third person. The expression on her face… Fear? Excitement? Trepidation?

Another photo, the two of them clothed, standing outside what looked like a police station. A cop? He went back to his briefcase, got the Polaroid out, clipped on the close-up attachment, knelt, and duplicated the photos.

There was nothing else in the bedroom. The bathroom was odorless, freshly scrubbed, but the vanity countertop was a jumble of lipsticks, shampoos, soap, deodorant, a box of something called YeastGard, panty shields, a pack of needles, tweezers, a huge box of Band-Aids and a bottle of sesame body oil. The medicine cabinet held a small selection of over-the-counter items: aspirin, Mycitracin, Nuprin.

He headed for the office.

She was meticulous about her accounts, and everything seemed about right: she had one bank account, a safety-deposit box, and an account with Fidelity Investments, which turned out to be an IRA.

And where was her book? He shuffled through the desk drawers. She must have a personal phone book. She probably carried an annual one with her, but she should have some sort of book she kept at home, that she wouldn't be changing every year. He frowned. Nothing in the desk. He walked out to the front room and looked around the telephone. Nothing there. The phone had a long cord, and he walked over to the pile of magazines on the television table, stirred through them. The book was there, and he flipped it open. Names. Dozens of them. He got the Polaroid and began shooting. When he finished, he'd used all but two shots.

Enough. He looked around, checked the lights and backtracked out of the apartment. The guard was staring stoically at a blank marble wall when Lucas left, and never looked up. The guard's job was to keep people out, not keep people in. • • • Kennett and another detective were looking at paper, while a third cop talked on a telephone.

"Barbara's down the hall," Kennett said, looking up when Lucas walked in. "We got you an empty office so you can have a little peace…"

"Thanks," Lucas said.

Fell was sorting through a stack of manila files. He stopped in the doorway, watched her for a moment. She was focused, intent. Attractive. The nude photos popped up in his mind's eye: she looked smaller in the photos, more vulnerable, less vivid. She began paging through a file. After a moment, she felt him in the door, looked up, startled: "Jesus, I didn't hear you," she said.

He stepped inside, walked around the table. Picked up a file: "Robert Garber, 7/12." "Is this everything?"

"Yeah. I've been reading through it. A zillion details," she said. She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. "The problem is, we don't need any of it. We know who Bekker is and what he looks like, and he admits in these crazy medical papers that he did the killings. All we have to do is find him; we don't need all the usual shit."

"There must be something…"

"I'll be goddamned if I can see it," Fell said. "The other guys made a list, like the stuff you were talking about at the meeting this morning. He needs an income. He needs a place to hide. He needs a vehicle. He needs to change his face. So they've put out the publicity to employers: watch who you're paying. They've contacted all the hotels and flophouses and anyplace else he might stay. They're talking with the taxi companies, thinking maybe he's moving around in the cab-that would explain how he gases them, using the backseat as a gas chamber. They've gone to all the stores that sell cover-up makeup for people who are disfigured, and every place that sells theatrical makeup. The narcotics guys are talking to dealers, and we're chasing fences. What else is there?"

"I don't know, but it's not enough," Lucas said. He flipped his hand at the stack of paper. "Let's look at the victims first…"

They spent an hour at it. Bekker had killed six people in Manhattan, their bodies found scattered around Midtown, the Village, SoHo and Little Italy. Working on the theory he wouldn't take them far, he was probably south of Central Park, north of the financial district. The zip codes on the envelopes he'd mailed to the medical journals suggested the same thing: three papers, three different zips: 10002, 10003 and 10013.

"He uses halothane?"

"That's what they assume," Fell said, nodding. "They found traces in three people when they were doing the blood chemistry. And that supposedly accounts for the lack of any sign of a struggle. The stuff is quick. Like one-two-three-gone."

"Where did he get it?"

"Don't know yet-we've run all the hospitals in Manhattan, northern Jersey, Connecticut. Nothing yet, but you know, nobody tracks exact amounts of the stuff. You could transfer some from one tank to another. If the tank wasn't gone, how could you tell?"

"Nnn. Okay. But how does he get close enough to whip it on them?" Lucas got up and went out into the hallway, came back with a cone-shaped throwaway water cup. "Stand up."

She stood up. "What?"

He thrust the cup at her face. "If I come at you like this, from the front, I can't get the leverage."

Fell stepped back and the cup came free.

"Even if they got some gas, they could get far enough back to scream," he said.

"We don't know that they didn't scream," said Fell.

"Nobody heard anything."

She nodded. "So if he hits them on the street, he must come up from the back."

"Yeah. He grabs them, pulls them in, claps it over their mouth…" He turned her around, clapped the cup over her mouth, his elbow in her spine, his hand hooked over her shoulder. "One, two, three… Gone."

"Do it again," she said.

He did it again, but this time, she grabbed his wrist and twisted. The paper cup crumbled and her mouth was open. "Scream," she said. He let go and she said, "That doesn't work too well, either."

"This woman… Ellen Foen." Lucas picked up the file, flipped it open. "Statements from her friends say she was very cautious. She'd had some trouble with street people-they hang out in the alley behind the place she worked, going through the dumpsters. She could look out through the glass port in the door while it was still locked, and she always checked before she went out. So if Bekker was there, she must have seen him."

"It was late."

"Nine o'clock. Not quite dark."

"Maybe he was dressed okay. He's not a real big guy-maybe she just wasn't worried."

"But with his face?"

"Makeup. Or… I don't know. It makes more sense to me that he's driving a cab. She gets in, he's got one of the security windows between himself and the backseat. He's got it sealed up somehow, and when she shuts the door, he turns on the gas. She passes out. I mean, I just can't see a woman, somebody supposedly cautious, letting a guy get that close to her. And even if he comes up from behind, she'd fight it. You're a hell of a lot bigger than Bekker, but you'd have a hard time holding a mask over my mouth, even from behind."

"Maybe that's why he picks small people, women," Lucas suggested.

"Even so, you just twist away. Even if he gets you, there'd be bruises-but the M.E. hasn't found any bruises. It's gotta be a cab, or something like it."

"But why did Foen take a cab? She was running across the street to get Cokes for everybody. Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up at nine-thirty, when she got off."

"Maybe… fuck, I don't know."

"And look at Cortese. Cortese walks out of this club and across Sixth Avenue, down Fifty-ninth Street toward the Plaza. His friends saw him go in at the Sixth Avenue end. He apparently never arrived at the other end, because there was a phone message for him at the Plaza from nine o'clock on, and he never got it. So he gets picked up on Fifty-ninth between Fifth and Sixth. What happened in there? Why would he flag a cab? He only had to go a few hundred feet."

She shrugged. "I don't know. And it's dark in there, so maybe he got jumped. But you gotta be careful when you start looking for logic, man…"

"I know, I know…"

"It could be anything. Maybe Cortese left his friends because he was looking for a little action."

Lucas shook his head. "He sounds awful straight."

"So does Garber… I don't know."

"Keep reading," said Lucas.

She was watching him, he thought. Odd glances, wary. "Is there something wrong?" he asked finally.

After a moment, she asked, "Are you really here working on Bekker?"

"Well…" He spread his arms to the stack of paper on the table. "Yeah. Why?"

"Oh, the more I think about it, the odder it seems. We'll catch him, you know."

"Sure, I know," Lucas said. "I'm mostly here for the publicity thing. Take some heat off."

"That doesn't seem quite right either," Fell said. She studied him. "I don't know about you. You hang out with O'Dell. You're not Internal Affairs?"

"What?" He pulled back, surprised. "Jesus, Barbara. No. I'm not Internal Affairs."

"You're sure?"

"Hey. You know what happened to me in Minneapolis?"

"You supposedly beat up somebody. A kid."

"A pimp. He'd cut up a woman with a church key, one of my snitches. Everybody on the street knew about it and I had to do something. So I did. He turned out to be a juvenile-I guess I knew that-and I got hammered by Internal Affairs. There was nothing particularly fair about it. I was just doing what I had to do, and everybody knew it. I got fucked because fucking me was safer than not fucking me. But I'm not Internal Affairs. You can check, easy enough."

"No, no."

She went back to her papers, and Lucas to his, but a minute later he said, "Jesus, Internal Affairs."

"I'm sorry."

"Well…"

They took a break, walked two blocks down, bumping hips, and got a booth in a Slice-o'-Pie pizza joint, with gallon-sized paper cups of Diet Pepsi. She liked him: Lucas knew it and let the talk drift toward the personal. He told her about his onetime long-distance relationship with Lily; about the ambiguity now. About his kid.

"I wouldn't mind having a kid," Fell said. "My fuckin' biological alarm clock is banging like Big Ben."

"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."

Fell 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 feet 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.