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He staggered back across the basement and pulled himself up the stairs and looked carefully around the corner. Shadow Love was lying on the rug like a pile of dirty clothing. Lucas stepped over to him, keeping the .45 centered on the man’s chest, and kicked the M-15 across the room.
He felt Je
“You’re a mean sonofabitch,” Shadow Love groaned. Nothing moved but his lips.
“Die, motherfucker,” Lucas croaked.
“Is he dead?” Je
“In a few minutes,” Lucas said.
“Lucas, we gotta call . . .”
Lucas grabbed Je
“Lucas . . .”
“Give him a few minutes,” Lucas said. He looked at Shadow Love. “Die, motherfucker,” he said again.
“Lucas,” Je
Lucas looked at her and shook his head. “Not yet.”
Je
“Who told? Who gave us away?” Shadow Love coughed. Still no pain, only a growing cold. Davenport was a mean sonofabitch, Shadow Love thought.
“You did,” Lucas snapped.
“I did?”
“Yeah. Your mom’s grave. You had them send the bills to Barbara Gow.”
“I?” Shadow Love asked again. As he exhaled, a blood bubble formed on his lips and then burst. The salty taste of the blood was his last sensation.
“Die, motherfucker,” Lucas said.
He was talking to a dead man. After another moment, with no further movement from Shadow Love, Lucas released Je
“Call the cops,” he said.
CHAPTER
30
“You got him?” Daniel asked.
“He’s dead,” Lucas said. “I’m looking at him,” he explained, and told him that Je
“How bad are you?”
“My leg’s burned. I’m full of splinters. My house is fucked up,” Lucas said.
“So take the day off,” Daniel said. His voice was flat, not fu
“Pretty fuckin’ fu
“What do you want me to say? You’re so fucked up I don’t know why you’re talking to me on the telephone.”
“I needed to tell somebody,” Lucas said. He looked out of the kitchen to the open front door. After Je
“Get your ass to the hospital,” Daniel said. “I’ll see you there in ten minutes.”
Je
The baby had a half-dozen splinters in her back. The does said that by the time she was old enough to be told about the fight, the scars would be virtually invisible.
Lucas spent the night, the next day and part of the following day at Ramsey Medical Center, first receiving treatment for the burns on his leg and the plaster particles in his right eye. He wouldn’t need skin grafts, but it was a near thing. The plaster was washed out: the eye would heal. When the docs had finished with the eye, a physician’s assistant went to work on the splinters. They weren’t in deep, but there were dozens of them, from his thigh across his butt and up his back and his left arm.
He got out early the second afternoon, still wearing a massive gauze bandage that covered his eye, and went to look at his house. The insurance man, he decided, would jump out of his window twice when he saw it.
Late that night, after a number of calls to clear the way, he drove to He
“Lucas,” she said, “I told her you were coming. She’s still awake.”
“Is she alone?”
“Do you mean, ‘Has her husband gone?’ Yeah, he’s gone,” the nurse said, gri
A younger nurse, barely out of her teens, leaned on the station counter and said, “The guy is really something else. He reads to her, gets videos for her, gets snacks. He’s here all the time. I’ve never seen anybody so . . .” She groped for the word. “ . . . faithful.”
“Just like my cocker spaniel,” said the older nurse.
Lily was propped up in bed, watching the Letterman show.
“Hey,” she said. She touched the remote and Letterman winked out. Her face was pale, but she talked easily. “You got him. And he got you. You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” Lucas said. He kissed her on the lips and eased himself into the bedside chair. “I got him more.”
“Mmm,” she said. “The legend of Lucas Davenport grows another couple of inches.”
“So how do you feel?” Lucas asked.
“Not too bad, as long as I don’t laugh or sneeze,” Lily said. She looked tired, but not sick. “My ribs are messed up. They had me walking around today. It hurt a lot.”
“How much longer will you be here?”
Lily hesitated, then said, “I get out tomorrow. They’re going to brace me up. I’m taking Andretti’s plane to New York tomorrow afternoon.”
Lucas frowned and sat back in the chair. “That’s pretty quick.”
“Yes.” There was another silence, then Lily said, “I can’t help it.”
Lucas looked down at her. “I think we have some unfinished business. Somehow.” He shrugged. There was another space of silence.
“I don’t know,” she said finally.
“David?” Lucas asked. “Do you love him?”
“I must,” she said.
A while later she said, “Will you get back with Je
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s . . . kind of freaked out after what happened in the house. I’ll see her tomorrow. Maybe.”
“Don’t come see me off,” Lily said. “I don’t know if I could handle things, if you and David were there at the same time.”
“Okay,” Lucas said.
“And could you . . .”
“What?”
“Could you leave?” she said, in a tiny, distant voice that squeaked toward despair. “If you stay any longer I’ll cry, and crying hurts . . . .”
Lucas stood awkwardly, shuffled his feet, then leaned over and kissed her again. She caught his shirt in her hand, pulling him, and the kiss went on, fiercer, with heat, until suddenly she let go and instead of pulling him, pushed against his chest.
“Get the fuck out of here, Davenport,” she said. “We can’t start this again, God damn it, get the fuck out of here.”
“Lily . . .”
“Lucas, please . . .”
He nodded and took a breath, let it go. “See you.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He backed out of the hospital room, looking into her eyes until the swinging door flapped shut.
At the nurses’ desk, he asked his friend what time Lily would check out. Ten o’clock, he was told, with an ambulance scheduled to drive to the St. Paul municipal airport, where she would be loaded into a private jet.
Lucas drove out to the airport the next morning in his Ford four-by-four, and sat and watched as Lily was lifted from the ambulance and wheeled in a chair through the gate to the waiting jet. David bent over her, still wearing the blue seersucker suit, his hair rumpled in the wind. He looked like an academic. David.
They had to carry Lily up the steps to the jet. As they picked her up, Lucas felt her eyes on him, but she never raised a hand. She looked at him for three seconds, five, and then was gone.
The jet left and Lucas rolled out of the airport toward the Robert Street bridge.
He talked to Je