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Bekker took a step toward Lucas, his hands crossed on his chest. “Spi . . .”
An old woman lay there, bound and wired silent, her eyes permanently open now, staring, white eyeballs, the skin removed from her chest . . . .
Alive . . .
“Aw, fuck,” Fell screamed. She pivoted, the gun coming up, her mouth open, working, her hands clutching.
Lucas had time to say, “No.”
Bekker said, “ . . . ders.” And one hand dropped and the other swung up, a glint of steel. He thrust the derringer at Lucas’ chest . . .
. . . and Fell fired a single .357 round through the bridge of Michael Bekker’s nose and blew out the back of Michael Bekker’s sleek, shaven head.
CHAPTER
30
The walls of Lily’s office seemed to melt, and Petty was there, the adult face superimposed on the child’s face, both of them together.
And then Ke
Ke
No sex, just sleeping together. Ke
“Hanging out with a geek,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I’m not enough, she’s got a geek on the side.”
“Not a geek,” she said.
“All right. A dork. A nerd. Revenge of the Nerds, visited on Richard X. Ke
“Shut up,” she said, mock-severely. “Or I will fondle your delicate parts and then leave you hanging—in good health, of course.”
“Lily . . .” A change of tone. Sex on the mind.
“No. I’m sorry I said it. Ke
“All right. Back to the dork . . .”
“He’s not a dork. He’s really a nice guy, and if he cracks this thing, he could go somewhere . . . .”
She’d talked, Lily had, about the Robin Hood case. She’d talked in bed. She’d talked about the intelligence guys who’d stumbled over it, she’d talked about Petty being assigned to it, she’d talked about computers.
Not all at once. Not formally. But bits and pieces. Pillow talk. But Ke
Petty’s image floated in her mind’s eye, his hair slicked down, his red ears sticking out, ru
“I killed you,” she said to his image, speaking aloud. Her voice was stark as a winter crow. “I killed you, Walt.”
CHAPTER
31
The river was black as ink, but thick, oily, roiled, as it pushed the last few miles toward the sea. A full moon had come up in the east, red, huge, shrouded by smog over the city. Lily waited until the elderly night guard and his dog were at the far end of the marina, then used her key at the member’s gate.
The docks were cluttered, as always, badly lit by widely spaced yellow bug lights. Out in the water, anchor lights shone off the masts of a half-dozen anchored boats. Here and there, lights showed at portholes, and a light breeze banged halyards against aluminum masts, a pleasant whipping tinkle like wind chimes. The smell of marijuana hovered around a small Capri daysailer and a man was giggling inside the tiny cabin. She walked out of the marijuana stink into the river smell, compounded of mud and decaying fish.
“Lily.” Ke
“You know about Bekker?”
“Yeah. And that I’ve been cut out of the loop.”
Lily stepped into the cockpit, sat down, staring at him. His face was flat, solemn; he was looking steadily back. “You’re Robin Hood,” she said.
“Robin Hood, bullshit,” he said wearily. He flicked the cigarette into the water.
“I’m not wearing a wire,” she said.
“Stand up, turn around.” She stood up and Ke
He opened the purse, clicked on an electric light that hung from the backstay, looked inside. After poking inside, he took the .45 out of its holder, dropped the magazine and shucked the shells out into the water. Then he jacked the slide, to eject the shell in the chamber. The chamber was empty, and he shook his head. “You oughta carry one under the hammer.”
“I’m not here to talk about guns,” she said. “I’m here to talk about you being Robin Hood. About using me as a dummy to spy on O’Dell. About killing Walt Petty.”
“I didn’t use you as a dummy,” he said flatly. “I got with you because I liked you and I’m falling in love with you. You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you’re a cop, and there aren’t many women around I can talk to.”
“I don’t doubt that you like me,” she said, squaring off with him. “But that didn’t keep you from ru
“Christ, Lily . . . Lily, if you told me anything about O’Dell or Petty . . . it was by-product. I wasn’t sleeping with you to get information. Jesus, Lily . . .”
“Shut up,” Lily said. She reached overhead and pulled the chain on the backstay light and they were plunged into the dark again. “I want to know some shit. We’ve got Jeese and Clemson, Davenport got them, and we know about Copland . . . .”
“I knew Davenport was dangerous,” Ke
“Is that why your guys tried to beat him up, instead of just whacking him?”
Ke
“They were lucky,” Lily said. “Why didn’t you try again?”
Ke
“Not completely. It was Davenport who found Bekker, all right. He was feeding the message to O’Dell to see if any hitters showed up. They did, but I was with O’Dell the whole time. He didn’t make any calls. So I started thinking about it.”
“God damn it. I thought about skipping Bekker.”
“You should have.”
“Couldn’t. Didn’t know what he’d say about . . .” He stopped, remembering.
“About the guys he saw hit Walt. Jeese and Clemson. Thick and Thin.”
“No,” Ke