Lucas crossed the street to the parking garage.
CHAPTER 8
Pressure. He opened his fist, felt for the tab in his hand, licked it, felt the acidic cut of the drug as well as the salty taste of his own sweat. Too much? He had to be careful. He couldn't bleed today, he'd be in the car. But then the speed was on him and he stopped thinking about it.
He called Druze from a pay phone.
"We have to risk it," he said. "If I do Armistead tonight, the police will go crazy. Meeting could be tough after this."
"Are the cops still hanging around?" Druze sounded not worried-his emotional range might not reach that far-but concerned. "I mean, Armistead's still on, isn't she?"
"Yes. They keep coming back. They want me, but they've got nothing. Armistead will steer them further away."
"They might get something if they find the guy in the towel," Druze said sullenly.
"That's why we've got to meet."
"One o'clock?"
"Yes."
Stephanie's keepsake photos were stuffed in shoe boxes in the sewing closet, stuck in straw baskets in the kitchen, piled on a drawing table in the study, hidden in desk and bureau drawers. Three leather-bound albums were stacked in the library, photos going back to her childhood. Bekker, nude, stopping frequently to examine himself in the house's many mirrors, wandered through the antiques, hunting the photos. In her chest of drawers, he found a plastic bag for a diaphragm-at first he didn't recognize it for what it was-shook his head and put it back. When he was satisfied that he had all the photos, he fixed himself a sandwich, punched up Carl Orff's Carmina Burana on the CD player, sat in an easy chair and replayed the funeral in his mind.
He had been fine, he thought. The tough-guy cop. He couldn't read the tough guy, but he had Swanson beat. He could sense it. The tough guy, on the other hand… his clothes were too good, Bekker decided.
As he chewed, his eye found a small movement in the far corner of the room. He turned to catch it: another mirror, one of a dozen or so diamond-shaped plates set in the base of a French lamp from the twenties. He moved again, adjusting himself. His eyes were centered in one of the mirrors and, at this distance, looked black, like holes. His genitals were caught in another plate, and he laughed, genuine enjoyment.
"A symbol," Bekker said aloud. "But of what, I don't know." And he laughed again, and did his jig. The MDMA was still on him.
At noon he dressed, pulled on a sweater, loaded the photos into a shopping bag and went out through the breezeway to his car. Could the police be watching him? He doubted it-what else would they expect him to do? Stephanie was already dead; but he'd take no chances.
Out of the garage, he drove carefully through a snake's nest of streets to a small shopping center. No followers. He cruised the center for a few minutes, still watching, bought toilet tissue and paper towels, toothpaste and deodorant and aspirin, and returned to the car. Back through the snake's nest: nothing. He stopped at a convenience store and used the phone on the outside wall.
"I'm on my way."
"Fine. I'm alone."
Druze lived in a medium-rise apartment at the edge of the West Bank theater district. Bekker, still wary, circled the building twice before he left the car on the street, cut through the parking lot and buzzed Druze's apartment.
"It's me," he said. The door opened and he pushed through into the lobby, then took the stairs. Druze was watching a cable-channel show on scuba diving when Bekker arrived. Druze punched the TV out with a remote as Bekker followed him into the apartment.
"Those the pictures?" asked Druze, looking at the bag.
"Yes. I brought everything I could find."
"You want a beer?" Druze said it awkwardly. He didn't entertain; nobody came to his apartment. He had never had a friend before…
"Sure." Bekker didn't care for beer, but enjoyed playing the relationship with Druze.
"Hope he's here," Druze said. He got a bottle of Bud Light from the refrigerator, brought it back and handed it to Bekker, who was kneeling on the front-room carpet, unloading the shopping bag. Bekker turned one of the shoe boxes upside down, and a clump of snapshots fell out on the rug.
"We'll get him," Bekker said.
"Big, flat, blond Scandinavian face. Head like a milk jug, pale, almost fat. Got pretty good love handles on him, a belly," said Druze.
"We knew a half-dozen people like that," Bekker said. He took a hit on the beer and grimaced. "Most likely he's part of the antiques crowd. That could be tough, 'cause I don't know all of them. There's a possibility that he's with the university. I don't know. This affair is the only thing the bitch ever did that surprised me."
"The bad thing is, antiques people are the kind of people who go to plays. Art people. He could see me."
"Up on the stage, with the makeup, you look different," Bekker said.
"Yeah, but afterwards, when we go out in the lobby and kiss ass with the crowd, he could see me up close. If he ever sees me…"
"We'll figure him out," Bekker said, dumping the last box of photos on the pile. "I'll sort, you look."
There were hundreds of pictures, and the process took longer than Bekker imagined it would. Stephanie with friends, in the woods, shopping, with relatives. No pictures of Bekker…
Halfway through the pile, Druze got to his feet, burped and said, "Keep sorting. I gotta pee."
"Mmm," Bekker nodded. As soon as Druze closed the bathroom door, he stood, waited a minute, then quickly padded across the front room to the kitchen and opened the end drawer on the sink counter. Maps, paid bills, a couple of screwdrivers, matchbooks… He stirred through the mess, found the key, slipped it into his pocket, eased the drawer shut and hurried back to the front room as he heard the toilet flush. He'd been here a few times, waiting for the chance at the key… Now he had it.
"Any more candidates?" Druze asked, stepping out of the bathroom. Bekker was back in the center of the photo pile.
"A couple," Bekker said, looking up. "Come on. We're running late."
There were several large blond men, but this was Minnesota. Twice Druze thought he'd found him, but after a closer look under a reading lamp, he shook his head.
"Maybe you should look at them in person. Discreetly," Bekker suggested.
"They're not the guy," Druze said, shaking his head.
"You're positive?"
"Pretty sure. I didn't get the best look at him, I was on the floor, and he was standing up, but he was heavier than these guys. Fat, almost." He picked up a photo of Stephanie and a blond man, shook his head and spun it sideways back into the pile around Bekker.
"God damn it. I was sure he'd be in here," Bekker said. The photos were scattered around them like piles of autumn leaves; he grabbed a handful and threw them at an empty box, frustrated. "That bitch talked to everybody, took pictures of everybody, never gave anybody a minute's rest. Why wouldn't she have him in here? He's got to be here."
"Maybe he's somebody new. Or maybe she took them out. Have you gone through her stuff?"
"I spent half the morning at it. She had a diaphragm, can you believe it? I found this little plastic pack for it. Cops didn't say anything about that… But there's nothing else. No more pictures."
Druze began scooping the photos together and tossing them into the boxes. "So what do we do? Do we go ahead? With Armistead?"
"There's a risk," Bekker admitted. "If we don't find him, and we do Armistead, he might decide to turn himself in. Especially if he's got an alibi for the time that Armistead gets hit-as far as we know, he's hiding out because he's afraid the cops think he did it."
"If we don't do Armistead pretty soon, she'll dump me," Druze said flatly. "This turkey we're working on now, this Whiteface, won't last. And she hates my ass. We're hurting for payroll and I'll be the first to go."