With his face, and with the aura of the suit, sometimes he simply went down and relaxed in the cafeteria, let the public look at him…
Not today. When he was dressed, he pulled paper shoe-covers over his loafers, got his clipboard from the locker and headed up another flight of stairs, his heart pounding a bit. It had been a few days since he'd talked to Sybil. He really had to find more time.
At the top of the stairs, he pushed through the fire door and walked down the hall to the nurses' station.
"Dr. Bekker," a nurse said, looking up. "You're earlier than usual."
"Had a little extra time." He put on a smile. "Any changes?"
"No, not since you were last here," the nurse said, not managing a smile. "Changes" was Bekker's euphemism for "death." It had taken her a few of his visits to catch on.
"Well, I think I'll wander down," Bekker said. "Anywhere I shouldn't go?"
"Room seven-twelve, we have a radiation treatment there-we're keeping that clean."
"I'll stay away," Bekker promised. He left her at the desk, plowing through the endless paperwork that seemed to afflict nurses. He stopped at two rooms, for show, before heading to Sybil's.
"Sybil? Are you awake?" Her eyes were closed as he stepped into the room, and they didn't open, but he could see that a drip tube leading to her arm was working. "Sybil?"
Still her eyes didn't open. He glanced down the hallway, then stepped up to her bed, leaned forward, placed his fingertips on her forehead, pulled up an eyelid with his thumb and murmured, "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"
The television behind him was tuned to TV3, a game show that apparently involved some kind of leapfrog. He didn't notice; Sybil had opened her eyes and was looking frantically around the room.
"No, no. There isn't any help, dear," Bekker crooned. "No help anywhere." • • • Bekker spent an hour at the hospital. He was picked up by the surveillance team as he left through the lobby.
"He's got a funny look on his face," the narc said into her purse. "He's coming right at me." She watched Bekker go down the sidewalk, past the bench where she was reading a car issue of Consumer Reports.
"What's funny?" the crew chief asked, as the net closed around Bekker again.
"I don't know," the narc said. "He looked like he just got laid or something."
"A look you know well," said a cop named Louis, normally in uniform, but pulled for this job.
"Shut up," the crew chief said. "Stay on his ass and don't spook him. We're doing good."
Halfway across the campus, Bekker did a little jig. He did it quickly, almost unconsciously, but not quite-he caught himself and looked around guiltily before moving on.
"What the fuck was that all about?" the narc asked.
"Potty-mouth," said Louis.
"Shut up," said the crew chief. "And I don't know. We oughta get some video on this guy, you know? I woulda liked to have some video on that."
The crew took him home, where another crew picked up the watch. Louis, who liked wisecracks, went back to police headquarters, where he bumped into the police reporter for Channel Eight.
"What's happening, Louis?" the reporter asked. "Workin' on anything good?"
Louis chewed a lot of gum and tipped his head, a wiseguy. "Got a thing going here and there," he said. "Hell of a story, if I could only tell ya."
"You look like you been on surveillance," the reporter suggested. "All dressed up like a human being."
"Did I say surveillance?" Louis grinned. He liked reporters. He'd been quoted several times at crime scenes.
The reporter frowned. "Hey, are you working that Bekker thing?"
Louis' smile faded. "I got no comment. Like, really."
"I won't fuck you, Louis," the reporter said. "But there's a hell of a leak around here somewhere, and TV3 is kicking ass."
Louis liked reporters…
CHAPTER 21
Anderson tossed two manila file folders on Lucas' desk.
"Surveillance report, and summary interviews from the theater people and Armistead's friends," he said.
"Anything in them?" Lucas asked. He was leaning back in his chair, his feet on a desk drawer. A boom box on the floor was playing "Radar Love."
"Not much," Anderson said, with a flash of his yellow teeth. He was the department's computer junkie. He dressed like a hillbilly and had once been a ferocious street cop. "Bekker mostly hung around the university, his office, the hospital…"
"All right, I'll take a look," Lucas said, yawning. "If we don't break something soon…"
"I'm hearing about it from Daniel," Anderson said, nodding. "That goddamned warehouse raid saved our asses, but there's nothing going on today."
"How many TV sets did we get?"
"One hundred and forty-four: twelve dozen. Hell of a haul. Also thirty Hitachi VCRs, six Sunbeam bathroom scales, about thirty cases of Kleenex man-size bathroom tissues, some water-soaked, and one box of Lifestyles Stimula vibra-ribbed rubbers, which Terry said were for personal use only. Wonder if they work?"
"What?"
"Vibra-ribbed rubbers…"
"I don't know. I use Goodyear Eagle all-weathers myself."
Anderson left, and Lucas picked up the surveillance folder and flipped through it. Bekker had done a jig: Lucas spotted it immediately and thought back to the night he'd met Bekker and the frenzied dance he'd seen through the window. What was he doing in the hospital? Might be worthwhile checking again…
The folders yielded nothing else. Lucas tossed them aside, yawned again, feeling pleasantly sleepy. Cassie was a little rough, a little muscular in her lovemaking. Interesting.
And different. He watched her, comparing her with Jennifer, finding the differences. Jennifer had a tough veneer, developed over years as a reporter. Lucas had the same shell. So did most social workers.
"When you see too much shit in one lifetime, you've got to find a way to deal with it," Jennifer had said once. "Reporters and cops develop the shell as a defense. If you can laugh at a crazy rapist, you know, 'the B.O. Fucker' and all those cute names you cops develop, well, then you don't have to take it so seriously."
"Yeah, right, pass the joint," Lucas had said.
"See? That's exactly what I'm talking about…"
Cassie had no shell. Everything that happened to her, she felt. Psychiatry, she thought, was normal. Most people were screwed up, but it helped to talk about it, even if you had to pay somebody to listen.
Occasionally, when he'd been with Jennifer, Lucas had had a feeling that they both yearned to talk, to let it out, but couldn't. Talking would have made them too vulnerable and, each of them knowing the other, the vulnerability would have been used…
"Hey, you get beat up. People use you, you get played for a sucker," Cassie had said, when he told her about that. "Big fuckin' deal. Everybody gets beat up."
And Lucas had once again found himself trying to dissect his episode of depression: "I've fooled around with a lot of women, ever since I was a teenager. I slowed down a lot after I started dating Jen-slipped up a couple of times, bad, but we were making it until… you know. But the thing is, when she walked… I just stopped. Fell off the cliff. The real pit was last fall, around Thanksgiving, I'd just gotten back from seeing this woman in New York and she'd pretty much called off our relationship. I thought I was crazy. Not crazy crazy, like in the movies. Crazy where you don't get out of bed for two days. You don't pay the mortgage, because you can't get yourself to write a check."
"I once didn't pay my taxes for that reason. I had the money, but I couldn't deal with the government," Cassie had said, not laughing.