"So what do you want to do?" Lucas asked when King's closed.
"I dunno. I guess you better take me back to the hotel. I doubt he'd be driving this late."
Lucas pulled the Porsche into the hotel parking lot and hopped out.
"Time to collect?" Lily asked.
"Yeah."
A half-dozen people were walking through the lot, and more were going in and out.
"This is not an invitation, so I don't want you to read anything into it…"
"Yeah?"
"You can come up for just long enough to collect."
They rode up in the elevator without speaking and walked down the hall to her room, Lucas feeling increasingly awkward. Inside, when she closed the door, it was dark. Lucas fumbled for the light switch but she caught his hand and said, "Don't. Just collect and then you can leave."
"All of a sudden, I feel like a fuckin' idiot," Lucas said, abashed.
"Let's get it over with," she said, a little drunkenly.
He found her in the dark, pulled her in and kissed her. She hung in his arms for just a fraction of a moment, then returned the kiss, powerfully, pushing him against the door, her face and pelvis pressed to his, her hands clenching his rib cage. They clung together for a long moment; then she broke her lips away and squeezed him tighter and groaned, "Oh, Jesus."
Lucas held her for a moment and then whispered in her ear, "Double or nothing," and found her lips again and they walked in a tight little circle and Lucas felt the bed hit the back of his knees and he dropped on it, pulling her with him. He expected her to resist, but she did not. She rolled to one side and held him, kissing him again on the lips, then on the edge of the jaw, and Lucas rolled over half on top of her and pulled at her shirt, getting it out of her trousers, slipping his hand inside, fighting the brassiere, finally reaching around her, unsnapping the bra and then catching one of her breasts in his hand…
"Oh, God," she said, arching against him. "God, Davenport…"
He found her belt, pulled it open, slipped his hand inside her trousers, under the edge of her underpants, down, to the hot liquid center…
"Ah, Jesus," she said, and she rolled away from him, pushing his hand away, off the side of the bed onto the floor.
"What?" It was pitch black in the room, and Lucas was groggy from the sudden struggle. "Lily…"
"God, Lucas, we can't… I'm sorry, I don't mean to tease. Jesus, I'm sorry."
"Lily…"
"Lucas, you're going to make me cry, go away…"
"Jesus, don't do that." Lucas stood up, pushed his shirt back in his pants, discovered he was missing a shoe. He groped in the dark for a second, found the light. Lily was sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed, clutching her shirt around her.
"I'm sorry," she said. Her eyes were black with remorse. "I just can't."
"That's okay," Lucas said, trying to catch his breath. He half laughed. "My fuckin' shoe is missing…"
Lily, her face drawn, looked around the edge of the bed and said, "Under the curtain. Behind you."
"Okay. Got it."
"I'm sorry."
"Look, Lily, whatever is right, okay? I mean, I'm going back home to blow my brains out, to relieve the pressure, but don't worry about it."
She smiled a tentative smile. "You're a nice guy. See you tomorrow."
"Sure. If I survive."
When he was gone, Lily stripped off her clothes and stood in the shower, letting the water pour down her breasts and then her back. After a few minutes, she began reducing the temperature until finally she stood in what felt like a torrent of ice water.
Sober, she went to bed. And just before she went to sleep, she remembered that last shot. Had she flinched? Or had she deliberately thrown the shot?
Lily Rothenburg, faithful wife, went to sleep with lust in her heart.
CHAPTER 10
The knock came a few minutes after ten o'clock. Sam Crow was washing a coffee cup in the kitchen sink. He stopped at the knock and looked up. Aaron Crow was sitting in front of a battered Royal typewriter, pecking at a press release on the Oklahoma killing. Shadow Love was in the bathroom. When the knock came, Aaron went to the door and spoke through it.
"Who is that?"
"Billy."
Billy. Aaron fumbled at the lock, pulled the door open. Billy Hood stood in the hallway, bowlegged in his cowboy boots, a battered, water-stained Stetson perched on his head. His square face was drawn and pale. He took a step forward and Aaron wrapped his arms around him and picked him up off his feet.
"God damn, Billy," he said. He could feel the stone knife dangling beneath Billy's shirt.
"I feel bad, man," Billy said when Aaron released him. "Man, I've been fucked up all the way back. I can't stop thinking about it."
"Because you're a spiritual man."
"I don't feel so fuckin' spiritual. I cut that dude," Billy said as he walked farther into the room. Aaron glanced once into the hallway and pushed the door shut.
"A white man," said Aaron.
"A man," Shadow Love said from the bathroom. He stood squarely in the doorway, arms slightly away from his sides, like a gunslinger. His cheeks were hollow. His white eyes hooked up at the corners, like a starving wolfs. "Don't make it sound small."
"I don't mean that it's small," said Aaron. "I mean that it's different. Billy killed the enemy in a war."
"A man is a man," Shadow Love insisted. "It's all the same."
"And an Indian man is an Indian man, and that's different, to be one of the people," Sam retorted. "One reason Aaron won't use you is that you don't understand the difference between war and murder."
The two Crows were squared off against their son. Hood broke it.
"Everybody's looking for me," he said. Billy looked scared, like a rabbit that's been chased until there's no more room to run. "Me and Leo. Christ, I heard about Leo and the judge. He took him off, man. Have you heard from him?"
"No. We're getting worried. They haven't got him, but we haven't heard a thing."
"Unless they've got him but they aren't saying, so they can squeeze him," said Shadow Love.
"I don't think so. This is too big to hide something like that," Sam Crow said.
Billy took off his hat, tossed it on a chair and wiped his hair back with his hand. "We've been on the radio every hour. In all the newspapers all the way from New York. Every town I come to."
"They don't know your names," Sam said.
"They connected us with Tony Bluebird. They'll be looking for us here in the Cities."
"That won't help them if they don't know who you are, Billy," said Aaron, trying to reassure him. "There are twenty thousand Indians in the Cities. How will they know which one? And we knew they'd connect you to Bluebird; that was the whole point."
"They'll find out who you are," Shadow Love said. His voice was gravelly, cold. He looked at the Crows. "It's time for you guys to go to the safe house, get out of this place. If you want to live."
"Too early," said Sam. "When we feel some pressure, we go to the safe house. Not before. If we go in too early and there's nothing happening, we'll get careless. We'll fuck around and somebody will see us."
"And they still don't have any names, nothing that will identify Billy or Leo," Aaron said again.
Shadow Love stepped out into the room and put a hand on Billy Hood's shoulder, ignoring his fathers. "I'll tell you now: They'll find your name. And they'll find Leo's. Eventually, they'll get the rest of us. They've got some movies from a camera in the building where you killed Andretti, so they've got your face. The cops'll take the pictures and go around and squeeze and squeeze, and somebody will tell them. And there was a witness who saw Leo. They'll have her looking at mug shots right now."
"You're a big authority?" Aaron asked sarcastically. "You know all the rules?"
"I know enough," Shadow Love said. His eyes were white and opaque, like marble chips from a tombstone. "I've been on the street since I was seven. I know how the cops work. They pick-pick-pick, talk-talk-talk. They'll find out."