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"All right." He nodded. He needed some more time with her.

They went north on Sixth, the sidewalk traffic picking up as they got closer to Central Park, tourists walking arm in arm along the sidewalks.

"It's too big," Lucas said, finally, watching through the window as the city went by. "In the Twin Cities, you can pretty much get a line on every asshole in town. Here…" He looked out and shook his head. "Here, you'd never know where it was coming from. You got assholes like other places got raindrops. This is the armpit of the universe."

"Yeah, but it can be pretty nice," she said. "Got the theaters, the art museums…"

"When was the last time you went to a theater?"

"I don't know-I really can't afford it. But I mean, if I could."

"Right."

In the front seat, the taxi driver was humming to himself. There was no tune, only variations in volume and intensity as the driver stared blank-eyed through the windshield, bobbing his head to some unheard rhythm. His hands gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. Lucas looked at the driver, looked at Fell and shook his head. She laughed, and he grinned and went back to the window.

The bar was small, carefully lit, convivial. The bartender called Fell by her first name, pointed her at a back booth. Lucas took the seat facing the entrance. A waitress came over, looked at him, looked at Fell, said, "Ooo."

Fell said, "Strictly business."

"Ain't it always," the waitress said. "Didja hear Louise had her kid, baby girl, six pounds four ounces?"

Lucas watched Fell as she chatted with the waitress. She looked a little tired, a little lonesome, with that uncertain smile.

"So," she said, coming back to Lucas. "Do you really freeze your ass off in Minnesota? Or is that just…"

Small talk, bar talk. A second drink. Lucas waiting for a break, waiting…

Getting it. A slender man walked in, touched a woman on the cheek, got a quick peck in return. He was blond, carefully dressed, and after a moment, looked at the back of Fell's head, said something to the woman he'd touched, then looked carefully at Lucas.

"There's a guy," Lucas said, leaning across the table, talking in a low voice. "And I think he's looking at you. By the bar…"

She turned her head and lit up. "Mica," she called. To Lucas she said, "He used to be my hairdresser. He's, like, moved downtown." She slid out of the booth, walked up to the bar. "When did you get back…?"

"I thought that was you…" Mica said.

Mica had been to Europe; he started a story. Lucas sipped the beer, lifted his feet to the opposite seat, caught Fell's purse between his ankles, pulled it in. Fumbled with it, out of sight, watching. The waitress glanced his way, lifted her eyebrows. He shook his head. If she came over, if Mica's story ended too soon, if Fell hurried back to get a cigarette…

There. Keys. He'd been waiting all day for a shot at them…

He glanced at the key ring in his hand, six keys. Three good candidates. He had a flat plastic box in his pocket that had once held push pins. He'd dumped the pins and filled both the bottom and the lid with a thin layer of modeling clay. He pressed the first key in the clay, turned it, pressed again. Then the second key. The third key he did in the lid; if he made the impressions too close together, the clay tended to distort… He glanced into the box. Good, clean impressions, six of them.

Fell was still talking. He slipped the keys back into her purse, gripped it with his ankles, lifted it back to her seat…

Pulse pounding like an amateur shoplifter's.

Jesus.

Got them.

CHAPTER

7

Lily called the next morning, "Got them," she said. "We're going to breakfast…"

Lucas called Fell, catching her just before she left her apartment.

"O'Dell called," he said. "He wants me to have breakfast with him. I probably won't make it down until ten o'clock or so."

"All right. I'll run the guy Lonnie told us about, the guy with the Cadillac in Atlantic City. It won't be much…"

"Unless the guy's into medical supplies. Maybe the syringes weren't his only item."

"Yeah…" She knew that was bullshit, and Lucas grinned at the telephone.

"Hey, we're driving nails. I'll buy you lunch later on."

The Lakota Hotel was old, but well-kept for New York. It was close to the publishing company that produced Lucas' board games, convenient to restaurants, and had beds that his feet didn't hang off of. From this particular room, he had a view over the roof below into the windows of a glass-sided office building. Not wonderful, but not bad, either. He had two nightstands, a writing table, a chest of drawers, a window seat, a color television with a working remote, and a closet with a light that came on automatically when he opened it.

He went to the closet, pulled out a briefcase and opened it on the bed. Inside was a monocular, a cassette recorder with a phone clip, and a Polaroid Spectra camera with a half-dozen rolls of film. Excellent. He closed the briefcase, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and rode back down to the street. A bellhop, loitering in the phone-booth-sized lobby, said, "Cab, Mr. Davenport?"

"No. I've got a car coming," he said. Outside, he hurried down the street to a breakfast bar, got a pint of orange juice in a wax carton, and went back outside.

After leaving Fell the night before, he'd gone to Lily's apartment and given her the key impressions. Lily knew an intelligence officer who could get them made overnight, discreetly.

"Old friend?" Lucas asked.

"Go home, Lucas," she'd said, pushing him out the door.

And now she called his name again: a black town car slid to the curb, a cluster of antennas sticking out of the trunk lid, and when the back window slid down, he saw her face. "Lucas…"

O'Dell's driver was a broad man with a Korean War crew cut, his hair the color of rolled steel. A hatchet nose split basalt eyes, and his lips were dry and thick; a Gila monster's. Lucas got in the passenger seat.

"Avery's?" the driver asked. The front seat was separated from the back by an electric window, which had been run down.

"Yeah," O'Dell said. He was reading the Times editorial page. A pristine copy of the Wall Street Journal lay between his right leg and Lily's left. As he looked over the paper, he asked Lucas, "Did you eat yet?"

"A carton of orange juice."

"We'll get you something solid," O'Dell said. He'd not stopped reading the paper, and the question and comment were perfunctory. After a moment, he muttered, "Morons."

Lily said to the driver, "This is Lucas Davenport next to you, Aaron-Lucas, that's Aaron Copland driving."

"Not the fuckin' piano player, either," Copland said. His eyes went to Lucas. "How are ya?"

"Nice to meet you," Lucas said.

At Avery's, Copland got out first and held the door for O'Dell. Copland had a wide, solid gut, but the easy moves of an athlete. He wore a pistol clipped to his belt, just to the left of his navel, and though his golf shirt covered it, he made no particular attempt to conceal it.

A heavy automatic, Lucas thought. Most of the New York cops he'd seen were carrying ancient.38 Specials, revolvers that looked as though they'd been issued at the turn of the century. Copland, whatever else he might be, was living in the present. He never looked directly at Lucas or Lily or O'Dell as they were getting out of the car, but around them, into the corners and doorways and window wells.

In the closest doorway was a solid oak door with a narrow window at eye height, and below that, a gleaming brass plaque that said AVERY' S. Behind the door was a restaurant full of politicians: they had places like this in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Lucas had never seen one in New York. It was twenty feet wide, a hundred feet deep, with a long dark mahogany bar to the right side of the entrance. Overhead, wooden racks held hundreds of baseball bats, lying side by side, all of them autographed. A dozen flat Plexiglas cases marched down the left-hand wall opposite the bar, like stations of the cross, and each case held a half-dozen more bats, autographed. Lucas knew most of the names-Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Maris, Mays, Snider, Mantle. Others, like Nick Etten, Bill Terry, George Stirnweiss, Monte Irvin, rang only faint bells in his memory. At the end of the bar, a double row of booths extended to the back of the restaurant; almost all of the booths were occupied.