Lucas shrugged. "You ever tried a cop?"
"Yeah, yeah." She nodded, with a small smile, eyes unfocusing. "A trouser snake. We were hot for a while, but… You want a little peace and quiet when you're home. He wanted to go out cruising for dopers."
Lucas took a bite out of a slice of pepperoni, chewed a minute and then said, "A couple of years ago, Lily and I were involved. This is between you and me?"
"Sure." The curiosity was wide on her face, unhidden.
"We were getting intense, this was back in Minneapolis, her marriage was falling apart," Lucas said. "Then this Indian dude shot her right in the chest. Goddamn near killed her."
"I know about that."
"I freaked out. Man. So then we saw each other a few times, but I'm afraid to fly, and she was busy…"
"Yeah, yeah…"
"Then last year…"
"The actress," Fell said. "The one that Bekker killed."
"I'm like a curse," Lucas said, staring past Fell's head, eyes and voice gone dark. "If I'd been a little smarter, a little quicker… Shit."
After lunch, they went back to the paper, working through it, finding nothing. Fell, restless, wandered down to the team room as Lucas continued to read. Kennett brought her back a half-hour later.
"Bellevue," she said, plopping down in the chair across from Lucas.
"What?" Lucas looked at Kennett, leaning in the door.
"Bellevue lost some monitoring equipment from one of its repair shops. We never found out because it wasn't too obvious-everything was accounted for, on paper. But when the stuff didn't come back from repair, somebody checked, and it was gone. The repair people have receipts, they thought it was back on the floor. Anyway, it's been gone for more than a month, and probably more like six or seven weeks. From before the time Bekker killed the first one," Kennett said.
"They lost exactly what Bekker's been using in his papers," Fell said.
"He could've gotten the halothane there, too, and probably any amount of drugs," Lucas said. "All from one source, if it's a staffer."
"Sounds like him," Fell said.
"I'd bet on it," Kennett said. He ran a hand through his hair, straightened his tie. Pissed. "God damn it, we were slow pulling this in."
"What're you going to do?"
"Move very quietly: we don't want to scare anybody off," Kennett said. "We'll start processing Bellevue staffers against criminal records. And we'll touch all the dopers we know, see who knows who on the inside. Then we do interviews. It'll take a few days. Maybe you guys could get back to your fences? See if you could find somebody who handles Bellevue."
"Yeah." Lucas looked at his watch. Almost three. "Let's get back to Jackie Smith," he said to Fell.
Smith met them in Washington Square. The afternoon was oppressively hot, but Smith was cooclass="underline" he arrived in a gray Mercedes, which he parked by a hydrant.
"I don't want to talk to you. You want to talk to somebody, talk to my lawyer," Smith said as Lucas and Fell walked up. They stood just off the boccie ball courts, under a gingko tree, hiding from the sun.
"Come on, Jackie," Lucas said. "I'm sorry about the goddamn putting green. I got a little overheated."
"Overheated, my ass," Smith snarled. "You know how long it'll take to fix it?"
"Jackie, we really need to make an arrangement, okay?" Lucas said. "Something new came up on this Bekker guy, and you're in a position to help. Like I said last night, it's personal with me. No bullshit. I just need a little information."
"I don't know fuckin' Bekker from any other asshole," Smith said impatiently.
"Hey, we believe you," Lucas said. "And I had to do the green. I had to get your attention-you were blowing us off. Isn't that right?"
Smith stared at him for a long beat, then said, "So what do you want? Exactly?"
"We need the names of guys who can get stuff out of Bellevue."
"That's all you want? Then you'll get off my back?"
"We can't promise," Lucas said. "I can't talk for Barbara-but I'd be a hell of a lot friendlier."
"Jesus Christ, I'm dealing with a fuckin' fruitcake," Smith said. Then: "I don't handle deals at that level. That's small-time."
"I know, I know, but we need a guy who does handle that kind of action. A couple of names, that's all."
"You gonna fuck them over?"
"Not if they talk to me. But if they fuck me over, I'll be back to you."
Fell jumped in with a sales pitch: "Jesus, Jackie, this'd be so easy if you just ride along. It's no skin off your ass. You're actually not helping the cops. You're helping some poor woman who's gonna get her heart cut out, or something."
"Yeah, you're the one who poured my coffee on the street," Smith said, apropos of nothing at all. He looked across the plaza, where a group of black kids were working through a dance routine to rap music from a boombox. "All right," he said. "Two guys. Welclass="underline" a guy and a woman. They're not actually inside the hospital, but they can put you onto guys who are inside."
"That's all we were asking for…"
"Yeah, yeah. Jesus, you're both full of shit…" Then he started toward his car and said, "I'll be a minute."
"Making a call," Fell said as Smith disappeared into the Mercedes.
He was back in two minutes, with two names and addresses. Lucas wrote the names in his notebook. Smith, with a snort of disgust, turned back to his car, shaking his head.
"Angela Arnold and Thomas Leese," Lucas said to Fell. "Where're these addresses?"
Fell looked and said, "Lower East Side. Never heard of them, though. Want me to run them?"
"Yes. Or just drop them off, get them run overnight," Lucas said, looking at his watch. "Kennett wants to be careful, and I don't want to step on him. Let's not worry about talking to them until tomorrow."
Fell dropped him at the hotel, then went on to Midtown South. Lucas cleaned up, ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, went back to his room and watched the Twins and Yankees through the seventh inning, then caught a cab for Lily's apartment. She buzzed him up and came to the door in her bare feet.
"You're late," she said.
"Got hung up," Lucas said, stepping inside. He'd stayed in her apartment almost two years earlier, when she'd just moved in: the furniture then had a temporary, scrounged look. Boxes had been stacked in the living room, a television had sat on two short metal file cabinets. The kitchen wallpaper had been a bizarre bamboo design, with monkeys; the countertops a well-chipped plastic. Now the place had a careful, colored look: warm rugs over a beige carpet; bright hand-printed graphics on the walls; sparse, but carefully chosen chairs and a broad leather couch. The kitchen was a subtle gold with hardwood counters. He'd stopped by the night before to drop off the key impressions, but hadn't stayed long enough to look around. Now he took a few minutes. "The place looks good," he said finally. He felt a pressure: when he'd been there two years before, they'd spent a lot of time in bed, Lily intent on exploring, feeling, desperate for the intensity of the sex. Now they were polite.
"That's what happens when your marriage splits up. You work on the apartment," she said. She stood close to him, but not too close, one hand just touching the other at her waist, like a hostess. Polite and something else. Wary?
"Yeah, I know."
"I made the back bedroom into an office, everything's stacked up in there. Go on back. Want a beer?"
"Sure." He wandered back to the office, yawned, sat down at the desk, pushed the chair back far enough that he could get his heels on a half-open drawer, picked up the first file. He'd been reading files all day; a million facts floating around free-form.