"Kays, Martin." He flipped the file open. Kays had been arrested twice for rape. Served two years the first time, acquitted the second time. He was suspected in as many as thirty attacks on the Upper West Side. He had had it down to a science, attacking women at night in locked parking garages. He apparently entered when a car exited, ducking under the descending door, then waited until he caught a woman alone in the dark. Half-dozen busts on drug-possession charges, assault, theft, drunkenness.
"Kays," Lily said, looking over his shoulder. "He should've gotten it five years earlier."
"Wrong thinking, mon capitaine, " Lucas said, looking up at her. She handed him a Special Export.
"Yeah, but it's part of the problem: with the exception of the three killings I told you about, including Walt, which they can deny, most people in town would be rootin' for these guys if they knew about them. Especially when they're doing guys like Kays. I doubt we could find a jury that'd convict them."
"You mean it was all right, as long as they were hitting dirtbags?"
"No. Just that if you kill somebody who deserves to die, and will anyway, someday, but maybe fuck up a hundred people's lives before then… hurrying the due date along doesn't seem that terrible. Compared to killing innocent people. But these guys aren't hitting criminals anymore, they're attacking… freedom."
"I can't operate at that kind of rarefied theoretical level," Lucas said, grinning at her.
"It does sound like wimpy-ass bullshit, doesn't it?" she said.
"It does."
"But it isn't," she said.
"All right."
"If you don't feel it… why'd you sign on?" she asked.
He shrugged. " 'Cause you're a good friend of mine."
"Is that enough?"
"Sure. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the few good reasons for doing anything. I'd hate to kill somebody out of patriotism or duty; I could never be a warden and throw the switch on somebody. But in hot blood, to protect family or friends… that's all right."
"Revenge?"
He thought for a minute, then nodded. "Yeah, revenge is in there. I like hunting Bekker. I'm gonna get him."
"You and Barb Fell."
"Yup. Speaking of whom…" He dug in his jacket shirt pocket. "Look at these. The guy looks like a cop and she's tight with him, or was." He handed her two of the Polaroids he'd taken at Fell's.
"Oh, Barbara," Lily muttered, looking at them, shaking her head. "I know this guy. Vaguely. He's a lieutenant in Traffic. We'll run him against the killings and see what we get."
"And I've got some names for you. Friends of hers. I don't know how many are cops, but if you could run them…"
"Sure."
Lucas stayed until two o'clock, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, when Lily came in and asked, "Find anything?"
"No. And you were right. These guys were the scum of the scum. How many people could put together a list like this?"
"Hundreds," she said. "But Barb Fell was at the intersection of a lot of possibilities."
Lucas nodded, ripped the sheets off the legal pad, folded them and stuck them in his jacket pocket. "I'll keep working her."
Lily's apartment was on the second floor of a converted townhouse. Lucas left at ten after two, the night just beginning to find the soft coolness that lay between the tropical days. He was a little tired, but still awake; at home he might have gone for a walk along the river, smoothing down for bedtime. In New York…
The street was reasonably well lit; a taxi loitered in the next block. He turned that way and started walking, hands in his pockets.
There were two of them.
They were big, quick, like professional linebackers.
The cars along the street were parked bumper-to-bumper. The guy behind the Citation got Lucas to turn toward him by dragging something metallic across the bumper, a chilling, ripping sound, like a knife dragged down a washboard.
Lucas instinctively stepped away and half-turned, pivoting toward the sound. Something was happening: a sound like that had to be intentional. His hand dropped to the small of his back, toward the weight of his.45.
And as he turned, the second guy, the guy who'd hidden behind the stoop, charged onto the walk, slashed at Lucas' elbow with a sap, hit him in the spine with a shoulder, and drove him into the Citation.
The pain from the sap was like an explosion, as clear as a star on a cold night, separate from the impact, standing by itself: a skillful, debilitating cop-pain. It began at his elbow and exploded up his arm to his shoulder, and Lucas screamed, thinking he might have been shot, his arm flopping uselessly as he was smashed into the car. He tried to swing the arm back, to clear out to the right, but it wouldn't move.
He saw the other man's hand coming down, and partially blocked it with his left, then was hit in the cheekbone with a fist and rocked back against the car.
The second man, coming over the car's fender, hit him, leather gloves, the second punch in a quick one-two-three combo, and Lucas, back hunched, tried to cover.
Thought: Clear out, clear out…
He was hit again, across the ear, but this time it didn't hurt: it was stunning and he started down, rolling. A gloved hand struck at him and he grabbed it with his good left hand, pulled it under him, pinned it against his chest, let his weight fall on it. He heard what seemed to be a faraway screaming as they hit the concrete walk, felt a snap; he'd broken something. He felt a dim, distant satisfaction, because he was losing this, they were killing him…
Heard glass breaking, registered it, didn't know what it was, but felt the pressure change.
Thought: Clear out, clear out. Let go of the gloved hand, felt it wrench away, and the other man screaming… Tried to roll under the car, but it was too close to the curb. Tried to cover his head with his good arm…
The.45 was like a thunderbolt.
The muzzle-flash broke over them like lightning, freezing everything in a strobe effect. The attackers wore nylon ski masks and gloves, long-sleeved shirts. The one who'd hit him from behind was pivoting, already running. A sap dangled from his hand, long, leather-bound, with a rounded bulge at the business end. The one whose arm Lucas had broken scrabbled to his feet and screamed, "Jesus…" and ran.
The.45 struck down again as Lucas sat down on the curb, his legs gone, trying to roll under the car and away from the lightning, not knowing where it came from, groping in the small of his back with his good arm, but the holster was too far around, trying to free his pistol as the attackers faded like ghosts, without a word, down the sidewalk…
Then silence.
And Lily was there in a cotton nightgown, the.45 in her fist, a ludicrous combination, the soft white human cotton and the dark steel killer Colt.
"Lucas…" She maneuvered toward him, controlling the.45, not really looking at him, her eyes searching for targets. "Are you okay?"
"Fuck no," he said.
CHAPTER
8
Bekker was first astonished, then swept away. When he returned to the bookstore, he glanced at the counterman with a sigh.
"Are you okay?" The counterman was concerned. He had a long neck and a narrow head with small features, like an oversized thumb sticking out of his shoulders. His face was cocked to one side and the store lights glittered off the right lense of his spectacles, lending him a Strangelovian menace.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Bekker squeaked. He shuffled his feet and looked away, down the store.
The store was fifteen feet wide and forty deep. Vinyl paneling sagged away from the walls behind rough shelving; the linoleum floor was cracked and holed. The narrow aisles smelled of moldy paper, disintegrating bookcovers and the traffic of the unwashed. An obese man stood at a sale table halfway back, under a round antishoplifting mirror, a hardcover Spiderman anthology propped on his gut, feeding a nut-covered ice cream bar into his face. Bekker hadn't even seen him come in.