"Could take a couple of days."
"Get back to me-and I'm serious about a fee, man. A few bucks."
"We can work that out…"
"Get back to me, man."
When he hung up, Lucas dropped back on the bed, thinking back to the interview with Rich. Rich didn't know why he'd been picked for Petty's team. Neither did Lily. His only qualification seemed to be that he'd later get a call from a burglar he knew, producing the only lead in the case. Good luck of a rare and peculiar variety.
Rich said that Cornell Reed was heavy into the crack. If that was right, Reed shouldn't be flying out of town. If he had enough cash to fly, he'd buy dope with the cash and take the bus. Or hitchhike. Or just not go. With enough crack, you didn't have to go anywhere… He certainly wouldn't take several hundred dollars out to La Guardia and push it across the ticket counter.
On the other hand, a doper doesn't take a cab to the bus depot, not when the A train would have him there quicker and leave him enough change for a rock or two. La Guardia was another story. There was no easy way to get there, except by cab…
So maybe he was flying. And maybe he was flying on an unrefundable ticket. And that sounded like a ticket issued by a government.
Or a police department.
And then there was Mrs. Logan's story.
That was very interesting; interesting and disturbing. Had Lily not understood it? Or had she hoped that Lucas hadn't?
CHAPTER
12
Thirty hits of speed, two days; Bekker hadn't slept forever. He was carried along on the chemicals like a leaf in a river, the flow of time and thought rolling about him. And he was avoiding the woman with the eyes, the woman watching him. She terrified him: but the chemicals had defeated her after two days, and she was losing her grip.
But other things were happening.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, the bugs came. He could feel them, lines of them, inching through his veins. All of his veins, but in particular, a vein on the forearm; he could feel them, little bumps, rattling along, doing their filthy work. Eating him.
Eating the blood cells. He could remember, as a child, kicking open ant nests and seeing the ants running for cover, their mealy white eggs in their jaws. And this was the image that came to him: ants running, but with blood cells caught in their pincers. Thousands of them, running through his veins. If he could let them out…
A voice in his head: No no no, hallucination, no no no…
He stood up, his knees and feet aching. He'd walked for miles in the basement, back and forth, back and forth. How far? A few errant brain cells wandered away and did the calculation… say five thousand round trips, twenty feet each way… thirty-seven point eight seven eight miles. Thirty-seven point eight seven eight seven eight seven eight seven eight seven…
He was snared in the eight-seven loop, captivated by the sheer infinity of it, a loop that would last longer than the sun, would last longer than the universe, would go on for… what?
He shook himself out of the loop, felt the bugs raging through his veins, took his forearm to the bathroom, turned on the light, looked for bumps, where the bugs scuttled along…
A voice: formication…
He pushed it away. Had to let them out, squeeze them out somehow. He walked into the operating theater, went to the instruments pan, found a scalpel, let them out…
He began to walk, the bugs draining away, began to pace again-what was that smell? So clean and coppery, like the sea. Blood?
He looked down at himself. Blood was running from his arm. Not heavily, now slowing, but his hand and forearm looked as though they had been flayed. Where he'd been pacing, blood splattered the floor, an oval line marking his pattern, as though someone had been swinging a decapitated chicken.
The voice: stereotypy.
What? He stared at the arm and a bug zipped down the vein. Like Charlie Victor on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, like Charlie Victor at the Hotel Oscar, Charlie Hotel India Mike November Lima Tango Romeo…
Another loop-where had that come from? 'Nam? He shook himself out. The bugs were waiting, in all their ranks.
Medication. He went to his medicine table, found a half-dozen pills. That was all. He popped one, then another. And a third.
He picked up the phone, struggled with himself, put it back down. No telephone from here, not to a dealer. Cops bugged dealers, bugged… He looked down at his arm, at the sticky blood…
Calmed himself. Washed. Dressed. Put a bandage on the cut on his forearm. Cut? How did that…
He lost the thought and fixed himself in the mirror, preparing for his public, the need always there, looking over his shoulder. The need brought up the street personality. Changed his voice. Changed his manner. When he finished dressing, he went out to the corner, to a pay phone.
"Yes?" Woman's voice.
"May I speak to Dr. West?"
Whitechurch was there a second later. "Jesus Christ, we gotta talk. Like now. The cops have been here and they're looking for your buddy-or whoever you sold that shit to, the monitoring gear."
"What?"
"The guy you sold it to," Whitechurch said insistently. "He's this fruitcake killer, Bekker. Jesus Christ, the cops were all over me."
"New York cops?"
"Yeah, some cooze and this mean-looking asshole from Minneapolis."
"Are they on your phone?"
"This is not my phone. Don't worry about that. Just worry about the dude who bought that shit…"
"I can handle that," Bekker squeaked. The effort hurt. "But I need some product."
"Jesus Christ…"
"A lot of it."
"How much?"
"How much do you have?"
There was a moment's silence, then Whitechurch said, "You're not with this Bekker dude, are you?"
"It wasn't Bekker. I sold it to a high school kid out on Staten Island. He's using it for his science project."
That clicked with Whitechurch: Schoolteacher…
Whitechurch had decided to take a vacation to Miami, could use the extra cash. "I could get you two hundred of the crosses, thirty of the angels and ten of the white, if you can handle it."
"I can handle it."
"Twenty minutes?"
"No… I've got to come over…" Let him think Bekker lived on Staten Island. "I need a couple of hours."
"Two hours? All right. Two hours. See you at nine. Usual place."
Bekker left the Volkswagen in a staff parking ramp off First Avenue; the ramp was open to the public from six until midnight. He nodded to the guard in the booth and rolled all the way up to the top floor. He'd watched Whitechurch before. He believed in taking care and knew that drug dealers routinely sold friends and customers to the cops. He'd learned a lot in jail; another side of life.
Whitechurch insisted on punctuality. "That way, I only have the stuff on me, on the street, for a minute. Safer that way, you know?"
Usually, Whitechurch would be walking out of the hospital, or down the sidewalk toward a bus bench, when Bekker came by. Once Bekker, arriving early, had watched him from the ramp. Whitechurch had come out, walked down the sidewalk toward the bus bench, had waited for two or three minutes, then had gone back inside, using the same door he'd used on the way out. Bekker had called to apologize, and made the pickup a few minutes later.
Bekker walked down to the first floor, past the pay booth, and down the street to an alleylike passage to the emergency room. Night was settling in, the streetlights coming on. He was early, slowed down. Several people around. Not good. He turned down the alley to the emergency room, walked up to the door that Whitechurch usually came through. Pulled on the handle. Locked. Glanced at his watch. Still two minutes early. Whitechurch should be coming, just any moment…