"How cool can a Traffic guy be?" Lucas cracked.
She frowned. "Were we talking about him? I don't…"
"Sure, at your place," he said, thinking, As a matter of fact, you didn't, Lily did, Davenport, you asshole. "I remember, mm, important details…"
"Why's that important?" she asked, but she knew, and she was flattered.
"You're the fuckin' detective," Lucas said, grinning at her. "Have another drop of wine."
"Trying to get me drunk?"
"Maybe."
Fell put her wineglass on the table and poked a finger at him. "What the fuck are you doing, Davenport? Are you Internal Affairs?"
"Jesus Christ-I told you, I'm not. Look, if you're really serious, my goddamn publisher's not far from here and my face is on the game boxes. There's a biography and everything, we could go over…"
"Okay. But why are you pumping me?"
"I'm not pumping you…"
"Bullshit," she said. Her voice rose. "You're a goddamn trouser snake just like he was, and just like Kennett. I knew that as soon as you asked me to dance. I mean, I could feel myself melting. Now, what the fuck are you doing?"
Lucas leaned forward and said, trying to quiet her, trying not to laugh, "I'm not…"
"Jesus," she said, pulling back. She went back to the table and picked up her purse. "I'm really loaded."
"Where're we going?"
"Up to your room. I've changed my mind."
"Barbara…" Lucas threw three twenties at the tabletop, and hurried after her. "You're a little drunk…"
"Fuckin' trouser snake," Fell said as she led the way through the door.
He woke in the half-lit room, a thin arrow of light from the bathroom falling across the bed. He was confused, a feeling of deja vu. Didn't Fell just call, didn't she say…? He stopped, feeling the weight. She'd fallen asleep cradled beneath his arm, head on his chest, her leg across his right. He tried to ease out from beneath her, and she woke and said, "Hmmm?"
"Just trying to rearrange," he said, whispering, catching up with the night. She'd been almost timid. Not passive, but… wary.
"Um…" She propped herself up, her small breast peeking at him over the top of the blanket. "What time is it?"
Lucas found his travel clock, peered at it. "Ten minutes of three," he said.
"Oh, God." She pushed herself up, her back to him, and the sheet fell off. She had a wonderful back, he decided, smooth, slender, but with nice muscles. He drew a finger down her spine and she arched away from him. "Oooo. Stop that," she said over her shoulder.
"Come lay down," he said.
"Time to go."
"What?"
She turned to look at him, but her eyes were in shadow and he couldn't see them. "I really…"
"Bullshit. Come on and sleep with me."
"I really need some sleep. "
"So do I. Fuckin' Bekker."
"Forget Bekker for a few hours," she said.
"All right. But lay down."
She dropped back on the bed, beside him. "You're not still with Rothenburg?"
"No."
"It's over?"
"It's weird, is what it is," he said.
"You're not saying the right thing," said Fell. She propped herself up again, and he drew three fingers across the soft skin on the bottom of her breast.
"That's because Lily and I are seriously tangled up," Lucas said. "You know she's sleeping with Kennett."
"I figured. The first time I saw them together, she was dropping him off at Midtown South, and she kissed him good-bye and I had to go inside and put a cool wet rag on my forehead. I mean, hot. But then I saw you two talking to each other, you and Rothenburg, and it looked like unfinished business."
"Nah. But I was there when her marriage came apart and she helped kill off the last of my relationship with a woman I had a kid with. We were kind of… pivotal… for each other," Lucas said.
"All right," Fell said.
"Lily was driving?"
"What?"
"You said she dropped off Kennett."
"Well, yeah, Kennett can't drive. That'd kill him, the Manhattan traffic would." She sat up again, half turned, and this time he could see her eyes. "Davenport, what the fuck are you up to?"
"Jesus…" He laughed, and caught her around the waist, and she let him pull her down.
"The one thing I want to know-if you're up to something, you're not screwing me to get it, are you?"
"Barbara…" Lucas rolled his eyes.
"All right. You'd lie to me anyway, so why do I ask?" Then she frowned and answered her own question: "I'll tell you why. Because I'm an idiot and I always ask. And the guys always lie to me. Jesus, I need a shrink. A shrink and a cigarette."
"So smoke, I don't mind," Lucas said. "Just don't dribble ashes on my chest."
"Really?" She scratched him on the breastbone.
"I mean, it's killing you, slowly but surely, but if you need one…"
"Thanks." She got out of bed-a wonderful back-found her purse, got her cigarettes, an ashtray and the TV remote. "I gotta get some nicotine into my bloodstream," she said. Ingenuously, genuinely, she added, "I didn't have a cigarette because I was afraid my mouth would taste like an ashtray."
"I thought you'd decided not to sleep with me, and changed your mind."
She shook her head. "Dummy," she said. She lit the cigarette and pointed the remote control at the TV, popped it on, thumbed through the channels until she got to the weather. "Hot and more hot," she said, after a minute.
"It's like Los Angeles, 'cept more humid," Lucas said.
"Shoulda been here last year…"
They talked and she smoked, finished the cigarette, and then lit up another and went around the room and stole all his hotel matches. "I never have enough matches. I always steal them," she said. "When I'm working I've got two rules: pee whenever you can, and steal matches. No. Three rules…"
"Never eat at a place called Mom's?"
"No, but that's a good one," she said. "Nope: it's never sleep with a goddamn cop. Cops are so goddamn treacherous…"
CHAPTER
16
Sunday morning.
Sunlight poured like milk through the venetian blinds. Fell woke at nine o'clock, stirred, then half-sat, looking down at Lucas' dark head on the pillow. After a moment, she got up and stumbled around, picking up clothes. Lucas opened an eye and said, "Have I mentioned your ass?"
"Several times, and I appreciate all of them," she said. She offered a smile, but weakly. "My head… that goddamn cheap wine."
"That wine wasn't cheap." Lucas sat up, still sleepy, dropped his feet to the floor, rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll call Kennett, see if we can figure something out."
She nodded, still groggy. "I gotta go home to change clothes, then back to Bellevue. There'll be people around we wouldn't see during the week."
Lucas said, "This is really important to you, isn't it?"
"It's the biggest case I've ever been on," she said. "God, I'd love to get him. I mean, me, personally."
"You won't get him at Bellevue," Lucas said. "Even if you find Whitechurch's helper, and she talks, I wouldn't be surprised if Bekker's using a pay phone. Then where are you?"
"So if we find the phone, we can stake it out. Or maybe he uses one on the block where he lives, we can look at the apartments."
"Mmm."
"Maybe we'll get him tomorrow night, at the speech."
"Maybe… C'mon. I'll make sure you get clean in the shower."
"That's something I've always needed," she said. "Help in the shower."
"Well, you said your head feels weird. What you need is a hot shower and a neck massage. Really. I say this in a spirit of fraternity and sorority."
"Good, I don't think I could handle another sexual impulse," Fell said. But the shower took them back to the bed, and that took them back to the shower, and Fell was leaning against the wall, Lucas standing between her legs, drying her back with a rough terry-cloth towel, when Anderson called from Minneapolis.