feeb?'
'He went out. Said he was coming back. He seems kinda touchy about his chair, if that's what you were thinking,' said the thin cop.
'Yeah?'
'Stacks of newspaper down the hall,' Lily said.
One of the magazines had a debate on ten-millimeter automatic pistols. A gun writer suggested that it was the perfect defensive cartridge, producing twice the muzzle energy of typical nine-millimeter and.45 ACP rounds and almost half again as much as the.357 Magnum. The writer's opponent, a Los Angeles cop, worried that the ten- millimeter was a little too hot, tending to punch holes not only through the target but also through the crowd at the bus stop two blocks away. Lucas couldn't follow the details of the argument. His mind kept straying to the shape of Lily's neck, the edge of her cheek from the side and slightly behind, the curve of her wrist. Her lip. He remembered Sloan saying something about her overbite, and he smiled just a bit and nibbled at his own lip.
'What're you smiling about?' Lily asked.
'Nothing,' Lucas said. 'Magazine.'
She heaved herself to her feet, stretched, yawned and wandered over. 'Hot-hot-hot,' she said. 'It's a ten- MM?'
Lucas closed the magazine. 'Dumb fucks,' he said.
Anderson called on the portable a few minutes after one o'clock: The killer in Oklahoma City had vanished. Kieffer had talked to FBI agents in South Dakota about the rumors Hart had heard of a midnight ceremony, Anderson added, but nobody had much.
'There's some question about whether there ever was such a thing,' he said.
'What do you mean?'
'Kieffer talked to the lead investigator out there and this guy thinks the rumors came out of the confrontation with the bikers. One night the Indians surrounded Bear Butte, wouldn't let the bikers down the road around it. The bikers supposedly saw fires and so on, and heard drum music-and that eventually got turned into this secret- ceremony business.'
'So it could be another dead end,' Lily said.
'That's what Kieffer says.'
'I could be watching The Young and the Restless,' Lily said twenty minutes later.
'Go for a walk?' Lucas suggested.
'All right. Take a portable.'
They went out the alley, two blocks to a 7-Eleven, bought Diet Cokes and started back.
'So fuckin' boring,' Lily complained.
'You don't have to sit there. He probably won't be in until this evening,' Lucas said.
'I feel like I oughta be there,' Lily said. 'He's my man.'
On the way back, Lucas took a small gun-cleaning kit out of the Porsche. Inside the apartment, he spread newspapers on the floor, sat cross-legged, broke down his P7 and began cleaning it. Lily went back to her stack of newspapers for a few minutes, then moved over across from him.
'Mind if I use it?' she asked after watching for a moment.
'Go ahead.'
'Thanks.' She took her.45 out of her purse, popped the magazine, checked the chamber to make sure it was empty and began stripping it. 'I break a fingernail about once a week on this damn barrel bushing,' she said. She stuck her tongue out in concentration, rotated the bushing over the recoil spring plug and eased the spring out.
'Pass the nitro,' she said.
Lucas handed her the cleaning solvent.
'This stuff smells better than gasoline,' she said. 'It could turn me into a sniffer.'
'Gives me headaches,' Lucas said. 'It smells good but I can't handle it.' He noticed that her.45 was spotless before she began cleaning it. His P7 didn't need the work either, but it was something to do.
'Ever shot a P7?' he asked idly.
'The other one. The eight-shot. The big one, like yours, has a lot of firepower, but I can't get my hand around the butt. I don't like the way it carries either. Too fat.'
'That's not exactly a Tinker Toy you've got there,' he said, nodding at her Colt.
'No, but the shape of the butt is different. It's skinnier. That's what I need. It's easier to handle.'
'I really don't like that single-action for street work,' Lucas said conversationally. 'It's fine if you're target- shooting, but if you're only worried about hitting a torso… I like the double-action.'
'You could try one of the forty-five Smiths.'
'They're supposed to be good guns,' Lucas agreed. 'I probably would have, if the P7 hadn't come out first… How come you never went to a Smith?'
'Well, this thing just feels right to me. When I was shooting in competition I used a 1911 from Springfield Armory in thirty-eight Super. I want the forty-five for the street, but all that competition… the gun feels friendly.'
'You shot competition?' Lucas asked. The cops at the window, who had been listening in an abstract way, suddenly perked up at an undertone in Lucas' voice.
'I was New York women's champ in practical shooting for a couple of years,' Lily said. 'I had to quit competition because it was taking too much time. But I still shoot a little.'
'You must be pretty good,' Lucas offered. The cops by the window glanced at each other. A bet.
'Better than anybody you're likely to know,' she said offhandedly.
Lucas snorted and she squinted at him.
'What? You think you can shoot with me?'
'With you?' Lucas said. His lip might have curled.
Lily sat up, interested now. 'You ever compete?'
He shrugged. 'Some.'
'You ever win?'
'Some. Used a 1911, in fact.'
'Practical or bull's-eye?'
'A little of both,' he said.
'And you think you can shoot with me?'
'I can shoot with most people,' Lucas said.
She looked at him, studied his face, and a small smile started at the corners of her lips. 'You want to put your money where your mouth is?'
It was Lucas' turn to stare, weighing the challenge. 'Yeah,' he said finally. 'Anytime, anyplace.'
Lily noticed the cops by the window watching them.
'He's sandbagging me, right?' she said. 'He's the North American big-bore champ or some fuckin' thing.'
'I don't know, I never seen him shoot,' one of the cops said.
Lily stared at him with narrowed eyes, gauging the likelihood that he was lying, then turned back to Lucas. 'All right,' she said. 'Where do we shoot?'
They shot at a police pistol range in the basement of a precinct house, using Outers twenty-five-foot slow-fire pistol targets. There were seven concentric rings on each target face. The three outer rings were marked but not colored, while the inner four rings-the 7, 8, 9 and 10-were black. The center ring, the 10 ring, was a bit smaller than a dime. 'Nice range,' Lily said when Lucas turned on the lights. A Hennepin County deputy had been leaving just when they arrived. When he heard what they were doing, he insisted on judging the match.
Lily put her handset on the ledge of a shooting booth, took the.45 from her purse, held it in both hands and looked downrange over the sights. 'Let's get the targets up.'
'This P7 ain't exactly a target pistol,' Lucas said. He squinted downrange. 'I never did like the light in here either.'
'Cold feet?' Lily asked.
'Making conversation,' he said. 'I just wish I had my Gold Cup. It'd make me feel better. It'd also punch a bigger hole in the paper. The same size as yours. If you're as good as you say, that could make the
