looking like your dog had died.'
'Yeah. It's Jen and it's this fuckin' case. Larry killed, executed. And I've been useless. That feels weird, you know? When something important is happening-drugs, gambling, credit-card scams, burglary rings-I've got these contacts. Daniel comes to me and says, Talk to your net. We got thirty-six burglaries on the southeast side last week, all small shit, stereos and TVs.' So I go out and talk to the net. A good part of the time, I'll find out what's happening. I'll squeeze a gambler and get sent to a fence and squeeze the fence and find a junkie, and squeeze the junkie and get the whole ring. But this thing… I got nobody. If they were regular crooks, I could find them. Dopers need dope or need to sell it, so they're out and about. Burglars and credit-card hustlers need fences. But who do these guys need? An old friend. Maybe a former university professor. Maybe an old sixties radical. Maybe some kind of right-wing lunatic. Maybe Indian, maybe white. Who the fuck knows? I spent my whole goddamn life in this town, and most of the time I lived right around where the Indians live and I never saw them. I know a few, but it's because they're in drugs or burglary, or because they're straight and I go to their stores. Other than that, I just don't have a net out there. I've got a black net. I've got a white net. I've even got an Irish net. I don't have an Indian net.'
'Stop feeling sorry for yourself,' Lily said. 'You got the tip on the trouble out at Bear Butte and found the photograph that I picked Hood out of.'
'I got tied up like a fuckin' pig by Hood and almost got my brains blown out…'
'You figured out how to squeeze the Liss woman and got the names of the Crows out of her. You're doing all right, Davenport.'
'It's been luck, and that ain't going to hack it from here on out,' Lucas said, glancing at her. 'So stop trying to cheer me up.'
'I'm not,' she said cheerfully. 'We don't have a lot to be cheerful about. As a matter of fact, unless we get real lucky, we're completely fucked.'
'Not completely,' Lucas said. He downshifted, let the car wind down to a red light and touched her thigh. 'But in an hour, who knows?'
Lily prowled through the house like a potential buyer, checking each of the rooms. Once, Lucas thought, he caught her sniffing the air. He grinned, said nothing and got two beers.
'Pretty good,' she said finally, as she came up the stairs from the basement. 'Where'd you get that old safe?'
'I use it as a gun safe,' Lucas said, handing her a beer. 'I picked it up cheap when they were tearing out a railroad ticket office here in St. Paul. It took six guys to get it in the house and down the stairs. I was afraid the stairs were going to break under the weight.'
She took a sip of beer and said, 'When you invited me for lunch…'
'Yeah?'
'… am I supposed to make it?'
'Oh, fuck no,' he said. 'You got your choice. Pasta salad or chicken-breast salad with slices of avocado and light ranch dressing.'
'Really?'
'It's a zoo over on Franklin and down on Lake,' Lily said as she worked down into her salad. 'With Clay in town, the feebs are crawling all over the place.'
'Assholes,' Lucas grunted. 'They've got no contacts, the people hate them, they spend twenty-four hours a day stepping on their dicks…'
'They're doing that now, in major numbers,' Lily agreed. She looked up from her chicken-breast salad and said, 'That was delicious. That pasta looks pretty good too…'
'Want a bite?'
'Maybe just a bite?'
After lunch, they went to the study and Lily pulled out one of Anderson's notebooks for review. They both drank another beer, and Lucas put his feet up on a hassock and dozed.
'Warm in here,' Lily said after a while.
'Yeah. The furnace kicked in. I looked at the thermometer. It's thirty-six degrees outside.'
'It felt cold,' she said, 'but it's so pretty, you don't notice it. With the sun and everything.'
'Yeah.' He yawned and dozed some more, then cracked his eyes open as Lily peeled off her cotton sweater. She had a marvelously soft profile, he thought. He watched her read, nibbling at her lower lip.
'Nothing in the notebooks,' he said. 'I've been through them.'
'There must be something, somewhere.'
'Mmm.'
'Why did the Crows kill Larry? They must have known that it would be counterproductive, in the political sense. And they didn't have to kill him-he wasn't helping us that much.'
'They didn't know that. He was on TV after the raid on the Crows' apartment… Maybe they thought…'
'Ah. I didn't think of that,' she said. Then she frowned. 'I was on TV the other night. After Larry was cut.'
'Might be a good idea to lie low for a while,' Lucas said. 'These guys are fruitcakes.'
'I still can't figure Larry,' she said. 'Or this other guy, Yellow Hand. Why kill Yellow Hand? Revenge? But revenge doesn't make any sense in this kind of situation, against one of your own people. It just muddies things up. And they never mention those shootings in their press releases…'
'I got no ideas,' Lucas said. After a moment he added, 'Well, that's not quite right. I do have one idea…'
'What's that?'
'Why don't we sneak back to the bedroom?'
She sighed, smiled a sad smile and said, 'Lucas…'
When they talked about it later, Lucas and Lily agreed that there wasn't anything notable about the time they spent in bed that afternoon. The love was soft and slow, and they both laughed a lot, and between times they talked about their careers and salaries and told cop stories. It was absolutely terrific; the best of their lives.
'I've decided what I'm going to do about David,' Lily said later in the day, rolling out to the edge of the bed and putting her feet on the floor.
'What are you going to do?' Lucas asked. He had been putting on his jockey shorts, and he stopped with one foot through a leg hole.
'I'm going to lie to him,' she said.
'Lie to him?'
'Yeah. What we've got going, David and I, is pretty good. He's a good guy. He's attractive, he's got a nice sense of humor, he worries about me and the kids. It's just…'
'Keep talking.'
'There's not the same kind of heat as there is with you. I can look at him sometimes and I get a lump in my throat, I can't even talk. I just feel so… warm toward him. I love him. But I don't get that kind of driving hot feeling. You know what I mean?'
'Yeah. I know.'
'I was thinking about it the other night. I was thinking, Here's Davenport. He's large and he's rough and he makes himself happy first. He's not always asking me if I'm okay, have I come. So what is this, Lily? Is this some kind of safe rape fantasy?'
'What'd you decide?'
'I don't know. I didn't decide anything, really. Except to lie to David.'
Lucas got fresh underwear from his chest of drawers and said, 'Come on. I'll give you a shower.'
She followed him into the bathroom. In the shower she said, 'David wouldn't do this either. I mean, you just kind of… work me over. Your hands are… in everything, and I… kind of like it.'
Lucas shrugged. 'You're hurting yourself. Stop talking about David, for Christ's sake.'
She nodded. 'Yeah. I better.'
When they got out of the shower, he dried her, starting the rough towel around her head and slowly working down her legs. When he finished, he was sitting on the side of the bathtub; he reached around her and pulled her pelvis against his head. She ruffled his hair.
'God, you smell good,' he said.
