Randy fell over the bar, scrambled along the floor behind it and up over the end of it, grabbed a bottle of Absolut vodka and backhanded it at Del's head. Then he was running for the back of the bar, Lucas four steps behind him, knowing the back door was locked. Randy hit it, hit it again, then spun, his eyes wild, flashing a spike. They were all the fashion among the assholes. Clipped to a shirt pocket, they looked like Cross ballpoint pens. With the cap off, they were six-inch steel scalpels, the tip honed to a wicked point.
'Come on, motherfucker cop,' Randy howled, spraying saliva at Lucas. His eyes were the size of half-dollars, his voice high and climbing. 'Come on, motherfucker, get cut…'
'Put the fuckin' knife down,' Del screamed. His gun pointed at Randy's head. Lucas, glancing at Del, felt the world slowing down. The fat bartender was still behind the bar, his hands on his ears, as though blocking out the noise of the fight would stop it; Marie had gotten to her feet and was staring at a bleeding palm, shrieking; the two shitkickers had taken a step away from the shuffleboard bowling machine, and one of them, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, was fumbling at the sheath on his belt…
'Fuck you, cop, kill me,' Randy shrieked, doing a sidestep shuffle. 'I'm a fuckin' juvenile, assholes…'
'Put the fuckin' blade down, Randy…' Del screamed again. He glanced sideways at Lucas. 'What d'ya wanna do, man?'
'Let me take him, let me take him,' Lucas said, and he pointed. 'The shitkicker's got a knife.' As Del started to turn, Lucas was facing Randy, his eyes wide and black, and he asked, 'You like to fuck, Randy?'
'Fuckin' A, man,' Randy brayed. He was panting, his tongue hanging out. Nuts: 'Fuck-in-A.'
'Then I hope you got a good memory, 'cause I'm gonna stick that point right through your testicles, my man. You fucked up Betty with that church key. She was a friend of mine. I been looking for you…'
'Well, you got me, Davenport, motherfucker, come get cut,' Randy shouted. He had one hand down, as he'd been shown in reform school, the knife hand back a bit. Cop rule of thumb: An asshole gets within ten feet of you with a knife, you're gonna get cut, gun or no gun, shoot or no shoot.
'Easy, man, easy,' Del shouted, looking at the shit-kicker…
'Where's the woman? Where's the woman?' Lucas called, still facing Randy, his arms wide in a wrestler's stance.
'By the door…'
'Get her…'
'Man…'
'Get her. I'll take care of this asshole…'
Lucas went straight in, faked with his right, eluded Randy's probing left hand, and when the knife hand came around, Lucas reached in and caught his right coat sleeve, half threw him and hit him in the face with a roundhouse right. Randy banged against the wall, still trying with the knife, Lucas punching him in the face.
'Lucas…' Del screamed at him.
But the air was going blue, slowing, slowing… the boy's head was bouncing off the wall, Lucas' arms pumping, his knee coming up, his elbow, then both hands pumping, a slow motion, a long, beautiful combination, a whole series of combinations, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three, like working with a speed bag… the knife on the floor, skittering away…
Suddenly Lucas was staggering backward; he tried to turn, and couldn't. Del's arm was around his throat, dragging him away…
The world sped up again. The people in the bar stared in stunned silence, all of them on their feet now, their faces like postage stamps on a long, unaddressed envelope. The basketball game was going in the background, broadcast cheers echoing tinnily through the bar.
'Jesus,' Del said, gasping for breath. He said, too loudly, 'I thought he got you with that knife. Everybody stay away from the knife, we need prints. Anybody touches it, goes to jail.'
He still had a hand on Lucas' coat collar. Lucas said, 'I'm okay, man.'
'You okay?' Del looked at him and silently mouthed, Witnesses. Lucas nodded and Del said loudly, 'You didn't get stabbed?'
'I think I'm okay…'
'Close call,' Del said, still too loud. 'The kid was nuts. You see him go nuts with that knife? Never saw anything like that…'
Steering the witnesses, Lucas thought. He looked around for Randy. The boy was on the floor, faceup, unmoving, his face a mask of blood.
'Where's his girlfriend?' Lucas asked.
'Fuck her,' Del said. He stepped over to Randy, keeping one eye on Lucas, then squatted next to the boy and cuffed his hands in front. 'I thought you were gonna get stuck, you crazy fuck.'
One of the hookers, up and wrapping a red plastic raincoat around her shoulders, ready to leave, looked down at Randy and into the general silence said, in a long, calm Kansas City drawl, 'You better call an ambliance. That motherfucker is hurt.'
CHAPTER 3
Bekker was of two minds.
There was an Everyday Bekker, the man of science, the man in the white lab coat, doing his separations in the high-speed centrifuge, the man with the scalpel.
And then there was Beauty.
Beauty was up. Beauty was light. Beauty was dance…
Beauty was the dextroamphetamines, the orange heart-shaped tablets and the half-black, half-clear capsules. Beauty was the white tabs of methamphetamine hydrochloride, the shiny jet-black caps of amphetamine, and the green-and-black bumblebees of phendimetrazine tartrate. All legal.
Beauty was especially the illegals, the anonymous white tabs of MDMA, called ecstasy, and the perforated squares of blotter, printed with the signs of the Zodiac, each with its drop of sweet acid, and the cocaine.
Beauty was anabolic steroids for the body and synthetic human growth hormone to fight the years…
Everyday Bekker was down and dark.
Bekker was blood-red capsules of codeine, the Dilaudid. The minor benzodiazepines smoothed his anxieties, the Xanax and Librium and Clonopin, Tranxene and Valium, Dalmane and Paxipam, Ativan and Serax. The molindone, for a troubled mind. All legal.
And the illegals.
The white tabs of methaqualone, coming in from Europe.
Most of all, the phencyclidine, the PCP.
The power.
Bekker had once carried an elegant gold pillbox for his medicines, but eventually it no longer sufficed. At a Minneapolis antique store he bought a brass Art Deco cigarette case, which he lined with velvet. It would hold upward of a hundred tablets. Food for them both, Beauty and Bekker…
Beauty stared into the cigarette case and relived the morning. As Bekker, he'd gone to the funeral home and demanded to see his wife.
'Mr. Bekker, I really think, the condition…' The undertaker was nervous, his face flickering from phony warmth to genuine concern, a light patina of sweat on his forehead. Mrs. Bekker was not one of their better products. He didn't want her husband sick on the carpet.
'God damn it, I want to see her,' Bekker snapped.
'Sir, I have to warn you…' The undertaker's hands were fluttering.
Bekker fixed him with a cold stare, a ferret's stare: 'I am a pathologist. I know what I will see.'
'Well. I suppose…' The undertaker's lips made an O of distaste.
She was lying on a frilly orange satin pad, inside the bronze coffin. She was smiling, just slightly, with a rosy blush on her cheeks. The top half of her face, from the bridge of the nose up, looked like an airbrushed photograph. All wax, all moldings and makeup and paint, and none of it quite right. The eyes were definitely gone. They'd put her together the best they could, but considering the way she'd died, there wasn't much they could
