grand, and she'd had it for a while.'
Lucas' eyes narrowed. 'If a defense attorney got that into court…'
'Yeah,' Sloan said. 'It'd knock a hell of a hole in a circumstantial case.'
'And he's got an alibi.'
'Airtight. He was in San Francisco.'
'Jesus, I'd find him not guilty myself, knowing all that.'
'That's why we need you. If he's behind it, he had to hire a hitter. There are only so many guys in the Cities who'd do it. You probably know most of them. Those you don't, your people would know. There must have been a big payoff. Maybe somebody came into a big hunk of unexplained cash?'
Lucas nodded. 'I'll ask around. What about the guy who was in the sack with Bekker's old lady? Loverboy?'
'We're looking for him,' Sloan said. 'So far, no luck. I talked to Stephanie's best friend and she thought something might be going on. She didn't know who, but she was willing to mong a rumor…'
Lucas grinned at the word: 'So mong it to me,' he said.
Sloan shrugged. 'For what it's worth, she thinks Stephanie might have been screwing a neighborhood shrink. She'd seen them talking at parties, and she thought they… She said they quote stood in each other's space unquote.'
'All right.' Lucas yawned and stretched. 'Most of my people won't be around yet, but I'll check.'
'I'll Xerox the file for you.'
'You could hold off on that. I don't know if I'll be in that deep…' Sloan was standing, ready to leave, and Lucas reached back and punched the message button on his answering machine. The tape rewound, there was an electronic beep and a voice said: 'This is Dave, down at the auto parts. There're a couple of Banditos in town, I just did some work on their bikes. I think you might want to hear about it… You got the number.'
'I'll Xerox it,' Sloan said with a grin, 'just in case.'
Sloan left and Lucas sat with a yellow legal pad in his lap, feet up, listening to the voices on the answering machine, taking numbers. And watched himself.
His head wasn't working right. Hadn't been for months. But now, he thought, something was changing. There'd been just the smallest quieting of the storm…
He'd lost his woman and their daughter. They'd walked: the story was as simple as that, and as complicated. He couldn't accept it and had to accept it. He pitied himself and was sick of pitying himself. He felt his friends' concern and he was tired of it.
Whenever he tried to break out, when he worked two or three days into exhaustion, the thoughts always sneaked back: If I'd done A, she'd have done B, and then we'd have both done C, and then… He worked through every possible combination, compulsively, over and over and over, and it all came up ashes. He told himself twenty times that he'd put it behind himself, and he never had. And still he couldn't stop. And he grew sicker and sicker of himself…
And now Bekker. A flicker, here. An interest. He watched the first tickle, couldn't deny it. Bekker. He ran his hand through his hair, watching the interest bud and grow. On the legal pad he wrote:
1. Elle
How can you lose with a two-item list? Even when-what was it called? a unipolar depression?-even when a unipolar depression's got you by the balls, you can handle two numbers…
Lucas picked up the phone and called a nunnery.
Sister Mary Joseph was talking to a student when Lucas arrived. Her door was open a few inches, and from a chair in the outer office he could see the left side of her scarred face. Elle Kruger had been the prettiest girl in their grade school. Later, after Lucas had gone, transferred to the public schools, she'd been ravaged by acne. He recalled the shock of seeing her, for the first time in years, at a high school district hockey tournament. She had been sitting in the stands, watching him on the ice, eyes sad, seeing his shock. The beautiful blonde Elle of his prepubescent dreams, gone forever. She'd found a vocation with the Church, she had told him that night, but Lucas was never quite sure. A vocation? She'd said yes. But her face… Now she sat in her traditional habit, the beads swinging by her side. Still Elle, somewhere.
The college girl laughed again and stood up, her sweater a fuzzy scarlet blur behind the clouded glass of Elle's office door. Then Elle was on her feet and the girl was walking past him, looking at him with an unhidden curiosity. Lucas waited until she was gone, then went into Elle's office and sat in the visitor's chair and crossed his legs.
Elle looked him over, judging, then said, 'How are you?'
'Not bad…' He shrugged, then grinned. 'I was hoping you could give me a name at the university. A doctor, somebody who'd know a guy in the pathology department. Off the record. A guy who can keep his mouth shut.'
'Webster Prentice,' Elle said promptly. 'He's in psychology, but he works at the hospital and hangs out with the docs. Want his phone number?'
Lucas did. As she flipped through a Rolodex, Elle asked, 'How are you really?'
He shrugged. 'About the same.'
'Are you seeing your daughter?'
'Every other Saturday, but it's unpleasant. Jen doesn't want me there and Sarah's old enough to sense it. I may give it up for a while.'
'Don't cut yourself off, Lucas,' Elle said sharply. 'You can't sit there in the dark every night. It'll kill you.'
He nodded. 'Yeah, yeah…'
'Are you dating anybody?'
'Not right now.'
'You should start,' the nun said. 'Reestablish contact. How about coming back to the game?'
'I don't know… what're you doing?'
'Stalingrad. We can always use another Nazi.'
'Maybe,' Lucas said noncommittally.
'And what's this about talking to Webster Prentice? Are you working on something?'
'A woman got killed. Beaten to death. I'm taking a look,' Lucas said.
'I read about it,' Elle said, nodding. 'I'm glad you're working it. You need it.'
Lucas shrugged again. 'I'll see,' he said.
She scribbled a phone number on an index card and passed it to him.
'Thanks…' He leaned forward, about to stand.
'Sit down,' she said. 'You're not getting out of here that easy. Are you sleeping?'
'Yeah, some.'
'But you've got to exhaust yourself first.'
'Yeah.'
'Alcohol?'
'Not much. A few times, scotch. When I'd get so tired I couldn't move, but I couldn't sleep. The booze would take me out…'
'Feel better in the morning?'
'My body would.'
'The Crows beat you up pretty bad,' Elle said. The Crows were Indians, either terrorists or patriots. Lucas had helped kill them. Television had tried to make a hero out of him, but the case had cost him his relationship with his woman friend and their daughter. 'You finally found out that there's a price for living the way you do. And you found out that you can die. And so can your kid.'
'I always knew that,' Lucas said.
'You didn't feel it. And if you don't feel it, you don't believe it,' Elle rapped back.
