Smith met them in Washington Square. The afternoon was oppressively hot, but Smith was cool: he arrived in a gray Mercedes, which he parked by a hydrant.
'I don't want to talk to you. You want to talk to somebody, talk to my lawyer,' Smith said as Lucas and Fell walked up. They stood just off the boccie ball courts, under a gingko tree, hiding from the sun.
'Come on, Jackie,' Lucas said. 'I'm sorry about the goddamn putting green. I got a little overheated.'
'Overheated, my ass,' Smith snarled. 'You know how long it'll take to fix it?'
'Jackie, we really need to make an arrangement, okay?' Lucas said. 'Something new came up on this Bekker guy, and you're in a position to help. Like I said last night, it's personal with me. No bullshit. I just need a little information.'
'I don't know fuckin' Bekker from any other asshole,' Smith said impatiently.
'Hey, we believe you,' Lucas said. 'And I had to do the green. I had to get your attention-you were blowing us off. Isn't that right?'
Smith stared at him for a long beat, then said, 'So what do you want? Exactly?'
'We need the names of guys who can get stuff out of Bellevue.'
'That's all you want? Then you'll get off my back?'
'We can't promise,' Lucas said. 'I can't talk for Barbara-but I'd be a hell of a lot friendlier.'
'Jesus Christ, I'm dealing with a fuckin' fruitcake,' Smith said. Then: 'I don't handle deals at that level. That's small-time.'
'I know, I know, but we need a guy who does handle that kind of action. A couple of names, that's all.'
'You gonna fuck them over?'
'Not if they talk to me. But if they fuck me over, I'll be back to you.'
Fell jumped in with a sales pitch: 'Jesus, Jackie, this'd be so easy if you just ride along. It's no skin off your ass. You're actually not helping the cops. You're helping some poor woman who's gonna get her heart cut out, or something.'
'Yeah, you're the one who poured my coffee on the street,' Smith said, apropos of nothing at all. He looked across the plaza, where a group of black kids were working through a dance routine to rap music from a boombox. 'All right,' he said. 'Two guys. Well: a guy and a woman. They're not actually inside the hospital, but they can put you onto guys who are inside.'
'That's all we were asking for…'
'Yeah, yeah. Jesus, you're both full of shit…' Then he started toward his car and said, 'I'll be a minute.'
'Making a call,' Fell said as Smith disappeared into the Mercedes.
He was back in two minutes, with two names and addresses. Lucas wrote the names in his notebook. Smith, with a snort of disgust, turned back to his car, shaking his head.
'Angela Arnold and Thomas Leese,' Lucas said to Fell. 'Where're these addresses?'
Fell looked and said, 'Lower East Side. Never heard of them, though. Want me to run them?'
'Yes. Or just drop them off, get them run overnight,' Lucas said, looking at his watch. 'Kennett wants to be careful, and I don't want to step on him. Let's not worry about talking to them until tomorrow.'
Fell dropped him at the hotel, then went on to Midtown South. Lucas cleaned up, ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, went back to his room and watched the Twins and Yankees through the seventh inning, then caught a cab for Lily's apartment. She buzzed him up and came to the door in her bare feet.
'You're late,' she said.
'Got hung up,' Lucas said, stepping inside. He'd stayed in her apartment almost two years earlier, when she'd just moved in: the furniture then had a temporary, scrounged look. Boxes had been stacked in the living room, a television had sat on two short metal file cabinets. The kitchen wallpaper had been a bizarre bamboo design, with monkeys; the countertops a well-chipped plastic. Now the place had a careful, colored look: warm rugs over a beige carpet; bright hand-printed graphics on the walls; sparse, but carefully chosen chairs and a broad leather couch. The kitchen was a subtle gold with hardwood counters. He'd stopped by the night before to drop off the key impressions, but hadn't stayed long enough to look around. Now he took a few minutes. 'The place looks good,' he said finally. He felt a pressure: when he'd been there two years before, they'd spent a lot of time in bed, Lily intent on exploring, feeling, desperate for the intensity of the sex. Now they were polite.
'That's what happens when your marriage splits up. You work on the apartment,' she said. She stood close to him, but not too close, one hand just touching the other at her waist, like a hostess. Polite and something else. Wary?
'Yeah, I know.'
'I made the back bedroom into an office, everything's stacked up in there. Go on back. Want a beer?'
'Sure.' He wandered back to the office, yawned, sat down at the desk, pushed the chair back far enough that he could get his heels on a half-open drawer, picked up the first file. He'd been reading files all day; a million facts floating around free-form.
'Kays, Martin.' He flipped the file open. Kays had been arrested twice for rape. Served two years the first time, acquitted the second time. He was suspected in as many as thirty attacks on the Upper West Side. He had had it down to a science, attacking women at night in locked parking garages. He apparently entered when a car exited, ducking under the descending door, then waited until he caught a woman alone in the dark. Half-dozen busts on drug-possession charges, assault, theft, drunkenness.
'Kays,' Lily said, looking over his shoulder. 'He should've gotten it five years earlier.'
'Wrong thinking, mon capitaine, ' Lucas said, looking up at her. She handed him a Special Export.
'Yeah, but it's part of the problem: with the exception of the three killings I told you about, including Walt, which they can deny, most people in town would be rootin' for these guys if they knew about them. Especially when they're doing guys like Kays. I doubt we could find a jury that'd convict them.'
'You mean it was all right, as long as they were hitting dirtbags?'
'No. Just that if you kill somebody who deserves to die, and will anyway, someday, but maybe fuck up a hundred people's lives before then… hurrying the due date along doesn't seem that terrible. Compared to killing innocent people. But these guys aren't hitting criminals anymore, they're attacking… freedom.'
'I can't operate at that kind of rarefied theoretical level,' Lucas said, grinning at her.
'It does sound like wimpy-ass bullshit, doesn't it?' she said.
'It does.'
'But it isn't,' she said.
'All right.'
'If you don't feel it… why'd you sign on?' she asked.
He shrugged. ' 'Cause you're a good friend of mine.'
'Is that enough?'
'Sure. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the few good reasons for doing anything. I'd hate to kill somebody out of patriotism or duty; I could never be a warden and throw the switch on somebody. But in hot blood, to protect family or friends… that's all right.'
'Revenge?'
He thought for a minute, then nodded. 'Yeah, revenge is in there. I like hunting Bekker. I'm gonna get him.'
'You and Barb Fell.'
'Yup. Speaking of whom…' He dug in his jacket shirt pocket. 'Look at these. The guy looks like a cop and she's tight with him, or was.' He handed her two of the Polaroids he'd taken at Fell's.
'Oh, Barbara,' Lily muttered, looking at them, shaking her head. 'I know this guy. Vaguely. He's a lieutenant in Traffic. We'll run him against the killings and see what we get.'
'And I've got some names for you. Friends of hers. I don't know how many are cops, but if you could run them…'
'Sure.'
Lucas stayed until two o'clock, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, when Lily came in and asked, 'Find anything?'
'No. And you were right. These guys were the scum of the scum. How many people could put together a list
