Lily shook her head: 'Nothing on her line. She got one call, from an automated computer place saying that she'd won a prize if she'd go out to some Jersey condominium complex to pick it up. Nothing on the office phone.'
'Dammit. She must be calling from a public phone. We might need some surveillance here.'
'I'd wait on that. She's been on the street for a while. She'd pick it up, sooner or later.'
'Had to be Fell, though. Unless it really was muggers.'
'It wasn't muggers. Lucas thinks they were cops. He says one of them was carrying a black leather-wrapped keychain sap; about the only place you can buy them is a commercial police-supply house. And he says they never went for his billfold.'
'But they weren't trying to kill him.'
'No. But he thinks they were trying to put him out of commission. Maybe break a few bones…'
'Huh.' O'Dell grunted through a thin smile. 'You know, there was once a gang on the Lower East Side, they'd contract to bite a guy's ear off for ten bucks?'
'I didn't know that,' said Lily.
'It's true, though… All right. Well. With Davenport. String him along…'
'I still feel like I'm betraying him,' Lily said, looking away from O'Dell, out the window. A kid was pushing a bike with a flat tire down the sidewalk. He turned as the big black car passed, and looked straight at Lily with the flat gray serpent's eyes of a ten-year-old psychopath.
'He knew what he was getting into.'
'Not really,' she said, turning away from the kid's trailing eyes. She looked at O'Dell. 'He thought he did, but he's basically from a small town. He's not from here. He really doesn't know, not the way we do…'
'What'd you tell Kennett, about why Davenport was at your place?'
'I… prevaricated,' Lily said. 'And I could use a little backup from you.'
'Ah.'
Lucas hadn't been badly hurt, so Lily flagged a cab, took him to Beth Israel, then reported the attack. Because she'd fired her weapon, there had been forms to fill out. She'd started that night, and called Kennett to tell him about it.
'Should I ask why he was at your place at two in the morning?' Kennett had asked. He'd sounded amused, but he wasn't.
'Um, you don't want to know,' Lily had said. 'But it was strictly business, not pleasure.'
'And I don't want to know.'
'That's right.'
After a moment: 'Okay. Are you all right? I mean, really all right.'
'Sure. I've got a busted window I've gotta get fixed…'
'Good. Get some sleep. I'll talk to you tonight.'
'That's all? I mean…?'
'Do I trust you? Of course. See you tonight.'
Lily looked out the car window, at the city rolling past. Maybe she was betraying Lucas. Maybe she was betraying Kennett. She wasn't sure anymore.
O'Dell said, 'Cretins,' and his paper shook with anger.
CHAPTER
10
The reporters came and went, the naive ones swallowing Lucas' story that he had been mugged, others not so sure. A reporter from Newsday said flatly that something else was going on: that Bekker had a gang, or that somebody else was trying to stop Lucas' investigation.
'I don't know about muggers in Minneapolis, but in New York they don't work in professional tag teams. Unless you're lying, you were done by professionals…'
After they were gone, Lucas took a few more Tylenol, wandered down to the bathroom and got back in time to see Lily coming down the hall.
'You look… pretty rough,' she said.
'It's my cheek. My cheek hurts like hell,' he said. He touched a swollen magenta bruise with his middle finger. 'At least the headache's going away. They're letting me out after lunch.'
'I heard,' Lily said.
'Thanks for sending the jeans over. The other pants…'
'Are shot.' Lily said.
'Yeah.'
'O'Dell's fixed the Mengele speech-there'll be a notice in all the papers this afternoon, the Times tomorrow morning, and we're asking everybody to do a note about it. TV, too. We found a guy, a legit guy, who already lectures on Mengele.'
'Terrific,' Lucas said. 'When?'
'Monday.'
'Jesus, that quick?'
'We gotta do everything quick. Maybe we can get him before he does another one…' Lily backed into a hospital chair, dropped her purse by her foot. 'Listen, about last night. Are you absolutely sure they were cops?'
'Fairly sure. They could have been professional bone-breakers, but it didn't feel that way. They felt like cops. Why?'
'I was thinking about another possibility.'
'Smith?'
'Yeah. After you chopped up his putting green…'
Lucas pulled his lip. 'Maybe,' he said. 'But I doubt it. One thing you learn as a sleazoid businessman is to roll with the punches.'
'Have you talked to Fell this morning?'
'She's on her way over. We have a line on a couple of people who might know something about Bellevue. She's been talking to Kennett, to make sure we don't step on any toes…'
'Okay. I've got Bobby Rich coming over. He's the guy who took the tip about the witness.'
'The witness Petty found…'
'Yeah, the day he got killed. And there's still some more paper to look at.'
'That's pointless, I think,' Lucas said. 'With these guys, the dead guys, we won't find anything in their lives that'll point to the killers. It has to be bureaucratic: who pulled their files, and when…'
'That's impossible.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'So we're stuck?'
'Not quite, but it's getting sparse. Maybe Rich'll have something. We've still got Fell. I want to take a look at Petty's apartment, his personal stuff. And I wouldn't mind seeing the place where he was shot.'
'That's about a half-mile from my apartment-we could walk. His apartment's sealed. I'll get some new seals and take you over. When?'
'Tonight? After we talk to Rich?'
'Fine.'
'What'd you tell Kennett…?'
'About you being at my apartment? I said you came over to visit. I told him that sex was not a consideration, last night or in the future. I told him that you weren't making any moves on me and I wasn't making any moves on you, but that we had things to talk about.'
