moved. He eased it open until just a crack of light was visible and pressed his eye to the opening. Yes. Backstage. A man was there, wearing slacks and a sport coat, peering out at the audience from a dark corner on the opposite side of the stage. As Bekker watched, he lifted a rectangular object to his face. A radio? Must be. Cop.
Just inside the door, in front of Bekker, was a scarred table, and on the table an empty peanut butter jar, a black telephone and what looked like a collapsible umbrella in a nylon case. Bekker let the door close, turned back toward the steps. A finger of despair touched him: no way out. No way. And they'd be checking the building before they left. He knew that. He had to get out. Or hide.
Wait. A radio? The cop had a radio.
Bekker turned, went back to the door, peeked inside again. The cop was still in the corner, peering out from behind the curtain, checking the crowd. And on the table, not an umbrella, but a folding music stand, apparently left behind after a concert.
He flashed on Ray Shaltie, and the blood splashing from his head…
The PCP was coming up now, warming him, bringing him confidence. He needed that radio. He let the door close, took a quick, silent turn around the alcove outside the door, thinking. A paper? He dug in his bag, found an envelope, folded it. Thought again for a moment, but there was no other way: he would not be beaten. Bekker took a breath, posed for a moment, then stepped to the door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.
The cop saw him immediately and frowned, took a step toward him. Bekker held up the envelope, and in a whisper, called, 'Officer. Officer.'
The cop glanced out at the crowd, then started across the stage behind the curtain. Radio in his hand. Bekker took a step forward, touched the music stand. It would be flimsy when opened, but when closed, and wrapped in its plastic sheath, a perfect club.
'You're not…' the cop started. Deep voice.
'The man out there…' Bekker whispered, and thrust the envelope at the cop, dropping it at the same time. The envelope fell to the cop's feet. Without thinking, the cop bent to catch it.
And Bekker hit him.
Hit him behind the ear with the music stand, swinging it like a hatchet. The impact sounded like a hammer striking an overripe cantaloupe, and the cop went down, the radio hitting the floor beside him. There'd been little noise, and that was muffled by the curtains, Bekker thought, but he hooked the man by the collar and dragged him into the corner by the door. And waited. Waited for the call, for the shout, that would end it. Nothing.
The cop couldn't be allowed to talk about how he was ambushed. Bekker stood over him for a moment, waiting, waiting, then pushed open the exterior door, dragged the body through it. The courtyard was still empty. Bekker lifted the music stand and hit the unconscious cop again and again, until the head resembled a bloody bag of rice.
Stop… no time. But the eyes…
Hurrying now, he used his penknife to cut the eyes, then patted down the body and found an identification card: Francis Sowith. The radio. Shit. The radio was still inside. He went to the door, peeked through, saw the radio, stepped quickly inside and retrieved it.
Back out on the porch again, stepping over the dead man. He noticed he had blood on his hands, and wiped them on the cop's coat. Still sticky: he lifted them to his face and sniffed. The smell of the blood was familiar, comforting.
He looked at the radio. Basic thumb switch. Calmed himself, checked his clothing, straightened it, and walked up the steps to the door back inside.
He took a breath, tensing, opened the door, and walked straight ahead. A staff member, he thought. That's what he was: a teacher who worked here. He heard a voice, a man, from around the corner. He slipped up to the guard desk, where he'd seen the telephone, and stepped around behind the desk, the phone to his ear. He could see the shoulder and sleeve of Davenport's jacket now, if that was in fact Davenport, in the same place. He leaned over the desk, head down, put the radio to his mouth, and thumbed the switch.
'This is Frank,' he blurted. 'He's here, backstage, backstage…'
He dropped the radio hand, and pressed the phone receiver to his ear, his shoulder turned away: the body language said making a date. At the same time, there was a shout, then another. Davenport's shoulder disappeared from the doorway, but another man came through it, running, right past the desk and down into the courtyard.
Moving quickly, Bekker walked from behind the desk, looking straight ahead, out through the school doors into the street. A woman screamed from the auditorium. Bekker kept walking. The man who'd been working on the car hurried past him, heading toward the doors, a pistol in his hand.
And then the night closed around him. Bekker was gone.
CHAPTER
18
They wound up in the courtyard, a half-dozen senior police officers shouting at each other. Lights burned in every room of the building and uniformed cops crawled through it inch by inch, but the people in the courtyard knew the search was pointless.
'Silly motherfucker… How many got out? How many?'
'I was trying to save his ass. Where the fuck were your guys, huh? Where the fuck…' A square guy pushed a tall guy, and for a moment it looked like a fight; but then other cops got between them.
'Jesus Christ, you gotta go out the back, the fuckin' TV is sweeping the streets…'
'Who had the watch on the stairs? Where was…'
'Shut up.' Kennett had been sitting on a bench, talking to Lily and O'Dell. Now he shouldered through the ring of cops, his voice cutting through the babble like an icicle going through a sponge cake. 'Shut the fuck up.'
He stood on the sidewalk, pale, two fingers hovering over his heart. He turned to one of the cops: 'How many got out?'
'Listen, it wasn't my…'
'I don't give a shit whose fault it was,' Kennett snarled. 'We all fuckin' blew it. What I want to know is, how many got out?'
'I don't know,' the cop said. 'Twenty or thirty. When everybody stampeded backstage, a bunch of people in the lobby and near the doors just went outside. Nobody was there to stop them. When I came back… most of them were gone.'
'There were only about fifty people in the auditorium,' Kennett said. 'So maybe half of them got out.'
'But that's not the thing,' the cop said.
'What's the thing?' Kennett asked. His voice was like a hangnail, sharp, ragged, painful.
'The thing is, I looked into every one of those faces. Bekker wasn't there. I don't care if you hang me up by my nuts, you ain't gonna get me to say he was, 'cause he wasn't. He wasn't there.'
'He had to be somewhere,' Carter snapped.
'Nobody came across the stage. Nobody went out through the courtyard. There was only one other door, and that doesn't go anywhere, it just comes back to the lobby…'
There was a long moment of silence, compounded of anger and fear. Heads would roll for this one. Heads would roll. A couple of cops glanced furtively at O'Dell and Lily, deep in private talk. After a moment, Huerta said, 'He must've been here all the time. He must've hid out before we got here, saw that he couldn't get out, figured we'd sweep the place before we left, and nailed Frank to get his radio.'
Kennett was nodding. 'That couldn't have been Frank who called…'
'Sounded like Frank…'
'So Bekker's got a deep voice, big fuckin' deal. We had people back there in five seconds, and Frank was gone. It took a while to mess him up like that.'
'Then why'd he call? Bekker? If he was already gone?' Kuhn asked.
'To get us running back there,' Lucas said. 'Say he goes back there, nails Frank, takes the radio, goes off
