'Cop,' said Lucas. 'This is official.'
'Forget I asked…'
'I won't forget, honey,' Thomas said, licking his lower lip.
'You fuckin'…'
'Shut up,' Lucas snapped, poking a finger at the bartender. He looked back at Thomas. 'But did he do it? The walk?'
'Couple times, a few times, I guess. You know, we did talk about it, when I think back. Not so much about how good it feels, but how to do it. You know, gettin' the prosthetic bras and like that. He'd make a good-lookin' girl, too, 'cept for the scars.'
'You think so?' Lucas asked. 'Is that a professional opinion?'
'Don't dick me around, man,' Thomas said, flaring.
'I'm not. That's a real question. Would he make a good woman?'
Thomas stared at him for a minute, decided the question was real: 'Yeah, he would. He'd be real good at it. 'Cept for the scars.'
Lucas hopped off the bar stool, said thanks, and nodded to Johnson: 'We owe you. You need something, talk to Sloan.'
'That's all?' asked Thomas.
'That's all,' Lucas said.
Lucas called Fell from the pay phone at the back of the bar. When she answered, he could hear the television going in the background, a baseball game. 'Can you get to Kennett? Right now?'
'Sure.'
'Tell him we've figured out how Bekker is doing it,' Lucas said. 'How he's staying out of sight on the streets, getting out of the New School.'
'We have?'
'Yeah. I just talked to his former next-door neighbor at the Hennepin County Jail, name of Rayon Thomas. Nice-looking guy. Good makeup. Great legs. He's wearing a daiquiri-green party dress. He gave Bekker lessons…'
After a moment of silence, she breathed, 'Sonofabitch, Bekker's a woman. We're so fuckin' stupid.'
'Call Kennett,' Lucas said.
'You haven't talked to anyone?' she asked.
'I thought you'd like to break it.'
'Thanks, man,' Fell said. 'I… thanks.'
CHAPTER
20
Bekker could count the drops, each and every one, as the shower played off his body. The ecstasy did that: two tiny pills. Gave him the power to imagine and count, to multiply outrageous feelings by ineffable emotions and come up with numbers…
He turned in the shower, letting jets of water burn into him. He no longer used the cold water at all, and the stall was choked with heat and steam, his body turning cherry red as the old skin scalded away. And as he turned, his eyes closed, his head tipped back, his hands beneath his chin, his elbows close together, on his belly, he could count all the drops, each and every one…
He stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then, shivering, blue, annoyed, he leaped out. What time was it? He walked to the end of the room where he'd fitted a black plastic garbage bag over a barred basement window, and peeled back a corner of the plastic. Dark. Midnight. That was good. He needed the night.
Bekker walked back toward the bed, felt the stickiness on the soles of his feet and looked down. He needed to wash the floor. The sight of the dried blood on the floor reminded him of the cut. He looked at his arm, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. The cut was painful, but the ants were gone.
He caught sight of himself in a wall mirror, his furrowed face. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, grimacing at the sight of the scars. They were in long jagged rows, raised above the soft skin around them. The gunsight cuts had been sewn closed by an emergency-room butcher, instead of a qualified plastic surgeon.
He thought of Davenport, Davenport's teeth, the eye-teeth showing, his eyes, the gun swinging, battering…
He sighed, came back, shaken, staring at his face in the mirror. He put the makeup on mechanically, but carefully. Cover Mark to hide the scars, then straight, civilian makeup. Max Factor New Definition. Cover Girl nail polish. Suave styling spritz, to pull his blond hair down to cover his jawline, which was a bit too masculine.
The lipstick was last. Lipstick the color of a prairie rose. Just a touch. He didn't want to be mistaken for a harlot… He made kisses at the mirror, smoothed the lipstick with his tongue, blotted it with toilet paper. Just right.
Satisfied, finally, he went to the chest, picked out underwear, got the prosthetic bra and sat on the bed. He'd shaved his legs the night before, and they were just getting prickly. Bekker was fair-haired, fine-haired: even if he hadn't shaved, his legs wouldn't have been a problem. But he did shave, to capture the feel. Rayon had said that was important, and Bekker understood-or he'd understood at the time. You had to live the part, feel the part. He flashed. A woman hurrying behind him, afraid of the dark parking ramp. Live the part…
The panty hose slid smoothly up his leg; he'd discovered the technique of gathering them, slipping them up piece by bit-bit-bit. When the hose were on, he stood and looked at himself in the dressing mirror; he looked like a fencer, he thought, bare chest and tights. He posed, turning sideways. A little full in the front. He reached into the panty hose and arranged his penis, pushing it down and under, tight, pulling the hose up to hold it in place. Posed again. Good.
The bra was next. He disliked it: it was cold and awkward, and cut into the muscles of his shoulders. But it gave him the right look and even the right feel. He snapped it in back, and again checked the mirror. With his soft blond hair, falling naturally now to his shoulders-no more wigs-he was a woman. Whitechurch had certainly been convinced. Bekker flashed: the look on Whitechurch's face as the realization came to him, and the gun came up…
He picked out a medium-blue blouse with a high collar and the remnants of shoulder padding, a conservative, midcalf-length pleated skirt, and dark gym shoes with thick walking soles. With the breast prosthetics and his narrow shoulders, he had the figure of a woman, but his hands and feet might yet give him away.
They were simply too big, too square: he wore size ten men's shoes. But when he wore dark women's gym shoes, the size was not so obvious. As a woman he was taller than average, but not awkwardly so. And people expected blondes to be tall. Hiding his hands was a bigger problem…
When he'd finished dressing, he looked in the mirror. Fine. Excellent. The big shoulder bag was something he might keep dressier shoes in, wearing the gym shoes to walk back and forth to the parking ramp. Yuppie. He added a necklace of synthetic pearls, picked up a bottle of Poison by Christian Dior, dabbed it along his throat, on the inside of his wrists. The perfume was too flowery, and he deliberately used too much. Perfume, Rayon told him, was a feminine, psychological thing. The odor of perfume alone might subliminally convince, in close quarters…
There. Ready. He touched himself at the pit of his throat, and remembered that he'd seen his late wife do that, touch herself there, a sort of completion. He stepped to the mirror again, to take in the whole ensemble, and spontaneously laughed with the joy of it.
Beauty was back.
Beauty stepped carefully through the weeds to the lean-to garage, careful not to snag the hose. He left the car lights out, drove it to the gate, looked up and down the street, unlocked the gate, drove through, relocked it behind
