past…
'Hanging out with a geek,' he said. 'I can't believe it. I'm not enough, she's got a geek on the side.'
'Not a geek,' she said.
'All right. A dork. A nerd. Revenge of the Nerds, visited on Richard X. Kennett personally. A nerd may be dorking my woman. Or wait, maybe it's a dork is nerding my woman. Or wait…'
'Shut up,' she said, mock-severely. 'Or I will fondle your delicate parts and then leave you hanging-in good health, of course.'
'Lily…' A change of tone. Sex on the mind.
'No. I'm sorry I said it. Kennett…'
'All right. Back to the dork…'
'He's not a dork. He's really a nice guy, and if he cracks this thing, he could go somewhere…'
She'd talked, Lily had, about the Robin Hood case. She'd talked in bed. She'd talked about the intelligence guys who'd stumbled over it, she'd talked about Petty being assigned to it, she'd talked about computers.
Not all at once. Not formally. But bits and pieces. Pillow talk. But Kennett got most of it. With what Copland overheard, and what Kennett got in bed, they must've known it all.
Petty's image floated in her mind's eye, his hair slicked down, his red ears sticking out, running down the Brooklyn sidewalk with the paper overhead, so happy to see her…
'I killed you,' she said to his image, speaking aloud. Her voice was stark as a winter crow. 'I killed you, Walt.'
CHAPTER
31
The river was black as ink, but thick, oily, roiled, as it pushed the last few miles toward the sea. A full moon had come up in the east, red, huge, shrouded by smog over the city. Lily waited until the elderly night guard and his dog were at the far end of the marina, then used her key at the member's gate.
The docks were cluttered, as always, badly lit by widely spaced yellow bug lights. Out in the water, anchor lights shone off the masts of a half-dozen anchored boats. Here and there, lights showed at portholes, and a light breeze banged halyards against aluminum masts, a pleasant whipping tinkle like wind chimes. The smell of marijuana hovered around a small Capri daysailer and a man was giggling inside the tiny cabin. She walked out of the marijuana stink into the river smell, compounded of mud and decaying fish.
'Lily.' Kennett's voice came out of the dark as she approached the Lestrade. He was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. 'I was wondering if you'd come.'
'You know about Bekker?'
'Yeah. And that I've been cut out of the loop.'
Lily stepped into the cockpit, sat down, staring at him. His face was flat, solemn; he was looking steadily back. 'You're Robin Hood,' she said.
'Robin Hood, bullshit,' he said wearily. He flicked the cigarette into the water.
'I'm not wearing a wire,' she said.
'Stand up, turn around.' She stood up and Kennett ran his hands down her, between her legs. 'Gimme the purse.'
He opened the purse, clicked on an electric light that hung from the backstay, looked inside. After poking inside, he took the.45 out of its holder, dropped the magazine and shucked the shells out into the water. Then he jacked the slide, to eject the shell in the chamber. The chamber was empty, and he shook his head. 'You oughta carry one under the hammer.'
'I'm not here to talk about guns,' she said. 'I'm here to talk about you being Robin Hood. About using me as a dummy to spy on O'Dell. About killing Walt Petty.'
'I didn't use you as a dummy,' he said flatly. 'I got with you because I liked you and I'm falling in love with you. You're beautiful and you're smart and you're a cop, and there aren't many women around I can talk to.'
'I don't doubt that you like me,' she said, squaring off with him. 'But that didn't keep you from running me. On the way up here, I was remembering when we'd lie down below there, in the berth, and you running those goddamn fantasies about what O'Dell did for sex. Do you remember that? You must've scripted those things, to get me talking about O'Dell. And before that, talking about Walt. When I think of the things I told you, because I felt secure. Because you were a lover and a brother cop. Jesus Christ, every time we got into bed, you were pumping me for information.'
'Christ, Lily… Lily, if you told me anything about O'Dell or Petty… it was by-product. I wasn't sleeping with you to get information. Jesus, Lily…'
'Shut up,' Lily said. She reached overhead and pulled the chain on the backstay light and they were plunged into the dark again. 'I want to know some shit. We've got Jeese and Clemson, Davenport got them, and we know about Copland…'
'I knew Davenport was dangerous,' Kennett said quietly. 'I really didn't underestimate him. I knew he was a really dangerous sonofabitch when he looked up Gauguin, about the necktie. And I couldn't help liking him.'
'Is that why your guys tried to beat him up, instead of just whacking him?'
Kennett grinned: she could see his teeth. Not a happy smile, a rueful one. 'Another mistake,' he said. 'You start feeling that everything in New York is more. That a small-town guy could never hold off a couple of real New York pros. So we were just gonna break a few ribs, maybe. Something that'd take him off the street for a month. They said he was quick as a pro fighter. They were pissed, said that if they'd been a half-inch slower, he'd of blown them up, he'd of had his.45 out…'
'They were lucky,' Lily said. 'Why didn't you try again?'
Kennett shrugged. 'At that point, we figured it was either kill him or forget him. He didn't seem… close enough… to kill. And I don't know if the guys would've done it anyway. Petty was already hard to stomach. Davenport's message to O'Dell, the one Copland picked up. That was fake?'
'Not completely. It was Davenport who found Bekker, all right. He was feeding the message to O'Dell to see if any hitters showed up. They did, but I was with O'Dell the whole time. He didn't make any calls. So I started thinking about it.'
'God damn it. I thought about skipping Bekker.'
'You should have.'
'Couldn't. Didn't know what he'd say about…' He stopped, remembering.
'About the guys he saw hit Walt. Jeese and Clemson. Thick and Thin.'
'No,' Kennett said evenly. 'It wasn't them.'
'Bullshit,' she flared. 'They fit.'
'No. It wasn't.'
'Who, then?'
'I won't tell you, but Jeese and Clemson, no.' He pulled at his lip. 'Old Copland. A good guy. What happens to him?'
'O'Dell will think of something… How many of you are there? And how many people have you done?'
Kennett shook his head. 'There are… several. Some singles, some two-man teams. None of them knows the others, and I won't tell you who they are.'
'We can put Jeese and Clemson in Attica if we want-assault on a police officer with a firearm. And if O'Dell wants to fix it, I'm sure we can find a problem with Copland's pension. He'll spend his last twenty years sitting on a park bench. Or rolled in an army blanket on a sidewalk.'
'Don't fuckin' do that,' Kennett whispered.
'That's what happens when you lose,' Lily said, her voice like ice.
'We were doing right,' Kennett said. 'I'll call it off. Walk away, and I'll call it off. I'll quit the force, if you want.'
'What, so you can write for the Times? You'd be a bigger danger there than where you are now,' Lily
