'So what?'
'Up to my neck.'
'That's all right.'
'It's not all right,' he sobbed. 'I'm the goddamned chief of police!'
He released what little control he had left and began to sob uncontrollably. Spasms racked him, his shoulders heaved and his face fell to his chest. He covered his face with his hands at first, but after a few moments he did not try to hide anything. He wandered away from the car, crying loudly, and Becker followed his friend helplessly, wondering what to do besides offering the occasional pat on the back. At length Tee came to a stop with his head leaning against a tree. 'My baby!' he bayed, in one of the few intelligible sounds that Becker heard. 'My baby.' The chief had drifted fifty yards away from the cruiser and McNeil seized the opportunity to slip out of the car. Down the road, Tee turned abruptly and pulled his automatic from the holster again. Becker ducked instinctively and Tee fired a round in McNeil's direction. After the previous shot and all the bowling, this report did not seem nearly as loud.
McNeil leapt into the back seat of the cruiser headfirst, then squirmed around to close the door behind him, carefully keeping below the level of the seat backs.
'That was justified,' Tee said, his gun hanging limply by his side.
A car approached on the road, slowing as it came abreast of them. Becker waved it past irritably, aware of the ludicrous sight he made, directing traffic in his bikini underpants as the chief of police stood beside him, sniffling. The car pulled to the side and Karen got out. Her service revolver was in the shoulder holster outside of her halter top and she looked more angry than alarmed.
'Oh, hi,' said Tee, as casualty as if he had just encountered her at the local shopping center.
'Holster the gun, Tee,' she said crisply.
Tee did so without hesitation. 'I didn't kill him,' he said, sniffing.
'Good. Sorry I'm late. I took the time to get dressed.' She looked pointedly at Becker.
Metzger arrived with siren screaming and lights flashing.
'I got a report of gunshots,' he said, his voice trailing off as he became aware of Becker's attire. 'Everything all right?'
'Outstanding,' said Becker.
'John, get in a car,' Karen said. 'Any car.'
'I'm going to drive Tee home,' said Becker. 'Karen, McNeil is hiding in the back of Tee's cruiser. He fell and landed on his face-he may need medical attention, but I doubt it. Would you mind driving him to the station and slapping him in a cell?'
'McNeil's in the car?' said Metzger. He looked around him in bewilderment. 'He's arrested?'
'We're putting him there for his own safe-keeping at the moment,' said Becker. 'I'll pick you up at the station when I get some clothes on, and we can come back for your car.'
Karen nodded. Although Becker's superior at the Bureau, she was not so enamored of her power that she felt obliged to assert it in such a situation. If this was any of the Bureau's business in the first place, it had yet to be demonstrated. She took Becker's arm after he had guided Tee to the passenger seat of his car and spoke to him quietly.
'We live in Clamden, John. That doesn't make us members of the police force here.'
'Put Metzger in the same car with McNeil and McNeil would be driving inside two minutes. I'll drive to the station, if you don't want to, but I think I'd better stay with Tee a bit longer.'
'I don't mind, I just don't know what's going on. What have you and Tee been up to out here in the middle of the night?'
24
Captain Luv became aware of the car following him home from Trumbull while he was on the Merritt Parkway. At one point he found himself trapped in the right lane behind a car with its distress lights flashing, while the cars behind Luv continued to slide into the left lane and pick up speed, effectively sealing him into place. He drove with his eye on the mirror, looking for the opening that would allow him out of the pocket, and that was when he noticed the Toyota keeping pace with his enforced forty-five miles per hour yet staying a hundred yards back. When the opening came in the left lane, it was available to the Toyota first but the Toyota driver ignored it, staying behind Luv as if invisibly attached. Only when Luv managed to pass the distressed vehicle did the Toyota also slide into the left lane, still maintaining its discreet hundred-yard distance.
Once he was aware of it, it was a simple matter to confirm that the Toyota was following him. Luv pulled off the Merritt one exit early and made his way through the local roads, the Toyota tagging along turn for turn, varying the distance, sometimes almost disappearing, allowing other cars to slip in front of it, but never falling completely out of touch.
Disturbed but not frightened, Luv drove home and left his car parked conspicuously in the driveway. He locked himself in his study for a time, ignoring his wife, who wanted to prattle on about some grievance or other, and paced and thought. Through some stroke of dumb luck the police, or more likely the FBI, had stumbled onto him. It wasn't the result of a mistake he had made, he made no mistakes; it had to be another calamitous misfortune, like the freakish flooding that had started the investigation. Whatever it was, it could only be suspicion.
If they had anything concrete, they would have arrested him. If they were going to follow him, it meant they were only fishing, hoping he would do something stupid. Luv grinned. He didn't do stupid things, that was why he was Cap'n Luv. That was why he had lived his life for years without detection. They would have to wait forever if they waited for Luv to get dumb.
He felt a tremendous surge of pride as he reflected on how well he had done, how he had accomplished so much. So many women! They were his, they were all his for the having! Had any man a richer, fuller life?
They loved him, they all loved him! He could make any woman love him and spread her legs for him and call out his name begging for him when he was with her, and weep with longing when he was not. Any woman, anyone he wanted. He knew their secrets, he knew how to manipulate them, he knew what they wanted and what they needed and he gave them both in the best way they had ever had or ever would have in their lives. If he had any regrets, it was that he could not have each of them over again because he was better now, he knew more now, understood more, than he did a few years ago, and would be better still in years to come. When the best continues to improve, no one else can come close.
Had any other man ever affected so many women's lives so profoundly?
They didn't just fuck him, they loved him. They could not believe their good fortune in meeting him, he was perfect, he was their dream come true, or better, an improvement on the dream which had been limited by their association with other men. He was an experience they would never forget-Luv reshaped lives for the better.
He felt so proud, so good about himself that joy swelled to fill his chest and broke forth in laughter. In the privacy of his study he laughed and laughed, bursting with triumph. He had overcome so much, his looks, his body, the contempt of other men, and he had overcome, overwhelmed, the resistance of so many women. It was always a contest with them and he considered each seduction a victory, no matter how fervently the women wanted to lose. But he was a magnanimous winner and he treated them all so well that none regretted him. They loved him still, he knew that.
He felt as confident, cocky, and proud as a rooster and he crowed and crowed, laughing at himself, mingling the laughter with a hoot that turned finally to a cough. He fell to his knees, coughing, laughing, hooting, and his eyes ran with tears. No one could stop him!
Was he going to let some idiot cops ruin everything for him? For the women? They needed him, he brightened their lives, and if he had been selfish a few times, if he had thought only of his own pleasure and not theirs, was he not human? Wasn't he entitled to be selfish a few times?
He had never killed them with malice, they had not suffered, they had not been afraid. They had given their lives in love for him, trying to the utmost to give him what he needed, and he was profoundly grateful to them all. It was not an exchange the police would understand, of course, but Luv felt certain that the women who died for
