Eyes of Prey

drunk who needed money. Not much of a gun, a .38 special, but good enough.
    As for the shot . . . he’d have to risk it. If she had a radio . . . Maybe four o’clock would be better. They should be at home then, and the people in the apartments adjoining the woman’s would be less likely to be there.
    He paced, working it out, working himself up, generating a heat, the light dose of PCP flipping him in and out of other-when.
    At midnight, pressed by the needs of Beauty, he threw down two tabs of MDMA. The drug roared through him, hammered down the PCP, and he began to dance, to flap around the living room, on the deep carpets, and he went away . . . .
    When he returned, breathing hard, he found himself half stripped. What now? He was confused. What? The idea came. Of course. If something went wrong tomorrow—unlikely, but possible; he was confident without being stupid about it—he would have missed an opportunity. Excited now, his hands trembling, he pulled his clothes back on, got his jacket and hurried out to the car. The hospital was only ten minutes away . . . .
    He was stuck in the stairwell for five minutes.
    He’d gone to his office first, done another MDMA for the creative sparkle and insight it brought, and a methamphetamine to sharpen the edge of his perceptions. Then he went to the locker room and changed into a scrub suit. The clean cotton felt cool and crisp against his skin, touching but not clinging to his chest, the insides of his arms, his thighs, like freshly starched sheets, the pleasure of its touch magnified by the ecstasy . . . .
    He left then, alternately hurrying and restraining himself. He couldn’t wait. He crept up the stairs, not quite chortling, but feeling himself bursting with the joy of it. He was careful. If he was seen, it wouldn’t be a disaster. But if he was not, it would be better.
    At the top of the stairs, he opened the door just a crack, enough so that he could see the nurses’ station fifty feet downthe hall. He held onto the door handle: if anyone came through unexpectedly, he could react as though he were about to pull the door open . . . .
    The nurse spent five minutes on the telephone, standing up, laughing, while he watched her through the crack and cursed her: the drugs were working in his blood, were demanding that he go to Sybil. He held back but wasn’t sure how long he could last . . . .
    There. The nurse, still smiling to herself, hung up the phone, sat down and pivoted in her chair, facing away from Bekker. He opened the door and quickly stepped through, across the hall, to where her line of vision was cut off. He moved away silently, the surgical moccasins muffling his footsteps, down the hall to Sybil’s room.
    Her television peered down from the ceiling; it was tuned to the word processor. He frowned. She wasn’t supposed to be able to use it. He stepped next to the bed and bent over in the dim light. The processor console sat on a table to the left side of her bed. He reached out, rolled her head: she was wearing the switch. Looking up at the screen, he used the keyboard’s arrow keys to move a cursor to the Select option, then pressed Enter. A series of options came up, including a dozen files. Nine of the files were named. Three were not: they had only numbers.
    He was moving the cursor to select the first of the files when he realized that she was awake. Her eyes were dark and terrified.
    “It’s time,” he whispered. The drugs roared and he moved closer to her bedside, peering down into her eyes. She closed them.
    “Open your eyes,” he said. She would not.
    “Open your eyes . . . .” Her eyes remained closed.
    “Open your . . . Sybil, I really need to know what you see, there at the end; I need to see your reactions. I need your eyesopen, Sybil . . . .” He rattled a key on the keyboard. “I’m looking at your files, Sybil . . . .”
    Her eyes opened, quickly, almost involuntarily. “Ah,” he said, “so there is a reason I should look . . . .”
    Her eyes were flashing frantically from Bekker to the screen. He moved the cursor to the first numbered file and pushed Enter. There were two letters on the screen: MB.
    “Ah. That wouldn’t stand for ‘Michael Bekker,’ would it?” he asked. He erased the letters, moved to the next file. KLD. He erased them. “A little message here? Do you really think they would’ve understood? Of course, with a few more days, you might have been