Eyes of Prey

get something if they find the guy in the towel,” Druze said sullenly.
    “That’s why we’ve got to meet.”
    “One o’clock?”
    “Yes.”
     
    Stephanie’s keepsake photos were stuffed in shoe boxes in the sewing closet, stuck in straw baskets in the kitchen, piledon a drawing table in the study, hidden in desk and bureau drawers. Three leather-bound albums were stacked in the library, photos going back to her childhood. Bekker, nude, stopping frequently to examine himself in the house’s many mirrors, wandered through the antiques, hunting the photos. In her chest of drawers, he found a plastic bag for a diaphragm—at first he didn’t recognize it for what it was—shook his head and put it back. When he was satisfied that he had all the photos, he fixed himself a sandwich, punched up Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana on the CD player, sat in an easy chair and replayed the funeral in his mind.
    He had been fine, he thought. The tough-guy cop. He couldn’t read the tough guy, but he had Swanson beat. He could sense it. The tough guy, on the other hand . . . his clothes were too good, Bekker decided.
    As he chewed, his eye found a small movement in the far corner of the room. He turned to catch it: another mirror, one of a dozen or so diamond-shaped plates set in the base of a French lamp from the twenties. He moved again, adjusting himself. His eyes were centered in one of the mirrors and, at this distance, looked black, like holes. His genitals were caught in another plate, and he laughed, genuine enjoyment.
    “A symbol,” Bekker said aloud. “But of what, I don’t know.” And he laughed again, and did his jig. The MDMA was still on him.
    At noon he dressed, pulled on a sweater, loaded the photos into a shopping bag and went out through the breezeway to his car. Could the police be watching him? He doubted it—what else would they expect him to do? Stephanie was already dead; but he’d take no chances.
    Out of the garage, he drove carefully through a snake’s nest of streets to a small shopping center. No followers. He cruised the center for a few minutes, still watching, bought toilet tissue and paper towels, toothpaste and deodorant and aspirin, and returned to the car. Back through the snake’s nest:nothing. He stopped at a convenience store and used the phone on the outside wall.
    “I’m on my way.”
    “Fine. I’m alone.”
    Druze lived in a medium-rise apartment at the edge of the West Bank theater district. Bekker, still wary, circled the building twice before he left the car on the street, cut through the parking lot and buzzed Druze’s apartment.
    “It’s me,” he said. The door opened and he pushed through into the lobby, then took the stairs. Druze was watching a cable-channel show on scuba diving when Bekker arrived. Druze punched the TV out with a remote as Bekker followed him into the apartment.
    “Those the pictures?” asked Druze, looking at the bag.
    “Yes. I brought everything I could find.”
    “You want a beer?” Druze said it awkwardly. He didn’t entertain; nobody came to his apartment. He had never had a friend before . . . .
    “Sure.” Bekker didn’t care for beer, but enjoyed playing the relationship with Druze.
    “Hope he’s here,” Druze said. He got a bottle of Bud Light from the refrigerator, brought it back and handed it to Bekker, who was kneeling on the front-room carpet, unloading the shopping bag. Bekker turned one of the shoe boxes upside down, and a clump of snapshots fell out on the rug.
    “We’ll get him,” Bekker said.
    “Big, flat, blond Scandinavian face. Head like a milk jug, pale, almost fat. Got pretty good love handles on him, a belly,” said Druze.
    “We knew a half-dozen people like that,” Bekker said. He took a hit on the beer and grimaced. “Most likely he’s part of the antiques crowd. That could be tough, ’cause I don’t know all of them. There’s a possibility that he’s with the university. I don’t know. This affair is the only thing the bitch ever did that surprised me.”
    “The bad thing is, antiques people are the kind of people who go to plays. Art people. He could see me.”
    “Up on the stage, with the makeup, you look different,” Bekker said.
    “Yeah, but afterwards, when we go out in the lobby and kiss ass with the crowd, he could see me up close. If he ever sees me . . .”
    “We’ll figure him out,” Bekker said, dumping the last box of photos on the pile. “I’ll sort, you