Eyes of Prey

message. I can do the same to get the message, or leave one for you. You should check every few hours to see if I’ve left anything.”
    “Good,” Druze said. “But make sure you clean up the tapes . . . .”
    “You can erase them remotely, too,” Bekker said, and explained.
    Druze jotted the code numbers in an address book. “Then we’re all set,” he said.
    “Yes. We should probably stay away from each other for a while.”
    “And we’re gonna do Armistead like we planned?”
    Bekker looked at the troll, and a smile touched his face. Druze thought it might be simple joy. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll do Armistead. We’ll do her tonight.”
     
    The stained-glass windows in Bekker’s parlor came from a North Dakota Lutheran church that had lost its congregation to the attractions of warmer climates and better jobs. Stephanie had bought the windows from the church trustees, trucked them back to the Twin Cities and learned how to work in lead. The restored windows hung above him, dark in the night, ignored. Bekker focused instead on the coil that was unwinding in his stomach.
    A dark exhilaration: but too soon.
    He suppressed it and sat on a warm wine-and-saffron Oriental carpet with a wet clawhammer and the pile of paper towels. He’d bought the hammer months before and never used it. He’d kept it in the basement, hidden in a drawer. Bekker knew just enough about crime laboratories to fear the possibility that a chemical analysis would pick up something unique to the house—Stephanie’s refinishing chemicals, glass dust or lead deposits. There was no point in taking chances. He washed it with dishwashing detergent, then sat on the rug and patted it dry with the paper towels. From now on, he would handle it only wearing gloves. He wrapped the hammer in extra towels and left it on the rug.
    Plenty of time, he thought. His eyes skittered around the room and found his sport coat hanging on a chair. He got the pill case from its breast pocket and peered inside, calculating. No Beauty tonight. This needed a cold power. He put a tab of PCP on his tongue, tantalized himself with the bite, then swallowed. And a methamphetamine, for the action; usually the amphetamines were Beauty’s ride, but not on top of the other . . . .
    • • •
    Elizabeth Armistead was an actress and a member of the board of directors of the Lost River Theater. She’d once played on Broadway.
    “Bitch’ll never give me a part.” Druze had been drunk and raving, the night six months earlier when the deal had occurred to Bekker. “Just like that movie—what was the name? On the train . . . ? She’s gonna dump me. She’s got the pretty boys lined up. She likes pretty boys. With this face . . .”
    “What happened?”
    “The company voted to do Cyrano. Who gets the lead? Gerrold. The pretty boy. They made him ugly and I’ll carry a goddamn pike in the battle scenes. Before this bitch joined up—she supposedly played on Broadway, big deal, but that’s why they took her, she can’t act—I used to be something. The next thing I know, I’m carrying fuckin’ pikes.”
    “What’re you going to do?”
    Druze had shaken his head. “I don’t know. Finding a job is tough. Up on the stage, with the lights, with makeup, this face is okay. But getting in the door—people look at me, theater people, and they say, Whoa, you’re ugly. Theater people don’t like ugly. They like pretty.”
    Bekker had asked, “What if Elizabeth Armistead went away?”
    “What do you mean?” But Bekker had caught the quick, feral glint when Druze looked toward him, and he knew the idea was there in the back of Druze’s head. If Armistead went away, things would be different. Just like they would be for him, if Stephanie went away . . . .
     
    Bekker had kept the coveralls in a sack at the back of his chest of drawers since he bought them, at a Sears, three months earlier. They were blue, the kind a mechanic might wear. He pulled them over his jeans and sweatshirt, found the matching hat in the closet and put it on. Druze knew aboutcostumes and had put it together for him. This costume said service. Nobody would look at him twice.
    Bekker glanced at his watch, and the first dislocation occurred, thrilling him: the watch elongated, a Dalí watch, draped over his wrist like a sausage. Wonderful. And the power was coming, darkening his vision, shifting everything to the ultraviolet end. He groped in his pocket for the