Eyes of Prey

buzz . . . I’ll come up the stairs. Have the door open.”
    “All right. If you’re sure . . .”
    “I’m sure, but I need you to say yes, he’s the one.”
    Bekker hung up and looked around. Was he being watched? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so. The woman customer was using the phone now, paying no attention to him. An elderly man was going through the check-out with a can of coffee, and the only other people in sight were store employees.
    He’d taken a quick trip around the store once before he picked up the phone. There was an exit sign by the dairy case . . . .
    He got a pushcart and started to the back of the store, checking the other customers. But you couldn’t tell, could you? At the dairy case, he waited until he was alone, then left the cart and walked straight out a swinging door under the exit sign. He found himself in a storage area that stank of rotting produce, looking at a pair of swinging metal doors. He pushed through them to a loading dock, walked briskly along the dock and down the stairs at the far end, watching the door behind him.
    Nobody came through, nobody looked through. Five seconds later he was in the alley that ran along the back of the store. He hurried down the length of the block, around the corner, another hundred feet and into the outer lobby of Druze’s apartment building. He pushed the button on Druze’s mailbox, got an instant answering buzz, pulled open the inner door and was inside. Elevator straight ahead, stairs through the door to the right. He took the stairs two at a time, checked the hallway and hustled down to Druze’s apartment. The door was open and he pushed through.
    “God damn, Mike . . .” Druze’s face was normally as unreadable as a pumpkin. Now he looked stressed, uncharacteristic vertical lines creasing the patchwork skin of his forehead. He was wearing a tired cotton sweater the color of oatmeal, and pants with pleats. His hands were in his pockets.
    “Is this him?” Bekker thrust the photo of Philip George at Druze.
    Druze looked at it, carried it to a light, looked closer, his lower lip thrust out. “Huh.”
    “It must be him,” Bekker said. “He fits: he’s blond, he’s heavy—he’s even heavier in real life than he is in that picture. That photo must be four or five years old. And he wasn’t in any of the other photos. And Stephanie was calling him secretly from New York.”
    Druze finally nodded. “It could be. It looks like him. Butthe guy at the house, I just saw him like that.” Druze snapped his fingers.
    “It must be him,” Bekker said eagerly.
    “Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. Give him a couple of more years . . . Yeah.”
    “God damn, Carlo,” Bekker crowed, his beautiful face absolutely radiant. He caught Druze around the neck with the crook of his elbow and squeezed him down, a jocklike hug, and Druze felt the pleasure of approval flush through his stomach. Druze had never had a friend . . . . “God damn, we beat the police.”
    “So now what?” Druze asked. He felt himself smiling: What an odd feeling, a real smile.
    Bekker let him go. “I’ve got to get out of here and think. I’ll figure something out. Tonight, after your show, come up to my office. Even if they’re watching me, they won’t be inside the building. Call me before you leave and I’ll come down and let you in at that side door by the ramp. If you look like you’re unlocking the door, they’d never suspect . . .”
     
    Philip George.
    Bekker worried the problem all the way back to the hospital. They had to get to George quickly. He stopped at the secretary’s desk in the departmental office.
    “Lucy, do you have a class schedule?”
    “I think . . .” The secretary pulled open a filing cabinet and dug through it, and finally produced a yellow pamphlet. She handed it to him. “Could you bring it back, it’s the only one . . . .”
    “Sure,” he said distractedly, flipping through the schedule. Pain flared in his hand, and he stopped and looked at it more carefully. He should bandage it . . . .
    “Lucy?” He went back to the secretary’s desk. “Do we have any big Band-Aids around here? I’ve burned my thumb . . . .”
    “I think . . .” The secretary dug through her desk, found a box of bandages. “Let me see . . . . Oh my God, Dr. Bekker, how did you do this . . . ?”
    He let her bandage it, then walked down the corridor to his office, unlocked it and settled