Eyes of Prey

started, then shrugged and said, “ . . . smoke a lot.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Lucas said to her. He sat on the couch himself, half turned toward Clark. “You had a relationship with Michael Bekker.”
    “I told the first officer. It was almost nothing.” Her hands fluttered at her chest.
    “He’s under investigation in the murder of his wife. We’re not accusing him, but we’re looking at him,” Lucas said. “You seem like an intelligent person. What we need from you is . . . an assessment.”
    “Are you asking me . . . ?”
    “Could he kill his wife?”
    She looked at him for a moment, then broke her gaze away. “Yes.”
    “Was he violent with you?”
    There was a moment of silence, and then she nodded. “Yes.”
    “Tell me.”
    “He . . . used to hit me. With his hands. Open hands, but it hurt. And he choked me once. That time, I thought I might die. But he stopped . . . . He’d go into rages. He seemed unstoppable, but he always . . . stopped.”
    “What about sexual practices? Anything unusual, bondage, like that?”
    “No, no. The thing is, there almost wasn’t any sex.” She looked up at Lucas to see if he believed her.
    “He’s impotent?” Lucas asked.
    “He wasn’t impotent,” she said. She glanced at Del, who nodded, encouraging her. “I mean, sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t, but he didn’t seem driven so much by sex as . . .”
    “What?”
    Clark’s fear of them had slipped into the background and she seemed to be searching for the right phrase, interested despite herself. “He needs to control things. He’d make me do . . . you know, oral sex and so on. Not because it turned him on, I don’t think, but because he liked to make me do it. It was the control he liked, not the sex.”
    “Did he ever use drugs while you were around?”
    “No . . . well, he maybe smoked a little marijuana. You know, though, I think he might have used steroids. He has a very good body . . . .” She dropped her eyelashes. “But he had very small testicles.”
    “Small?”
    “Very small . . . almost like marbles,” she said. “You know, he lifts weights, and weightlifters sometimes use steroids. Testicles can shrink with prolonged use of steroids, so I asked him, and he got angry . . . . That was the time he choked me.”
    “Did you ever see him dance?” Lucas asked.
    “Dance? His dance?” Clark pulled back. “You’ve been watching him . . . .”
    “So you’ve seen it,” Lucas said. Del was frowning at him, confused.
    “One time, he beat me up,” Clark said in a rush, bouncing on the couch. “Not bad, I mean, nothing showed, but I was hurting, and crying, and all of a sudden he started to giggle and jump up and down. I couldn’t believe . . . it was like a dance. It was a dance, a jig . . . .”
    “Jesus Christ,” Del blurted. “A jig?”
    Lucas nodded. “I’ve seen it. It’s gotta be dope. You should talk to your people, see if he’s buying on the street.”
    Del looked at Clark and asked, “Why’d you go along with him?”
    She looked up at him and said, “Because he’s beautiful.”
    “Beautiful?”
    “He’s beautiful. I’d never had a beautiful man.” She looked between them, looking for understanding. After a moment, Del nodded.
     
    They left her ten minutes later.
    “She knows something else,” Lucas said. “She didn’t tell us something, and she thinks it might be important.”
    “Yeah. But there’s no way to tell how important it is.” Del scratched his head, looking back at the apartment house door. “And if we squeeze, she’ll either crack like Humpty-fuckin’-Dumpty or call a lawyer . . . .”
    “Which is worse . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    They were walking along the sidewalk to the car. “Where’s your wife?” Lucas asked suddenly. “I heard she split.”
    “Yeah. More’n a year ago.”
    “You gettin’ laid?”
    “Only by Lady Fingers,” Del said, with a dry chuckle. “Look at me, man, I’m a fuckin’ wreck. I’m stoned half the time and I’m walkin’ around with a gun in my armpit. Who’d go out with me? Other’n maybe a couple of hookers?”
    “Yeah.” Lucas looked at the other man. “You know what? She kind of liked you. Clark did. Talking about bikes and all. I mean, she’s a rider and you’re . . . like you are.”
    Del shook his head. “Man, I can do better’n her.”
    “You haven’t been,” Lucas pointed out. “And doing