Silent Prey

said, “I think he’s real.”
    “So do I,” said Lucas. “He saw him.” He looked up at the red-brick buildings around him, with their iron stoops and window boxes full of petunias. “And he’s somewhere close, Bekker is. He didn’t drive any distance to get to a small bookstore. I can smell the sonofabitch.”
    He took her to the restaurant where Petty had been killed, sat and had Cokes, and almost told her about it.
    “Not too bad a place,” he said, looking around.
    “It’s all right,” she said.
    “You ever been here? Your regular precinct is around here, right?”
    “Ten blocks,” Fell said, poking a straw in her Coke. “Too far. Besides, this is sort of a sit-down place, not the kind of place you come to for lunch if you’re a cop.”
    “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
    Late in the afternoon, while Fell browsed a magazine rack, Lucas stopped at a pay phone, dropped a quarter, and got Lily in O’Dell’s car.
    “Where are you?”
    “Morningside Heights.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Up by Columbia.”
    “I need to see you. Tonight. By yourself. Won’t take too long.”
    “All right. How about nine, at my place?”
    “Good.”
    When he hung up, Fell looked up from a copy of Country Home and said, “So. Are you up for dinner?”
    “I’m talking to Lily tonight,” he said. “I’d like to come around later, though.”
    “I hate to see you hanging around with that woman,” Fell said, dropping the magazine back on the rack.
    “This is purely business,” Lucas said. “And look, could you stop by Midtown and pick up those file summaries? We’ve been floating around all day, listening to bullshit . . . maybe something’ll come out of the files.”
    “All right. I’ll haul them over to my place . . . .”
     
    Lily was sitting in a living room chair, her high heels in the middle of the carpet, her bare feet up on a hassock. The hassock was covered with a brocaded throw that seemed to Lucas to be vaguely Russian, or Old World. She was sipping a Diet Coke, tired smudges under her eyes.
    “Sit down. You sounded tense,” she said. “What happened?” Her head was back, her dark hair a perfect frame around her pale oval face.
    “Nothing happened, not today, anyway. I just need to talk to you,” he said. He perched on the edge of her other overstuffed chair. “I need to know about you and Walter Petty—your relationship.”
    She leaned farther back in the chair, wiggled once to settle in, laid her head back, and closed her eyes. “Can I ask why you need to know?”
    “Not yet.”
    She opened her eyes and looked at him carefully and said, “Robin Hood?”
    “I’m not sure. What about Petty?”
    “Walt and I went back as far as you can go,” Lily said,her eyes unfocusing. “We were born on the same block in Brooklyn, sort of middle-class brownstones. I was exactly one month older, to the day. June first and July first. His mother and mine were friends, so I suppose I first laid eyes on him when I was five or six weeks old. We grew up together. Went to kindergarten together. We were both in the smart group. Someplace along the way, sixth or seventh grade, he got interested in math and science and ham radio in that geeky way boys do, and I got interested in social things. After that we didn’t talk so much.”
    “Still friends, though . . .”
    She nodded. “Sure. I’d talk to him when I saw him around the block, but not at school. He was in love with me for most of his life. And I guess I loved him, you know, but not sexually. Like a handicapped brother, or something.”
    “Handicapped?”
    She carefully set the glass on the table and said, “Yeah, he was socially handicapped. Walked around with a slide rule on his belt, his table manners went from bad to worse, he got weird around girls. You know the type. Sort of ineffectual, nonphysical. Really nice, though. Eager . . . too eager.”
    “Yeah. A dork. A nerd. The kind of kid that gets shredded by girls.”
    “Yes. Exactly. The kind that gets shredded,” she said. “But we were friends . . . . And whenever I needed something done—you know, get an apartment painted, or help fixing something—I could call him up and he’d drop everything and be there. I took him for granted. He was always there, and I assumed he always would be.”
    “Why’d he become a cop?”
    “ ’Cause he could. It was a job you could get with a testand with family connections. He was brilliant on tests and had the