Silent Prey

Pillow talk. But Kennett got most of it. With what Copland overheard, and what Kennett got in bed, they must’ve known it all.
    Petty’s image floated in her mind’s eye, his hair slicked down, his red ears sticking out, running down the Brooklyn sidewalk with the paper overhead, so happy to see her . . . .
    “I killed you,” she said to his image, speaking aloud. Her voice was stark as a winter crow. “I killed you, Walt.”

CHAPTER
31
    The river was black as ink, but thick, oily, roiled, as it pushed the last few miles toward the sea. A full moon had come up in the east, red, huge, shrouded by smog over the city. Lily waited until the elderly night guard and his dog were at the far end of the marina, then used her key at the member’s gate.
    The docks were cluttered, as always, badly lit by widely spaced yellow bug lights. Out in the water, anchor lights shone off the masts of a half-dozen anchored boats. Here and there, lights showed at portholes, and a light breeze banged halyards against aluminum masts, a pleasant whipping tinkle like wind chimes. The smell of marijuana hovered around a small Capri daysailer and a man was giggling inside the tiny cabin. She walked out of the marijuana stink into the river smell, compounded of mud and decaying fish.
    “Lily.” Kennett’s voice came out of the dark as she approached the Lestrade. He was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. “I was wondering if you’d come.”
    “You know about Bekker?”
    “Yeah. And that I’ve been cut out of the loop.”
    Lily stepped into the cockpit, sat down, staring at him. His face was flat, solemn; he was looking steadily back. “You’re Robin Hood,” she said.
    “Robin Hood, bullshit,” he said wearily. He flicked the cigarette into the water.
    “I’m not wearing a wire,” she said.
    “Stand up, turn around.” She stood up and Kennett ran his hands down her, between her legs. “Gimme the purse.”
    He opened the purse, clicked on an electric light that hung from the backstay, looked inside. After poking inside, he took the .45 out of its holder, dropped the magazine and shucked the shells out into the water. Then he jacked the slide, to eject the shell in the chamber. The chamber was empty, and he shook his head. “You oughta carry one under the hammer.”
    “I’m not here to talk about guns,” she said. “I’m here to talk about you being Robin Hood. About using me as a dummy to spy on O’Dell. About killing Walt Petty.”
    “I didn’t use you as a dummy,” he said flatly. “I got with you because I liked you and I’m falling in love with you. You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you’re a cop, and there aren’t many women around I can talk to.”
    “I don’t doubt that you like me,” she said, squaring off with him. “But that didn’t keep you from running me. On the way up here, I was remembering when we’d lie down below there, in the berth, and you running those goddamn fantasies about what O’Dell did for sex. Do you remember that? You must’ve scripted those things, to get me talking about O’Dell. And before that, talking about Walt. When I think of the things I told you, because I felt secure. Because you were a lover and abrother cop. Jesus Christ, every time we got into bed, you were pumping me for information.”
    “Christ, Lily . . . Lily, if you told me anything about O’Dell or Petty . . . it was by-product. I wasn’t sleeping with you to get information. Jesus, Lily . . .”
    “Shut up,” Lily said. She reached overhead and pulled the chain on the backstay light and they were plunged into the dark again. “I want to know some shit. We’ve got Jeese and Clemson, Davenport got them, and we know about Copland . . . .”
    “I knew Davenport was dangerous,” Kennett said quietly. “I really didn’t underestimate him. I knew he was a really dangerous sonofabitch when he looked up Gauguin, about the necktie. And I couldn’t help liking him.”
    “Is that why your guys tried to beat him up, instead of just whacking him?”
    Kennett grinned: she could see his teeth. Not a happy smile, a rueful one. “Another mistake,” he said. “You start feeling that everything in New York is more. That a small-town guy could never hold off a couple of real New York pros. So we were just gonna break a few ribs, maybe. Something that’d take him off the street for a month. They said he was quick as a pro fighter. They were pissed, said that if