Silent Prey

Back to business: “So this guy needs money and drugs?”
    “Yeah. And we want you to put the word out on yournetwork. Somebody is dealing with him, and we want him. Now.”
    Smith picked up a putter that was leaning against the far end. Three balls waited in a rack, and he popped them out, lined up the first one, stroked and missed. The ball rolled past the cup and stopped two feet away.
    “Twenty-two feet. Not bad,” he said. “When you’ve got a long lag like that, you just try to get it within two feet of the cup. You pretend you’re shooting for a manhole cover. That’s the secret to single-bogey golf. Do cops play golf?”
    “We need you to put out the word,” Fell said.
    “Talk into my belly button, said Little Red Riding Hood,” Smith said. He lined up another putt, let it go. The ball rolled four feet past the cup. “Fuck it,” he said. “Nerves. You guys are putting pressure on me.”
    “There’s no wire,” Lucas said quietly. “Neither one of us is wired. We’re looking for a little help.”
    “What do I get out of it?” Smith asked.
    “Civic pride,” Lucas said. The pitch of his voice had dropped a bit, but Smith pretended not to notice, and lined up the last ball.
    “Civic pride? In fuckin’ New York?” He snorted, looked up and said, “Excuse the language, Dr. Fell . . . . Anyway, I really don’t know what you’re talking about, this network.”
    He walked around the green, squinting at the short putt. The blond man approached with a china platter covered with steaming slices of bread. “Anybody for fresh bread? We’ve got straight and garlic butter . . . .”
    “Fuck the bread,” said Fell. She looked at Lucas. “We’re not getting to him. Maybe we ought to have the fire department check his . . .”
    “Nah, political shit doesn’t work with a guy who’sreally connected,” Lucas said. “Mr. Smith sounds like he’s connected.”
    Smith squinted at him. “Who’re you? I don’t remember you . . . .”
    “I’ve been hired as a consultant here,” Lucas said. He wandered back to the driving net, speaking so softly that the others could barely pick up the words. He pulled a three iron out of the golf bag and looked at it. “I used to work in Minneapolis, until I got thrown off the force. I caught Bekker the first time, but not before he killed a good friend of mine. Cut her throat. He let her see it coming. Made her wait for it. Then he sawed right through her neck . . . . She was tied up, couldn’t fight back. So later, when I caught Bekker . . .”
    “His face got all fucked up,” Smith said suddenly.
    “That’s right,” said Lucas. He’d come back, carrying the iron. “His face got all fucked up.”
    “Wait a minute,” said Fell.
    Lucas ignored her, hopped up on the putting green, and walked toward Smith. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fell’s hand sliding into the fold of her shoulder bag. “And I didn’t worry about fucking him up. You know why? Because I’ve got a lot of money of my own and I didn’t need the job. I don’t need any job.”
    “What the fuck are you talking . . .” Smith backed away, looked quickly at the blond.
    “ . . . And Bekker got me really pissed,” Lucas said to Smith, his voice riding over the other man’s. His eyes were wide, the tendons in his neck straining at his shirt collar. “I mean really fuckin’ pissed. And I had this pistol, with this big sharp front sight on it, and when I caught him, I pounded his face with the sight until you couldn’t tell it was a face. Before that, Bekker’d been really pretty, just like this fuckin’ green . . . .”
    Lucas pivoted and swung the three iron, a long sweeping swing into the perfect turf. A two-pound divot of dirt and grass sprayed off the platform across the pool table.
    “Wait, wait . . .” Smith was waving his hands, trying to stop it.
    The blond had set the china tray aside and his hand went toward the small of his back and Fell had a pistol out, pointed at his head, and she was yelling, “No, no, no . . .”
    Lucas rolled on, swinging the club like a scythe, screaming, walking around Smith, saliva spraying on Smith’s black shirt. “Pounded his face, pounded his motherfuckin’ face, you believe the way we pounded his fuckin’ face.”
    When he stopped, breathing hard, a dozen ragged furrows slashed the surface of the green. Lucas turned and looked at the blond man. Hopped down off the platform, walked