Silent Prey

convivial. The bartender called Fell by her first name, pointed her at a back booth. Lucas took the seat facing the entrance. A waitress came over, looked at him, looked at Fell, said, “Ooo.”
    Fell said, “Strictly business.”
    “Ain’t it always,” the waitress said. “Didja hear Louise had her kid, baby girl, six pounds four ounces?”
    Lucas watched Fell as she chatted with the waitress. She looked a little tired, a little lonesome, with that uncertain smile.
    “So,” she said, coming back to Lucas. “Do you really freeze your ass off in Minnesota? Or is that just . . .”
    Small talk, bar talk. A second drink. Lucas waiting for a break, waiting . . . .
    Getting it. A slender man walked in, touched a woman on the cheek, got a quick peck in return. He was blond, carefully dressed, and after a moment, looked at the back of Fell’s head, said something to the woman he’d touched, then looked carefully at Lucas.
    “There’s a guy,” Lucas said, leaning across the table, talking in a low voice. “And I think he’s looking at you. By the bar . . .”
    She turned her head and lit up. “Mica,” she called. To Lucas she said, “He used to be my hairdresser. He’s, like,moved downtown.” She slid out of the booth, walked up to the bar. “When did you get back . . . ?”
    “I thought that was you . . .” Mica said.
    Mica had been to Europe; he started a story. Lucas sipped the beer, lifted his feet to the opposite seat, caught Fell’s purse between his ankles, pulled it in. Fumbled with it, out of sight, watching. The waitress glanced his way, lifted her eyebrows. He shook his head. If she came over, if Mica’s story ended too soon, if Fell hurried back to get a cigarette . . .
    There. Keys. He’d been waiting all day for a shot at them . . . .
    He glanced at the key ring in his hand, six keys. Three good candidates. He had a flat plastic box in his pocket that had once held push pins. He’d dumped the pins and filled both the bottom and the lid with a thin layer of modeling clay. He pressed the first key in the clay, turned it, pressed again. Then the second key. The third key he did in the lid; if he made the impressions too close together, the clay tended to distort . . . . He glanced into the box. Good, clean impressions, six of them.
    Fell was still talking. He slipped the keys back into her purse, gripped it with his ankles, lifted it back to her seat . . . .
    Pulse pounding like an amateur shoplifter’s.
    Jesus.
    Got them.

CHAPTER
7
    Lily called the next morning, “Got them,” she said. “We’re going to breakfast . . . .”
    Lucas called Fell, catching her just before she left her apartment.
    “O’Dell called,” he said. “He wants me to have breakfast with him. I probably won’t make it down until ten o’clock or so.”
    “All right. I’ll run the guy Lonnie told us about, the guy with the Cadillac in Atlantic City. It won’t be much . . . .”
    “Unless the guy’s into medical supplies. Maybe the syringes weren’t his only item.”
    “Yeah . . .” She knew that was bullshit, and Lucas grinned at the telephone.
    “Hey, we’re driving nails. I’ll buy you lunch later on.”
    The Lakota Hotel was old, but well-kept for New York. It was close to the publishing company that produced Lucas’ board games, convenient to restaurants, and had beds that his feet didn’t hang off of. From this particular room, he had a view over the roof below intothe windows of a glass-sided office building. Not wonderful, but not bad, either. He had two nightstands, a writing table, a chest of drawers, a window seat, a color television with a working remote, and a closet with a light that came on automatically when he opened it.
    He went to the closet, pulled out a briefcase and opened it on the bed. Inside was a monocular, a cassette recorder with a phone clip, and a Polaroid Spectra camera with a half-dozen rolls of film. Excellent. He closed the briefcase, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and rode back down to the street. A bellhop, loitering in the phone-booth-sized lobby, said, “Cab, Mr. Davenport?”
    “No. I’ve got a car coming,” he said. Outside, he hurried down the street to a breakfast bar, got a pint of orange juice in a wax carton, and went back outside.
    After leaving Fell the night before, he’d gone to Lily’s apartment and given her the key impressions. Lily knew an intelligence officer who could get them made