Silent Prey

overnight, discreetly.
    “Old friend?” Lucas asked.
    “Go home, Lucas,” she’d said, pushing him out the door.
    And now she called his name again: a black town car slid to the curb, a cluster of antennas sticking out of the trunk lid, and when the back window slid down, he saw her face. “Lucas . . .”
     
    O’Dell’s driver was a broad man with a Korean War crew cut, his hair the color of rolled steel. A hatchet nose split basalt eyes, and his lips were dry and thick; a Gila monster’s. Lucas got in the passenger seat.
    “Avery’s?” the driver asked. The front seat was separated from the back by an electric window, which had been run down.
    “Yeah,” O’Dell said. He was reading the Times editorial page. A pristine copy of the Wall Street Journal lay between his right leg and Lily’s left. As he looked over the paper, he asked Lucas, “Did you eat yet?”
    “A carton of orange juice.”
    “We’ll get you something solid,” O’Dell said. He’d not stopped reading the paper, and the question and comment were perfunctory. After a moment, he muttered, “Morons.”
    Lily said to the driver, “This is Lucas Davenport next to you, Aaron—Lucas, that’s Aaron Copland driving.”
    “Not the fuckin’ piano player, either,” Copland said. His eyes went to Lucas. “How are ya?”
    “Nice to meet you,” Lucas said.
    At Avery’s, Copland got out first and held the door for O’Dell. Copland had a wide, solid gut, but the easy moves of an athlete. He wore a pistol clipped to his belt, just to the left of his navel, and though his golf shirt covered it, he made no particular attempt to conceal it.
    A heavy automatic, Lucas thought. Most of the New York cops he’d seen were carrying ancient .38 Specials, revolvers that looked as though they’d been issued at the turn of the century. Copland, whatever else he might be, was living in the present. He never looked directly at Lucas or Lily or O’Dell as they were getting out of the car, but around them, into the corners and doorways and window wells.
    In the closest doorway was a solid oak door with a narrow window at eye height, and below that, a gleaming brass plaque that said AVERY ’ S . Behind the door was a restaurant full of politicians: they had places like this in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Lucas had never seen one in New York. It was twenty feet wide, a hundred feet deep, with a long dark mahogany bar to the rightside of the entrance. Overhead, wooden racks held hundreds of baseball bats, lying side by side, all of them autographed. A dozen flat Plexiglas cases marched down the left-hand wall opposite the bar, like stations of the cross, and each case held a half-dozen more bats, autographed. Lucas knew most of the names—Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Maris, Mays, Snider, Mantle. Others, like Nick Etten, Bill Terry, George Stirnweiss, Monte Irvin, rang only faint bells in his memory. At the end of the bar, a double row of booths extended to the back of the restaurant; almost all of the booths were occupied.
    “I’ll be at the bar,” Copland said. He’d looked over the occupants of the restaurant, decided that none of them was a candidate for shooting.
    O’Dell led the way back: he was an actor, Lucas realized, rolling slowly down the restaurant like a German tank, nodding into some booths, pointedly ignoring others, the rolled copy of the Wall Street Journal whacking his leg.
    “Goddamn town,” O’Dell said when he was seated at the booth. He dropped the papers on the seat by his leg. Lily sat opposite him, with Lucas. He peered at Lucas across the table and said, “You know what’s happening out there, Davenport? People are stringing razor wire—you see it everywhere now. And broken glass on the tops of walls. Like some goddamned Third World city. New York. Like fuckin’ Bangkok.” He lowered his voice: “Like these cops, if they’re out there. A death squad, like Brazil or Argentina.”
    A balding waiter with a pickle face came to the table. He wore a neck-to-knees white apron that seemed too neatly blotched with mustard.
    “Usual,” O’Dell grunted.
    Lily glanced at Lucas and said, “Two coffees, two Danish.”
    The waiter nodded sourly and left.
    “You got a reputation as a shooter,” O’Dell said.
    “I’ve shot some people,” Lucas said. “So has Lily.”
    “We don’t want you to shoot anybody,” O’Dell said.
    “I’m not an assassin.”
    “I just wanted you to know,” O’Dell said. He groped in