Silent Prey

numbers.”
    “Mmmph.” Lucas looked at Lily and then O’Dell. “I need some heavy time to dig through this . . . .”
    “Don’t,” said O’Dell. He pointed a fork at Lucas’ nose. “Your first priority is to find Bekker and to provide a diversion for the media. We need a little air. You’ve got to do that for real. If this gang is out there, these killers, they won’t be easily fooled. Bringing you to New York was supposed to be like bringing in a psychic from Boise: to keep the Boises in the newsroom happy. Everybody’sbuying it so far. They’ve got to keep buying it. This other thing has to be way, way in the background.”
    “What happens if we catch Bekker too soon?” Lucas asked. “Before we identify these guys?”
    Lily shrugged. “Then you go home and we find some other way to do it.”
    “Mmm.”
    “So. We’re in a position where we’re hopin’ a goddamn psycho holds out for another few weeks and maybe butchers somebody else’s kid, so we can run down our own guys,” O’Dell mumbled, half talking to himself, staring into the half-eaten sludge pile of toast and syrup. He turned to Lily. “We’re really fucked, you know that, Lily? We’re really and truly fucked.”
    “Hey, this is New York,” Lucas said.
    O’Dell slogged through the rest of the French toast, filling in background on Petty’s computer search for the killers.
    “Is there any possibility that he turned up something unexpected with the computer?” Lucas asked.
    “Not really. Things don’t work that way—with a computer, you grind things out, you inch forward. You don’t get a printout that says ‘Joe Blow Did It.’ I think something must have happened with this witness.”
     
    When they left the restaurant, O’Dell walked ahead, again nodding into some booths, pointedly ignoring others. Lily grabbed Lucas’ sleeve and held him back a step.
    “Here.” She handed him three keys on a ring.
    “That was quick,” Lucas said.
    “This is New York,” she said.
     
    Lucas took a cab from Avery’s to Fell’s apartment building. The cabdriver was a small man with a whitebeard, and as soon as Lucas settled in the backseat, he asked, “See Misérables ?”
    “What?”
    “Let me tell you, you’re missing something,” the driver said. He smelled like a raw onion and was soaked with sweat. “Where’re you going? Okay—listen, you gotta see Misérables, I mean why d’ya come to New York if you ain’t gonna see a show, you know what I mean? Look at the crazy motherfucker over there, you should excuse the language, you think they should let a jerk like that on the streets? Jesus Christ, where’d he learn to drive?” The driver stuck his head out the window, leaning on the horn. “Hey, buddy, where’d you learn to drive, huh? Iowa? Huh? Hey, buddy.” Back inside, he said, “I tell you, if the mayor wasn’t black . . .”
     
    Lucas called Fell at the office from a pay phone mounted on the outside wall of a parking garage. The garage paint, covered with indecipherable graffiti, was peeling off, to reveal another layer of graffiti. “Barb? Lucas. I gotta run back to my place, just for a minute. Are we still on for lunch?”
    “Sure.”
    “Great. See you in a few minutes,” Lucas said. He hung up and looked across the street at Fell’s apartment building. A thousand apartments, he thought. Maybe more. Ranks of identical balconies, each with a couple of plants, most with bicycles. Yuppie-cycles, the mountain bikes, in case the riders encountered an off-trail situation in Central Park. Some of them, as high as he could see, were chained to the balcony railings.
    The lobby of her building was a glass cage surrounding a guard. At the back were two ranks of stainless-steelmailboxes. The guard, in an ill-fitting gray uniform, was stupidly watchful.
    “Where’s the sales office?” Lucas asked. A light flickered in the guard’s eyes. This situation was specifically covered in his orders. “Second floor, sir, take a right.”
    “Thanks.” Apartment security; it was wonderful, if you had it. Lucas walked back to the elevators, punched two. The second floor had several offices, all down to the right. Lucas ignored them, took a left. Found the stairs, walked up a floor, went back to the elevators and punched sixteen.
    The telephone call assured him that Fell was still at Midtown; he didn’t have to worry that she’d slipped back home for a snack or to pay bills, or whatever. She lived alone,