Silent Prey

rocked, twisting her gnarled, knobby fingers.
    “You should call her. Give her time to get home, and talk to her,” Bekker said.
    “Yes, yes, I’ll call her . . . .”
    “Her number’s on the emergency pad, by the telephone,” Bekker said.
    “Yes, yes . . .” She looked up at him, her thin skin papery and creased in the moody light.
    “Don’t forget . . .”
    “No . . .” And then: “I can’t find my glasses.”
    He found them near the kitchen sink; handed them to her without a word. She bobbed her head in thanks and said, “My glasses, my glasses,” and shuffled toward the TV. “Have you seen . . . No, you don’t watch. I saw Arnold on the news.”
    Arnold Schwarzenegger. She expected him any day to clean the crooks out of New York.
    “I’ve got to go.”
    “Yes, yes . . .” She waved him away.
    “Call Bridget,” Bekker said.
    “Yes . . .” From the side, her face glowed blue in the light from the television screen, like a black-light painting. Like the face of the dying Chinese . . .
    Ultraviolet.
    The idea came from nowhere, but with a force that stopped him at the head of the stairs. Could the illumination of the dying man be related to a shifted spectrum? A light phenomenon that occurred in infrared or ultraviolet, that occasionally strayed into visible light? Was that why some people glowed and others didn’t? Was that how an old camera caught it, with the poor, wide-spectrum film of the nineteenth century? He’d seen both ultraviolet and infrared photography as a medical student. Ultraviolet could actually increase the resolution of a microscope, and highlight aspects of a specimen notvisible in ordinary light. And infrared could pick up temperature variations, even from dark objects.
    But that was all he knew. Could he use his ordinary cameras? How to check?
    Excited, excited, the science pounded in his brain. He hurried down the stairs, remembering Bridget Land only at the last minute. He slowed, looked ahead apprehensively, but she was gone.
    He hurried out the back, got in the Volkswagen, drove it to the fence, hopped out, unlocked the fence, drove through, checked for intruders, climbed back out, locked the gate behind him. He was flapping, frantic, eager to get on his way, to sustain the insights of the evening.
    North across Prince, east across Broadway, keeping to the side streets, the buildings pressing against him, working his way north and east. There. First Avenue. And Bellevue, an aging pile of brick.
    Bekker looked at his watch. He was a minute or so early; no problem. He took it slowly, slowly . . . . And there he was, walking toward the bus stop. Bekker leaned across the car and rolled the passenger-side window halfway down, pulled to the curb.
    Whitechurch saw him, looked once around, stepped to the window. “Three of the white, thirty crosses, all commercial. Two of the angels, good stuff . . .”
    “Only two?” Bekker felt the control slipping, fought to retain it. “Okay. But I’ll be calling you in a couple of days.”
    “I’ll have more by then. How many could you handle?”
    “Thirty? Could you get me thirty? And thirty more of the crosses?”
    “Yeah, I think so,” Whitechurch said. “My guy’s bringing out a new line. Call me . . . and I’ll need twenty-one hundred for tonight.”
    Bekker nodded, peeled twenty-one one-hundred-dollar bills from the roll in his pocket and handed them to Whitechurch. Whitechurch knew Bekker carried a pistol; in fact, he had sold it to him. Bekker wasn’t worried about a rip-off. Whitechurch stuffed the bills in his pocket and dropped a bag onto the front seat.
    “Come again,” he said, and turned toward the hospital.
    Bekker rolled the window up and started back, the sack shoved under the seat; but he knew he wouldn’t make it without a sample. He deserved a sample. He’d had a revolutionary idea this night, the recording of the human aura . . . .
    He stopped at a traffic light, checked the streets, turned on the dome light and opened the bag. Three fat twists of coke and two small Zip-Loc bags. Thirty small commercial tabs in one, two larger tabs in the other. His hands shook as he kept watch and unrolled one of the twists. Just enough to get home.
    The coke jumped him and his head rolled backward with the force of it roaring through his brain like a freight train. After a moment, he started out again, slowly, everything preternaturally clear. If he could hold