Silent Prey

day. Then he’d miss the early flight to Atlanta. Instead of getting into Charleston in the morning, he wouldn’t make it until the afternoon and probably wouldn’t get out until the next day. Then he’d have to think of an excuse for the New York people.
    The hooker rapped on the bar with her knuckles, nodded at the daiquiri, got a new one. She wore a pale-green party dress, almost the color of the drink. She caught his eyes again, let her gaze linger this time. Lucas didn’t remember her. He’d known most of the regulars when he was working, but he’d been off the streets for months now. A week is forever, on the streets. A whole new class of thirteen-year-old girls would be giving doorway blow jobs to suburban insurance agents who would later be described in court documents as good fathers . . . .
    Lucas was halfway through the beer when Johnson walked in, out of breath, as though he’d been running.
    “Jesus, Davenport,” he said. “Missed the bus.” He looked down the bar at the hooker as Lucas swiveled on the stool.
    “Where is he?” Lucas said.
    Johnson’s face lit up. “What’d you mean, where is he? He’s right there.”
    Lucas looked past the hooker to the back of the bar; all the pool players were white.
    “Where?”
    Johnson started to laugh, lifted a leg and slapped a thigh. “You sittin’ next to him, man.”
    The hooker looked at Lucas and said, in a voice an octave too low, “Hi, there.”
    Lucas looked at the hooker for a second, rereading the features, and closed his eyes. Transvestite. In a half-second, it all fell into place. Goddamn Bekker. This washow he got close to the women and the tourist males. As a woman. With the right makeup, at night, with his small, narrow-shouldered body. That was how he got out of the New School . . . .
    God damn it.
    “Did you tell Bekker how to . . . do this?” Lucas asked, gesturing at the dress. “The dress, the makeup.”
    “We talked about it,” Thomas said. “But he was a sick motherfucker and I didn’t like talking to him.”
    “But when you talked about it . . . was he real interested, or did you just talk?”
    Thomas tipped his head back, looked up at the ceiling, remembering. “Well . . . he tried it. A couple of things.” He hopped off the bar stool and walked away from Lucas and Johnson, moving his hips, turned and posed. “It ain’t that easy to get just the right walk. If you forget halfway through the block, it ruins your whole image.”
    The bartender, watching, said, “Are you guys gay?”
    “Cop,” said Lucas. “This is official.”
    “Forget I asked . . .”
    “I won’t forget, honey,” Thomas said, licking his lower lip.
    “You fuckin’ . . .”
    “Shut up,” Lucas snapped, poking a finger at the bartender. He looked back at Thomas. “But did he do it? The walk?”
    “Couple times, a few times, I guess. You know, we did talk about it, when I think back. Not so much about how good it feels, but how to do it. You know, gettin’ the prosthetic bras and like that. He’d make a good-lookin’ girl, too, ’cept for the scars.”
    “You think so?” Lucas asked. “Is that a professional opinion?”
    “Don’t dick me around, man,” Thomas said, flaring.
    “I’m not. That’s a real question. Would he make a good woman?”
    Thomas stared at him for a minute, decided the question was real: “Yeah, he would. He’d be real good at it. ’Cept for the scars.”
    Lucas hopped off the bar stool, said thanks, and nodded to Johnson: “We owe you. You need something, talk to Sloan.”
    “That’s all?” asked Thomas.
    “That’s all,” Lucas said.
     
    Lucas called Fell from the pay phone at the back of the bar. When she answered, he could hear the television going in the background, a baseball game. “Can you get to Kennett? Right now?”
    “Sure.”
    “Tell him we’ve figured out how Bekker is doing it,” Lucas said. “How he’s staying out of sight on the streets, getting out of the New School.”
    “We have?”
    “Yeah. I just talked to his former next-door neighbor at the Hennepin County Jail, name of Rayon Thomas. Nice-looking guy. Good makeup. Great legs. He’s wearing a daiquiri-green party dress. He gave Bekker lessons . . . .”
    After a moment of silence, she breathed, “Sonofabitch, Bekker’s a woman. We’re so fuckin’ stupid.”
    “Call Kennett,” Lucas said.
    “You haven’t talked to anyone?” she asked.
    “I thought you’d like to break