Silent Prey

going on here, and it’s pretty rough, doesn’t have anything to do with you. You’d best lay low.”
    “He’s out,” Don Reed said, looking at his son.
    Reed’s head bobbed. “I don’t want nothing more to do with New York.”
     
    On the way back to the airport, Pike said, “I don’t think I’d like New York.”
    “It’s got some low points,” Lucas said. He took a card from his pocket diary, scribbled his home phone number on the back of it. “Listen, thanks for the help. If you ever need anything from New York or Minneapolis, call me.”
    The flight to Atlanta was bad, but on the way to New York, the fear seemed to slip away. Lucas had reached a tolerance level: his fifth flight in three days. He’d never flown that much in his life. More or less relaxed, he founda notepad in his overnight case and doodled on it, working it out.
    Bobby Rich hadn’t been assigned to work the case because he had the best qualifications—he’d been assigned simply because he knew a guy who knew Red Reed. So that Red Reed could call his friend and insist that the friend pass information to the cops about the shooting of Fred Waites.
    Except that Reed hadn’t been there at all. The man with white hair and the deep tan was an O’Dell invention. Lucas grinned despite himself. In a crooked way, it was very nice: lots of layers.
    He closed his eyes, avoiding the next question: Did Lily know?
    At La Guardia he saw a copy of the Times with Bekker as a blond woman. He bought a copy, queued for a cab, got a buck-toothed driver who wanted to talk.
    “Bekker, huh?” buck-tooth said, his eyes on the rearview mirror. He could see the picture on the front of the paper as Lucas read the copy inside. “There’s a goofball for ya. Dressed up like a woman.”
    “Yeah.”
    “This last one, man, took her right out of a parking garage. Girlfriend says Bekker was right there with them, could’ve took them both.”
    Lucas folded the paper down and looked at the back of the driver’s head. “There’s another one? Today?”
    “Yeah, this morning. They found her in a parking lot with the wire gag and the cut-off eyelids and the whole works. I say, when they get him, they ought to hang him off a street sign by his nuts. Be an example.”
    Lucas nodded and said, “Listen, forget about the hotel. Take me to Midtown South.”

CHAPTER
23
    Carter, Huerta and James were huddled together over a tabloid newspaper in the coordinating office, all three of them with Styrofoam coffee cups in their hands. Lucas looked in and James said, “Kennett’s down in the corner office, he wants to see you.”
    “Have you seen Barbara Fell?” Lucas asked.
    “Gone home.” There was a rapid-fire exchange of glances among the three cops, a vein of thin amusement. They knew he was sleeping with Fell.
    “Anything happening?”
    “About a thousand sightings on Bekker, including three good ones,” Carter said. “He’s driving a Volkswagen Bug . . . .”
    “Jesus, that’s terrific,” Lucas said. “Who saw him? How’d you get the car?”
    “Two witnesses last night at the parking ramp. The Carson woman’s girlfriend and the cashier. The girlfriend is a sure thing—she even told us he was wearing too much Poison. That’s a perfume . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    “ . . . And the cashier remembers the blond part, and says she—he—was driving an old Volkswagen. He remembers because it looked like it was in pretty good shape and he wondered if Bekker was an artist or something. He thinks it was dark green or dark blue. We’re running it through the License Bureau right now, but the Volkswagen part isn’t public yet. If he goes outside now, he’s gonna have to go in a car. And we’re stopping every Bug in Midtown.”
    “You said three people . . . .”
    “The third’s a maybe, but pretty definite. The night clerk in a bookstore down in the Village says he remembers the face very clearly, says it was Bekker. He says he was buying some weird book about torture.”
    “Huh.”
    “We’re getting close,” Carter said. “We’ll have him in two or three days, at the outside.”
    “I hope,” Lucas said. “Any returns on that stun-gun business?”
    “Three. Nothing.”
    “Phones?”
    “Nope. Goddamn rat’s nest.”
    “Okay . . .”
    Lucas started to turn away, and Carter said, “You’ve seen the papers?”
    “With Bekker? Yeah . . .”
    “No, that was this morning; the afternoon paper . . .” Huerta picked up