Silent Prey (17 page)

“What’s wrong?” Lily asked.

Kennett rolled toward her and put an arm under her head. “I feel like an invalid when we do that. I mean, nothing
but
that.”

The forward double berth was wedge-shaped, shoved into the bow of the boat. Kennett was lying on his side. He reached toward her face in the near-darkness, touched her at the hairline with the pad of his index finger, drew it down her nose, gently over her lips, between her breasts, then up to gently tap each nipple, then down around her navel, over her hipbone and down the inside of her thigh to her knee. She was still warm, sweating.

“We’re not . . . compelled . . . to do it,” Lily said.

“Maybe you’re not, but I am,” Kennett grumbled. “If I couldn’t make love anymore, I’d feel like a goddamn vegetable.”

“You just wanna be on top,” she said, trying to make a joke out of it. When he didn’t respond, she said, “You’ve got to listen to Fermut.”

“Fuckin’ doctors . . .” Fermut, the cardiologist, had reluctantly agreed that Kennett could resume his sex life “as long as your partner does the hard work.”

“Listen to him,” Lily said, gently but urgently. “He’s trying to save your life, you dope.”

“Yeah.” Kennett turned his head away from her, his hand scratching at his chest.

“You want a cigarette, right?”

“No, that’s not it. I was just thinking . . . it’s not the doctors. It’s me. When I get turned on and my heart starts thumping, I start listening to it . . . .”

“Then we oughta quit. Maybe only for a few weeks . . .” Lily said.

“No. That’d be worse. It’s just . . . Christ, I wish one thing—just one goddamn thing in this world—was simple. Just one thing. I gotta get laid, but if I get laid, I can’t help thinking about my heart, and that can mess up getting laid. Then with you on top all the time, and me just laying there like a dead man with a hard-on, I start thinking, what’s it like for her? It must be like necrophilia, screwing me.”

“Richard, you idiot . . .”

“Christ, I’m glad I met you,” he said after a while. “I couldn’t believe you were in there, working for O’Dell. I kept thinking, she can’t be just working for him, a woman like that, there’s gotta be something else going on here.”

“Oh, God . . .” Lily giggled, an odd, pleasant sound with her husky voice.

“Sorry ’bout that,” Kennett said, touching her again. “I wonder what O’Dell does for sex? Fly out to Vegas and get a couple-three fat ones in the sack? I wonder how long it’s been since he’s seen his dick? He’s so fat I don’t think he can even reach it anymore . . . .”

“C’mon . . .” Lily said, but she giggled again, a big woman giggling, and that set Kennett off, laughing.

And then: “ ’Course, things must’ve been different with Davenport.”

Lily cut him off: “Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Probably hung like a Shetland pony . . .”

“You wanna get bit?”

“Is that a clear offer?”

“Dick . . .”

“Hey. I’m not jealous. Well, maybe a little. But I really like the guy. This whole business of bringing him to dance with the media, that’s pretty bizarre, and it’s working. You think he’ll get in the sack with Barbara Fell?”

“I don’t know,” she said, crisply.

“He seems like the kind of guy who’d be looking around,” he offered.

“Pot and kettle.”

“Hey—I didn’t say it was bad. I just wondered about him and Fell. That’s a match made in hell.”

“She’s very attractive.”

“I guess, if you like the type,” Kennett said. “She looks like a biker chick who fell off the Harley one too many times. Why’d you put him with her? Some kind of psychological compulsion to bury your sexual history?”

“No, no, no. We just needed somebody who knew Midtown fences . . . .”

“Yeah, but Davenport’s supposed to be a talking head.”

“He’s never a talking head. Even when he’s talking. The guy has more moves than you do, and you’re the sneakiest, shiftiest . . .”

“ . . . crookedest . . .”

“ . . . most underhanded asshole on the force. Besides, he had to do something to get the media to talk to him.”

“I suppose.” Kennett’s fingertips slipped along her thigh again, her skin soft and slightly cool from evaporating sweat. “We’ll either have to get a sheet to cover up or figure out some way to warm up the place again.”

Lily groped for his groin and said, “Oh, Jesus. Are you sure? Dick . . .”

He rolled into her, his arm around her, pulling her tight. “That’s the word, all right. Dick.”

“Be serious.”

“All right. How’s this: I really do need you; it’s the thing that keeps my heart going . . . .”

Much later, when he was sleeping, she thought:
They can all make you feel guilty; it’s what they do best.
 . . .

The phone rang early and Lucas rolled out of the blankets, dropped his feet to the floor and sat a moment before he picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

“How’s your head?” Kennett sounded wide awake and almost chipper.

“Better,” Lucas said. He couldn’t seem to focus and noticed that the window shade was bright with low-angle sunshine. “What time is it?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“Ah, Jesus, man, I don’t get up at seven . . . .” His face hurt again, and when he turned toward the bed, he noticed a spot of blood on the pillowcase.

“Hey, it’s a great day, but it’s gonna be hot,” Kennett said cheerfully.

“Thanks. If you hadn’t called, I woulda had to look out the window . . . .”
What’s going on?

“I understand that you and Fell talked to a guy named Whitechurch yesterday, at Bellevue?”

“Yeah?”

“Bekker took him off last night.”

“What?” Lucas stood up, trying to understand.

“Shot him in a hallway. Cut his eyes,” Kennett said.

“The morgue guys said it’s gotta be Bekker, ’cause it was done too well to be a copycat. And with you talking to him about Bekker, there’s no way it’s a coincidence. When they called me, a couple of hours ago now, I shipped Carter over to the hospital. Somebody there finally figured out that cops were talking to Whitechurch yesterday . . . .”

“Ah, Jesus,” Lucas said. “Whitechurch was wrong, too. We knew it. We knew he was bullshitting us.”

“How’d you get onto him?”

“A fence,” Lucas said. “Down on the Lower East Side.”

“Smith?”

“No, a small-timer, a woman named Arnold. We’ll go back and talk to her, but I don’t think she has any connection with Whitechurch except to handle occasional shipments from him. But why was Bekker talking to Whitechurch again? More equipment?”

“Whitechurch was dealing dope,” Kennett said.

“Ah. For sure?”

“Yeah, we got it from a couple of places. And I’d bet that’s where the halothane is from.”

“Telephones?”

“We sent a subpoena over, and the phone company’s mopping up their computers right now. They’ll run back all the calls that came into Whitechurch’s apartment and his office phone, both, and where they came from, for the last two months.”

“That should do it,” Lucas said. “Fell’s got a beeper: if you find him, call us. I’d like to see the end of it.”

“Mmm. It doesn’t feel that easy,” Kennett said.

“All right. Well: I’ll get Fell and get back to the fence.
Goddammit, why’d Whitechurch cover for him? That’d be something to figure out.”

Lucas called Fell and told her.

“Did we mess it up?” she asked anxiously.

“No. We barely touched the guy—there was no way to know. But Kennett’s people are all over him now. Everybody who knew him. We’ve got to talk to what’s-her-name, the fence.”

“Arnold. Rose.”

“Yeah . . . So what’s your status? Are you ready?” Lucas asked.

“Hey, I’m just sitting here on my bed, buck naked, half asleep.”

“Jesus, if you had a warm croissant and a cup of coffee, I’d come right over,” Lucas said. The nude photo of Fell and the other cop popped up in his head.

“Fuck you, Davenport,” Fell said, laughing. “If you’re ready, why don’t you get a cab? I’ll be out front by the time you get here.”

“You come get me,” Lucas said. “I’m barely awake, and I gotta shave.” He touched his raw cheek.

“Be ready,” she said.

Fell, when she arrived, was wearing a black tailored cotton dress with small flowers—the kind of dress women wore in Moline, Illinois—black low heels and nylons.

“Jesus, you look terrific,” Lucas said, climbing into the cab behind her.

She blushed and said, “We just gonna walk in on Arnold?”

“You don’t want to talk about how terrific you look?”

“Hey, just shut the fuck up, okay, Davenport?” she said.

“Anything you want . . .” Under his breath, he added, “Toots.”

“What? What’d you just say?”

“Nothing,” Lucas said innocently.

She closed one eye and said, “You’re walking on the edge, buddy.”

Arnold was scared. “He maybe got done because he talked to you,” she said, sucking her heavy lips in and out.

“No. He got done because he called this asshole Bekker, who he was protecting, and told him that we’d interviewed him,” Lucas said. “Bekker knows me. He didn’t want to take any chances.”

“So what do you want from me? I gave you everything.”

“How’d you get in touch with Whitechurch when you needed to?” Lucas asked.

“I never needed to. When he had something good, he’d bring it over. Otherwise—shit, I don’t handle hospital stuff. I handle shit you can sell, cheap. Suits. Neckties. Telephones. I wouldn’t know what to do with no hospital stuff.”

Fell pointed a finger at her: “You took down Simpson-McCall, what, two months ago . . . ?”

Arnold looked away. “No. I don’t know nothing about that.”

Fell studied her for a moment, then looked at Lucas. “Brokerage moves to a new building, one of those over-the-weekend moves. Trucks coming and going all night with files, computers, telephones, furniture, putting it in. The only thing is, not all of the trucks were hired by the brokerage. Some assholes rented trucks, drove them up to the loading docks, and disappeared over the horizon.
 . . . One of them took off six hundred brand-new beige two-button phones. Somebody else got fifty Northgate IBM compatibles, still in the boxes.”

“Really?” said Arnold, faintly distressed. “Computers?”

Fell nodded, and Lucas looked back at Arnold. “If you
had
to get to Whitechurch, what’d you do?”

Arnold shrugged. “Call him at the hospital. Wasn’t no big secret where he worked. Nights only, though.”

“Did he have a special number?”

“I don’t know, man, I never called him.”

“Did . . .”

Fell’s beeper went off. She took it out of her purse, glanced at the readout. “Where’s the phone?” she asked Arnold. To Lucas, she said, “I bet they got him.”

“Over there, at the end of the counter, underneath . . .” Arnold said, pointing.

As Fell punched the number into the telephone, Lucas went back to Arnold. “Did he work with anybody?”

“Man, I bought telephones from him, four dollars apiece,” Arnold said impatiently. “Boxes of pens and pencils. Notepads. Cartons of Xerox paper. Cleaning supplies. He once came in with two hundred bottles of ERA, you know, the laundry soap. I don’t know where he got it, I didn’t ask any questions. And that’s all I know about him.”

“Yeah, this is Fell, you beeped?” Fell said into the phone. And then, voice hushed, “Jesus. What’s the address. Huh? Okay.” She hung up and looked at Lucas. “Bekker did another one, another woman. Ten minutes from here, walking.”

Lucas pointed a finger at Arnold: “Did you hear that? Think about Whitechurch. Anything you think of, call us. Anything.”

“Man, there’s nothin’ . . .”

But Lucas and Fell were out the door.

The body was in a dead-end alley off Prince. Uniforms blocked the mouth of the alley, kept back the curious. Fell and Lucas flashed their badges and went through. Kennett and two other plainclothesmen were there, staring into a window well. Kennett’s hands, gripping the rail around the well, were white with tension.

“Goddamn maniac,” he said as Lucas and Fell walked up. The crime-scene techs had dropped a ladder into the well. Lucas looked over the railing and saw a small woman’s body at the bottom of the well, nude, crumpled like a doll, the techs working over her.

“No question it was Bekker?” Lucas asked.

“No, but it’s different. This doesn’t look so scientific. She’s pretty slashed up, like he . . . I don’t know. It looks like he was having fun.”

“Eyes?”

“Yeah, the eyes are cut and the doc says it looks like his work. The eyelids gone, very neat and surgical. The sonofabitch has a signature.”

“How long has she been down there?” Fell asked.

“Not long. A few hours at the most. Probably went in before dawn, this morning.”

“Got an ID?” asked Lucas.

“No.” Kennett looked at Fell, who was lighting a Lucky. “Could I bum one, I . . .”

“No.” Fell shook her head, carefully not looking at him.

“God damn it,” Kennett said. He stuck one hand in his jacket pocket, put two fingers of the other between his shirt buttons, over his heart. He caught himself, pulled them out, looked at his hand and finally stuck it in the other jacket pocket. “Fuckin’ do-gooders.”

“Anything on the Bellevue phones?” Lucas asked, watching the techs get ready to roll the woman’s body.

Kennett’s forehead wrinkled. “Think about this, Davenport: We got a guy who deals drugs, but he gets no phone calls. I mean, like, almost none. He got six calls at his apartment last month. There was a phone in the maintenance office he could use, but he didn’t, much. At least, that’s what his supervisor says.”

“Did he carry a beeper? Maybe a cellular?” Fell asked.

“Not that we can find,” said Kennett.

“That’s bullshit,” Lucas said flatly. “He was dealing, right? We know that for sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Then he’s got a phone. We’ve just got to find it . . . .”

“Carter’s guys are interviewing people over there right now, at Bellevue. Maybe you could listen in for a while?” Kennett said. He looked at Fell. “You’re the only guys who’ve come up with anything.”

At the bottom of the window well, the crime-scene techs rolled the body. The woman’s head flopped over, and her wide white eyes suddenly looked up at them.

“Aw, shit,” Fell gagged. She turned away, hunched over the alley cobblestones, and a stream of saliva poured from her mouth.

“You okay?” Lucas asked, his hand on her back.

“Yes,” she said, straightening. “Sorry. That just caught me, the eyes . . .”

Five minutes later, the body was out of the window well. The removal crew had wrapped it in a blanket, but Kennett ordered the wrapper peeled away. “I want to look,” he said evenly. “I wish the fuck I could have gotten down there . . . .”

Kennett and Lucas squatted next to the collapsible gurney as the blanket was lifted. The woman’s face was
like marble, white, solid, her dying pain and fear still graven on her face. The gag was like the earlier ones, carved from hard rubber, held in place with a wire that had been twisted tight behind her ear.

“Pliers,” Kennett said absently.

“Treats them like . . . lumber,” Lucas said, groping for the right concept.

“Or lab animals,” Kennett said.

“Sonofabitch.” Lucas leaned to one side, almost toppled, caught himself with his hand, then knelt over the body until his face was only inches from the body’s left ear. He looked up at one of the techs and said, “Roll her a little to the right, will you?” He took a pen from his shirt pocket and, to Kennett, said, “Look at this.”

Kennett knelt beside him and Fell squatted behind the two of them, the other detectives crowding in. Lucas used the pen to point at two oval marks on the dead woman’s neck muscle.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Lucas asked.

Kennett shook his head. “Looks like a burn,” he said. “Looks like a fuckin’ snakebite.”

“Not exactly. It looks like a discharge wound from one of those electroshock self-defense gizmos, stun guns. The St. Paul cops carry them. I went over to see a demonstration. If you keep the discharge points on bare skin for more than a second or two, you can get this kind of injury.”

“That’s why there’s no fight,” Fell said, looking at him.

Lucas nodded. “He hits them with the shocker. When you get hit, you go down, like right now. Then he comes with the gas.”

“Couldn’t be too many places around that sell those things,” Kennett said.

“Police-supply places, but I’ve seen them in gun magazines, too, mail order,” Lucas said.

Kennett stood and rubbed alley sand from his hands and tipped his head back, as though looking up to heaven. “Please, God, let me find a Midtown address on an order form.”

Lucas and Fell took a cab to Bellevue, windows open, the hot popcorn smell of the city roaring in as they dodged through traffic, and got trapped for five minutes in a narrow one-lane crosstown street. Fell’s jaw was working with anger.

“Thinking about Bekker?”

“About the body . . . Jesus. I hope Robin Hood gets him,” she said. “Bekker.”

“What? Robin Hood?” He looked at her curiously.

“Nothing,” she said, looking away.

“No, c’mon, who’s Robin Hood?”

“Ah, it’s bullshit,” she said, digging in her purse for a cigarette. “Supposedly somebody is knocking off assholes.”

“You mean, a vigilante?”

She grinned. “How else you gonna run this place?” she asked, gesturing out the window. “It’s supposed to be cops, but I think it’s just bullshit. Wishful thinking.”

“Huh.”

She lit the cigarette, coughed, and looked out the window.

Whitechurch had been a maintenance foreman. A changing roll of a dozen people worked under his loose supervision, doing minor repairs all over the hospital on the three-to-eleven shift.

“A great goddamn job if you’re stealing stuff,” Fell
said as they joined Carter in an employees’ lounge. Three detectives were interviewing hospital employees, with Carter supervising.

“Or if you’re dealing,” said Carter. He looked at his list. “Next one is Jimmy Beale. Goddamn, I got little faith in this.”

“I know what you mean,” Lucas said, watching the scared employees trooping through the lounge.

Beale knew nothing. Neither did any of the rest. Fell burned through a pack of Luckys, left to get another, came back and leaned in the door.

“God damn it, Mark . . . it’s Mark?” Carter was saying. “God damn it, Mark, we’re not getting anywhere and it’s hard to believe that a guy could be stealing the place blind and nobody’d know about it. Or dealing dope, and nobody’d know . . . .”

Mark, tall, narrow, acned, nodded nervously, his Adam’s apple working convulsively, sliding up and down his thin neck. “Man, you never seen the dude, you know? I mean, I’d come in and he’d say, Mark, g’wan up to 441D and put on a new doorknob and then see if there’s a leak on the drinking fountain up on six, and that’s what I’d do. He’d come by, but like, I never hung out with him or nothing.”