“He’s looking through the windows… I see Connell.”
Del tottered on ahead, perfect as a skyway wanderer, a little drunk, nowhere to go, staying inside until the stores closed, and moving out on the streets for the night. People looked away from him-even through him-but not at him.
“I just went by him,” he called back to Lucas. “He’s looking through the window, like he’s reading the numbers off their boards. Jensen’s on the way out.”
“I just walked back past him,” Sloan said. “Del, you better get out of sight for a minute.”
“I’m coming,” Lucas said.
There was a moment of silence. Lucas was conspicuous, loitering in the skyway, and he crossed to a newsstand cut as a notch into the skyway wall. Sloan came on. “Jensen’s out. He’s walking away, same way I am, coming at you, Lucas.”
“I’m going into the newsstand,” Lucas said. “I’ll pick him up.”
A moment later Sloan said, “Christ, Lucas, put your radio away. I think he’s coming in there.”
Lucas turned it off, slipped it into his pocket, grabbed a copy of The Economist from the newsstand, opened it, turned his back to the entrance. A second later, Koop came in and looked around. Lucas glanced at him from the corner of his eye. The store was just big enough for the two of them plus the gum counter with a bored teenager behind it. Koop took down a magazine, opened it. Lucas felt him turn toward the skyway, glanced at him again. Koop’s back was turned, and he was looking over the top of the magazine. Waiting for Jensen.
Sloan walked by, kept going. Koop was close enough that Lucas could smell him, a light scent of aging jock-sweat. People were streaming by the doorway as offices closed throughout the building, mostly women, a few of them still wearing the old eighties uniform of blue suit and after-work running shoes. Koop never looked at Lucas: he was completely focused on the skyway.
A man came in and said, “Give me a pack of Marlboros and a box of Clorets.” The girl gave them to him, and he paid, opened the cigarettes, and threw all but two of them in a trash can and walked away.
“Doesn’t want his wife to know,” the girl said to Lucas.
“I guess.” Shit. Koop would look at him.
Koop didn’t. He tossed the magazine back on the rack and hurried out. Lucas looked after him. Just down the skyway, he saw Connell’s blond hair and Jensen’s black. He put the magazine back, and started after Koop, using the radio again.
“They’re coming at you, Sloan. Del, where are you?”
“Coming up from behind. Sloan said you were pinned, and I stayed back in case he came that way. I’m coming up.”
“Elevators,” Connell grunted.
“I’m coming,” Lucas said. “Del, Sloan, you better get your rides.”
Sloan and Del acknowledged and Lucas said, “Greave, you guys ready?”
“We’re ready.” They were in the van, on the street.
“Elevator,” Lucas said. He took the bug out of his ear, put it in his pocket.
Koop was facing the elevator door, waiting for it to return. He’d be the first on. Four other people waited, including Jensen and Connell. Jensen stood directly behind Koop’s broad back, staring at the seam at his neck. Connell was beside her. Lucas edged in, just in front of Connell.
The elevator light went white, and the doors opened. Koop stepped in, pushed a button. Lucas stepped in beside him, turned the other way, pushed the button for Jensen’s floor. Connell moved in on the other side of Lucas, in the corner, where Koop couldn’t see her face. Lucas stood a half-step from the back of the elevator, quarter-turned toward Connell. Koop had never gotten a straight-on look at them, but they couldn’t do this again, not for a couple of days. Jensen and another woman got on last, Jensen stepping immediately in front of Koop. The doors closed and they started up. Lucas couldn’t see Koop, couldn’t look at him. He said, “Long day,” to Connell, who said, “Aren’t they all… I think Del’s coming down with a cold.”
Elevator talk. The woman beside Jensen turned to look at Lucas, and Jensen stepped back a bit, her butt bumping the front of Koop’s pants. “Sorry,” she mumbled, flashing a glance back at him.
When they got off, Lucas and Connell got off behind her. The doors closed and Koop went on up. He was parked on seven.
“I saw that,” Connell said to Jensen, grinning. “You’re the bitch from hell.”
“Thank you,” Jensen said.
“Don’t do it again,” Lucas said as they walked toward the cars. “Right now, we’re golden. A little too much, and we’re screwed.”
Koop followed Jensen out to a small strip shopping center; waited outside while she bought groceries.
“He’s gonna do it,” Connell said. She was watching him with the binoculars. She sounded elated and grim at the same time, like a burned survivor of a plane crash.
“He hasn’t looked away from the door since she went in. He’s totally focused. He’s gonna do it.”
Koop tracked Jensen back to her apartment, the pod of cops all around him, running the parallel streets, ahead and behind, switching off. Jensen rolled into the parking ramp. Koop stopped, watched for a few minutes from his truck, then began wandering, out on the interstates. He did a complete loop of the Cities, driving I-494 and
I-694.
“Go on back, you fucker,” Connell hissed at him. “Get back there.”
At nine o’clock, they sat at a stoplight and watched two middle-aged men on a par-three golf course, one with white hair and the other with a crew cut, trying to play in the quickly closing darkness. The crew cut missed a two-foot putt, Lucas shook his head, and Koop moved on.
Ten minutes later, he was on I-35, heading north. Through the Minneapolis loop-and then, like a satellite in a degrading orbit, watched as he was slowly pulled back toward Jensen’s apartment.
“He’s headed in,” Lucas said. “I’m breaking off, I’ll beat him there. If he changes direction, let me know.”
He ran the backstreets, Connell calling Jensen on the cellular phone. A minute later they rolled into Jensen’s parking garage, dumped the car.
“Where is he?” Lucas asked the radio.
“He’s coming,” Greave answered. Greave was riding the van. “I think he’s looking for a parking place.”
“Let’s get set up, gang,” Lucas said. Then the elevator came, and he and Connell rode up.
Jensen met them at the door. “He’s coming?”
“Maybe,” Lucas said, stepping past her. “He’s just outside.”
“He’s coming,” Connell said. “I can feel him. He’s coming.”
CHAPTER
33
From the moment he’d left the jail, Koop had been consumed by his hunger for the woman.
Couldn’t think of anything else.
Worked out, muscles still sore from jail, until he was loose again. Took a shower, thought about Jensen.
Went for a run in Braemar Park, up and over the hills. Went to an Arby’s, ordered a sandwich, wandered away without it. The counter girl had to catch him in the parking lot. Thinking about Sara Jensen.
Then, in the elevator, he was crowded against the back of some big dude in an expensive suit, and Sara stood just in front of him. Halfway up, she stepped back and gave him another butt-rub. Yes.
She knew about him, all right.
This was the second time.
No mistake.
Koop drove the Cities, barely aware of the road, and found himself, just after dark, coming up to Sara Jensen’s apartment house. He walked across the street and looked up. Frowned. The light wasn’t quite right. She’d pulled one of the drapes in the bedroom at least partway.
Koop felt a pulse of danger: had they figured out the roof? Were they waiting up there? But if they had, she’d never have pulled the drapes. They’d leave everything alone.
No matter.
He’d go up anyway…
“He’s inside,” Greave called. “He had a key.” Greave was still on the street, with
the van. Del and Sloan had taken the elevators up as soon as it appeared that Koop was looking for parking. Sloan would wait at another apartment. Del was on his way to the roof.
“He did that couple, the woman across the street. To get the guy’s keys,” Connell said. “For sure.”
Lucas said, “Yes.”
Connell was sitting on the kitchen floor, below the counter. Lucas was in the hallway between the living room and Jensen’s bedroom. Jensen was sitting on her bed. She’d partially pulled the drapes in her bedroom, so there was a two-foot-wide slit in them. Lucas had objected: “We should leave things the way they were.”
“Wrong,” she’d said. “I know what I’m doing.”
She sounded so sure of herself that he let it go. Now he stood up and stepped toward her room. “Cameras,” he said. “Action.”
She stood up. She was wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe, and showed bare legs and feet. “I’m set,” she said. “Tell me what he’s doing when you get it from Del.”
“Sure. Don’t look at me when I’m talking. Just keep reading.”
They’d decided that she’d be reading in bed. Koop would be able to see most of her through the slot in the drapes. She picked up copies of the Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Daily, spread them around, and dropped on the bed. “I’m a little jumpy.”
“Remember: when I say get out, you don’t do a thing but get,” Lucas said.
They had an apartment down the hall, an older woman recommended by the manager. She’d agreed to let them use her apartment as long as she could be around for the action. Lucas had been unhappy, but she’d been firm, and he had finally given in. The woman was there now, opening the door for Sloan. Greave and the van waited on the street, with two more guys from intelligence.
When Koop entered Jensen’s building-if he did-Greave and his partners would turn off the elevators from the main-floor control box, and seal the stairs. At the same time, Jensen would go to the woman’s apartment, with Sloan, for safekeeping. Del would come off the roof, down the stairs, step into a maintenance closet at the other end of the hall.
When Koop arrived at Jensen’s, they’d wait until he’d made a move at the door-tried to unlock it, tried to break it. Lucas would give the word, and Sloan would take him from one end of the hall, Del from the other. Lucas and Connell would come out of the apartment. Four-on-one.
Connell had her pistol out, checking it. She’d fed it with safety slugs. They’d rip massive holes in a slab of meat, but would pretty much fall apart when they hit a wall. She held the gun with the barrel up, her finger alongside the trigger guard, her cheek against the cylinder.
“On the roof. He’s on the roof,” Del called from Jensen’s roof. He was breathing hard: he’d beaten Koop up to the top by thirty seconds. A moment later: “He’s on the air conditioner.”
Koop pulled himself up, crawled to his protective vent, looked across the street. Sara was there, on the bed, reading. He’d seen her doing this twenty times, prowling through her papers. He put the Kowa scope on her and saw that she was looking through long lists of tables. Her concentration was intense. She turned a page.
She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe, the first time he’d seen it. He approved. It set off her dark, dramatic looks like nothing else would. If her hair had only been wet, she’d have looked like a movie star, on stage…
“He’s on the air conditioner,” Lucas said quietly to Jensen. She showed no sign that she’d heard, although she had.
“He’s got a scope, and he’s watching her,” Del said. “Christ, he must feel like he’s inside the room with her.”
“I’m sure he does,” Connell murmured into her headset. Lucas looked across at her: the gun was still against her cheek.
Jensen put down her newspaper and rolled off the bed, wandered toward the bathroom. This was not part of the script. “What?” Lucas asked.
She didn’t answer, just ran water in the bathroom for a moment, then walked back out. The bathrobe had fallen open. Lucas was looking at her back, but he had a feeling…
Jensen came out of the bathroom. The bathrobe had fallen open, and she was wearing only underpants beneath it. Her breasts looked wonderful against the terry cloth, alternately exposed and hidden. She was apparently upset by something. She spent a few minutes pacing, back and forth across the gap in the curtains, sometimes exposed, sometimes not. All told, it was the best strip show Koop had ever seen. His heart caught in his throat each time she passed the window.
Then she dropped on the bed again, on one elbow, facing him, one breast showing, and began going through the papers. Then she rolled onto her back, bare legs folded, feet flat on the bed, knees up, head up on a pillow, the robe open again, breasts flattening of their own weight…
Koop groaned with the heat of it. He nearly couldn’t bear to watch it. Absolutely couldn’t bear to take his eyes away.
Lucas swallowed, glanced back at Connell. She wasn’t getting any of this. She simply sat, staring sightlessly at a cupboard. He looked back at Jensen, on the bed. Jensen’s eyes had flicked toward him once, and he thought he saw the thinnest crease of a smile. Jesus. He began to feel what Koop did, the physical pull of the woman. She gave off some kind of weird Italianate hormone-cooking vibrations. Where’d she’d get the name Jensen? Had to be a married name; whatever was bubbling out of the woman on the bed, it wasn’t Scandinavian.
Lucas swallowed again.
If there was such a thing as a politically correct cop manual, this would be specifically outlawed. But Lucas had no objection: if this didn’t do it to Koop, nothing would.
Sara got out of bed again, robe open, went into the bathroom, closed the door. When she did this, she usually stayed awhile.
Koop dropped back behind the ventilator duct, tried to light a cigarette. Found that the cigarette was damp, realized that he was soaked with sweat.
He couldn’t do this. He had the hard-on of a lifetime. He found his knife, pushed the button. The blade sprang out like a serpent’s tongue.
Time to go.
“He’s down,” Del said. “Holy shit, he’s down. He’s walking across the roof, he’s through the door…”
“Greave, you hear that? It’s on you, man,” Lucas said.
“We got it,” Greave said.
Lucas stepped into the bedroom. “Sara. Time to go.”
Jensen came out of the bathroom, the robe tied tight. “He’s coming?”
“Maybe. He’s off the roof, anyway,” Lucas said. She felt vulnerable, intimate; he’d seen the show too. “Get your slippers.”
Jensen got her slippers, a bundle of clothes, and her purse, and then they waited, waited, Jensen standing next to Lucas. He felt protective, sort of big-brotherly. Sort of…
“He’s out the door,” Greave called. “He’s crossing the street.”
“I’m coming down,” Del said.
Greave: “He’s got a key for that one, too, he’s coming in, he’s in the building…”
“He’s coming,” Lucas said to Jensen. “Go.”
Jensen left, running down the hall in her robe, with her purse and clothes, like a kid on her way to a slumber party. Connell, on her feet, moved back to the living room, still with the dreamy look in her eyes, the gun in her hand.
Lucas went with her, caught her arm. “I don’t want any dumb-shit stuff. You’ve got a weird look about you. If you pull the trigger on the guy, you’re just as likely to hit Del or Sloan. They’ll be coming in a hurry.”
She looked up at him and said, “‘Kay.”
“Look, I fuckin’ mean it,” he said harshly. “This is no time…”
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Now we got him. I’m still alive for it.”
Worried, Lucas left her and moved into the kitchen.
As soon as Koop opened the door, Lucas would hit it with his body weight. The unexpected impact should blow Koop back into the hallway. Del and Sloan would be coming, an
d Lucas would jerk the door open, be right on top of the guy. Greave and the other two would be on the stairs, coming up…
They had him sewn up. They might already have enough for a trial, just with the entry across the street and the peeping.
But if he cracked Jensen’s door, they had him for everything. If he just cracked it…
Koop went quickly through the building straight to the stairs, pulled open the door and into the stairwell. Before the door shut completely, he thought he heard a flap-click.
What? He froze, listening. Nothing. Nothing at all. He started up, silently, listening at each landing, then padding up another.
“He’s taking the stairs,” Greave called. “He’s not in the elevators. He’s on the stairs.”
“Got it,” said Lucas. “Del?”
“I’m set.”
“Sloan?”
“Ready.”
Koop wound around the concrete stairs. What had that been, the flap-click? Like somebody running in the stairwell, a footfall and a door closing. Whatever it was, it had come from high in the building. Maybe even Jensen’s floor. Koop got to the top, reached toward the door to the hall. And stopped. Flap-click?
There was one more flight of stairs above him, going to the roof of Jensen’s building. Was he in a hurry? Not that much, he thought. Cat burglar: move slow…
He climbed the last flight, used his key-Sara’s key-to let himself out on the roof. Nice night. Soft stars, high humidity, a little residual warmth from the day. He walked silently to the edge of the roof. Jensen’s apartment would be the third balcony from the end.
At the edge of the roof, he looked over. Jensen’s balcony was twelve feet below him. A four-foot drop, if he hung from the edge. Nothing at all. Unless he missed-then it was a forever and a day down to the street. But he couldn’t miss. The balcony was six feet wide and fifteen feet long.
He looked across the street, at the apartment building where’d he’d spent some many good nights. There were lights, but only a few windows with the drapes undrawn, and nobody in those.
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