Eyes of Prey

by John Sandford

  Below his eyes, his nose was a narrow wedge, his nostrils small, almost dainty. His chin was square, with a cleft, his complexion pale but healthy. His lips were wide and mobile over even white teeth.

  If Bekker’s face was nearly perfect, a cinema face, he had been born with a body no better than average. Shoulders a bit too narrow, hips a little too wide. And he was, perhaps, short in the leg.

  The faults gave him something to work for. He was so close . . . .

  Bekker exercised four nights a week, spending a half-hour on the Nautilus machines, another hour with the free weights. Legs and trunk one night, arms and shoulders the next. Then a rest day, then repeat, then two rest days at the end of the week.

  And the pills, of course, the anabolic steroids. Bekker wasn’t interested in strength; strength was a bonus. He was interested in shape. The work broadened his apparent shoulder width and deepened his chest. There wasn’t anything he could do about the wide hips, but the larger shoulders had the effect of narrowing them.

  His legs . . . legs can’t be stretched. But in New York, just off Madison Avenue, up in the Seventies, he had found a small shop that made the most beautiful calfskin half-boots. The leather was so soft that he sometimes held the boots against his face before he put them on . . . .

  Each boot was individually fitted with the most subtle of lifts, which gave him an inch and made him as near to perfect as God would come with Nordic man.

  Bekker sighed and found himself looking into the bathroom mirror, the bathroom down the hall from his bedroom, the cold hexagonal tiles pressing into his feet. Staring at his beautiful face.

  He’d been gone again. How long? He looked at his watch with a touch of panic. Five after one. Fifteen minutes gone. He had to control this. He’d taken a couple of methobarbitals to flatten out the nervous tension, and they’d thrown him outside himself. They shouldn’t do that, but they had, and it was happening more and more often . . . .

  He forced himself into the shower, turned on the cold water and gasped as it hit his chest. He kept his eyes closed, turned his back, lathered himself, rinsed and stepped out.

  Did he have time? Of course: he always had time for this. He rubbed emollients into his face, dabbed after-shave along his jawline, cologne on his chest, behind his ears and under his balls, sprinkled powder across his chest, under his arms, between his buttocks.

  When he was done, he looked into the mirror again. His nose seemed raw. He considered just a touch of makeup but decided against it. He really shouldn’t look his best. He was burying Stephanie, and the police would be there. The police investigators were touchy: Stephanie’s goddamned father and her cop cousin were whispering in their ears.

  An investigation didn’t much worry him. He’d hated Stephanie, and some of her friends would know that. But he’d been in San Francisco.

  He smiled at himself in the mirror, was dissatisfied with the smile, wiped it away. Tried a half-dozen new expressions, more appropriate for the funeral. Scowl as he might, none of them detracted from his beauty.

  He cocked his head at himself and let the smile return. All done? Not quite. He added a hair dressing with a light odor of spring lilacs and touched his hair with a brush. Satisfied, he went to the closet and looked at his suits. The blue one, he thought.

  • • •

  Quentin Daniel looked like a butcher in good clothes.

  A good German butcher at a First Communion. With his lined red face and incipient jowls, the stark white collar pinching into his throat, the folds of flesh on the back of his neck, he would look fine behind a stainless-steel meat scale, one thumb on the tray, the other on your lambchops . . . .

  Until you saw his eyes.

  He had the eyes of an Irish Jesuit, pale blue, imperious. He was a cop, if he was one at all, with his brain: he’d stopped carrying a gun years before, when he’d bought his first tailored suits. Instead, he had spectacles. He wore simple military-style gold-rimmed bifocals for dealing with the troops, tortoise-shell single-vision glasses for reading his computer screen, and blue-tinted contact lenses for television appearances.

  No gun.

  Lucas pushed through the heavy oak door and slouched into Daniel’s office. He was wearing the leather bomber jacket from the night before but had shaved and changed into a fresh houndstooth shirt, khaki slacks and loafers.

  “You called?”

  Daniel was wearing his computer glasses. He looked up, squinted as though he didn’t recognize his visitor, took the computer glasses off, put on the gold-rimmed glasses and waved Lucas toward a chair. His face, Lucas thought, was redder than usual.

  “Do you know Marty McKenzie?” Daniel asked quietly, his hands flat, palms down, on his green baize blotter.

  “Yeah.” Lucas nodded as he sat down. He crossed his legs. “He’s got a practice in the Claymore Building. A sleaze.”

  “A sleaze,” Daniel agreed. He folded his hands over his stomach and peered up at the ceiling. “The very first thing this morning, I sat here smiling for half an hour while the sleaze lectured me. Can you guess why?”

  “Randy . . .”

  “ . . . Because the sleaze had a client over in the locked ward at Hennepin General who had the shit beat out of him last night by one of my cops. After the sleaze left, I called the hospital and talked to a doc.” Daniel pulled open a desk drawer and took out a notepad. “Broken ribs. Broken nose. Broken teeth. Possible cracked sternum. Monitored for blunt trauma.” He slapped the pad on the desktop with a crack like a .22 short. “Jesus Christ, Davenport . . .”

  “Pulled a knife on me,” Lucas said. “Tried to cut me. Like this.” He turned the front panel of the jacket, showed the deep slice in the leather.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Daniel said, ignoring the coat. “The Intelligence guys knew a week ago that you were looking for him. You and your pals. You’ve been looking for him ever since that hooker got cut. You found him last night and you kicked the shit out of him.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “Shut up,” Daniel snapped. “Any explanation would be stupid. You know it, I know it, so why do it?”

  Lucas shrugged. “All right . . .”

  “The police department is not a fuckin’ street gang,” Daniel said. “You can’t do this shit. We’ve got trouble and it could be serious . . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “McKenzie went to Internal Affairs before he came here, so they’re in it and there’s no way I can get them out. They’ll want a statement. And this kid, Randy, might have been an asshole, but technically he’s a juvenile—he’s already got a social worker assigned and she’s all pissed off about him getting beat up. She doesn’t want to hear about any assault on a police officer . . . .”

  “We could send her some pictures of the woman he worked over . . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. Maybe that’ll change her around. And your jacket will help, the cut, and we’re getting statements from witnesses. But I don’t know . . . . If the jacket wasn’t cut, I’d have to suspend your ass,” Daniel said. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, as though wiping away sweat, then swiveled in his chair and looked out the window at the street, his back to Lucas. “I’m worried about you, Davenport. Your friends are worried about you. I had Sloan up here, he was lying like a goddamn sailor to cover your ass, until I told him to can it. Then we had a little talk . . . .”

  “Fuckin’ Sloan,” Lucas said irritably. “I don’t want him . . . .”

  “Lucas . . .” Daniel turned back to Lucas, his tone mellowing from anger to concern. “He’s your friend and you should appreciate that, ’cause you need all the friends you’ve got. Now. Have you been to a shrink?”

  “No.”

  “They’ve got pills for what you’ve got. They don’t cure anything, but they make it a little easier. Believe me, because I’ve been there. Six years ago this winter. I live in fear of the day I go back . . . .”

  “I didn’t know . . .”

&n
bsp; “It’s not something you talk about, if you’re in politics,” Daniel said. “You don’t want people to think they’ve got a crazy man as police chief. Anyway, what you’ve got is called a unipolar depression.”

  “I’ve read the books,” Lucas snapped. “And I ain’t going to a shrink.”

  He pushed himself out of the chair and wandered around the office, looking into the faces of the dozens of politicians who peered from photos on Daniel’s walls. The photos came mostly from newspapers, special prints made at the chief’s request, and all were black-and-white. Mug shots with smiles, Lucas thought. There were only two pieces of color on the government-yellow walls. One piece was a Hmong tapestry, framed, with a brass plate that said: “Quentin Daniel, from His Hmong Friends, 1989.” The second was a calendar with a painting of a vase of flowers, bright, slightly fuzzy, sophisticated and childlike at the same time. Lucas parked himself in front of the calendar and studied it.

  Daniel watched him for a moment, sighed and said, “I don’t necessarily think you should see a shrink—shrinks aren’t the answer for everybody. But I’m telling you this as a friend: You’re right on the edge. I’ve seen it before, I’ll see it again, and I’m looking at it right now. You’re fucked up. Sloan agrees. So does Del. You’ve got to get your shit together before you hurt yourself or somebody else.”

  “I could quit,” Lucas ventured, turning back to the chief’s desk. “Take a leave . . .”

  “That wouldn’t be so good,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “People with a bad head need to be around friends. So let me suggest something. If I’m wrong, tell me.”

  “All right . . .”

  “I want you to take on the Bekker murder. Keep your network alive, but focus on the murder. You need the company, Lucas. You need the teamwork. And I need somebody to bail me out on this goddamn killing. The Bekker woman’s family has some clout and the papers are talking it up.”

  Lucas tipped his head, thinking about it. “Del mentioned it last night. I told him I might look into it . . . .”

  “Do it,” Daniel said. Lucas stood up, and Daniel put on his computer glasses and turned back to a screen full of amber figures.

  “How long has it been since you were on the street?” Lucas asked.

  Daniel looked at him, then up at the ceiling. “Twenty-one years,” he said after a moment.

  “Things have changed,” Lucas said. “People don’t believe in right and wrong anymore; if they do, we write them off as kooks. Reality is greed. People believe in money and power and feeling good and cocaine. For the bad people out there, we are a street gang. They understand that idea. The minute we lose the threat, they’ll be on us like rats . . . .”

  “Jesus Christ . . .”

  “Hey, listen to me,” Lucas said. “I’m not stupid. I don’t even necessarily think—in theory, anyway—that I should be able to get away with what I did last night. But those things have to be done by somebody. The legal system has smart judges and tough prosecutors and it don’t mean shit—it’s a game that has nothing to do with justice. What I did was justice. The street understands that. I didn’t do too much and I didn’t do too little. I did just right.”

  Daniel looked at him for a long time and then said soberly, “I don’t disagree with you. But don’t ever repeat that to another living soul.”

  Sloan was propped against the metal door of Lucas’ basement office, flipping through a throw-away newspaper, smoking a Camel. He was a narrow man with a foxy face and nicotine-stained teeth. A brown felt hat was cocked down over his eyes.

  “You been shoveling horseshit again,” Lucas said as he walked down the hall. His head felt as if it were filled with cotton, each separate thought tangled in a million fuzzy strands.

  Sloan pushed himself away from the door so Lucas could unlock it. “Daniel ain’t a mushroom. And it ain’t horseshit. So you gonna do it? Work Bekker?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Lucas said.

  “The wife’s funeral is this afternoon,” Sloan said. “You oughta go. And I’ll tell you what: I’ve been looking this guy up, Bekker. We got us an iceman.”

  “Is that right?” Lucas pushed the door open and went inside. His office had once been a janitor’s closet. There were two chairs, a wooden desk, a two-drawer filing cabinet, a metal wastebasket, an old-fashioned oak coatrack, an IBM computer and a telephone. A printer sat on a metal typing table, poised to print out phone numbers coming through on a pen register. A stain on the wall marked the persistent seepage of a suspicious but unidentifiable liquid. Del had pointed out that a women’s restroom was one floor above and not too much down the hall.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Sloan said. He dropped into the visitor’s chair and put his heels up on the edge of the desk as Lucas hung his jacket on the coatrack. “I’ve been reading background reports, and it turns out Bekker was assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division in Saigon during the Vietnam War. I thought he was some kind of cop, so I talked to Anderson and he called some of his computer buddies in Washington, and we got his military records. He wasn’t a cop, he was a forensic pathologist. He did postmortems in criminal cases that involved GIs. I found his old commanding officer, a guy named Wilson. He remembered Bekker. I told him who I was, and he said, ‘What happened, the sonofabitch kill somebody?’ ”

  “You didn’t prompt him?” Lucas asked, settling behind his desk.

  “No. Those were the first words out of his mouth. Wilson said Bekker was called ‘Dr. Death’—I guess he liked his work a little too much. And he liked the hookers. Wilson said he had a rep for pounding on them.”

  “How bad?”

  Sloan shook his head. “Don’t know. That was just his rep . . . . Wilson said a couple of whores got killed while Bekker was there, but nobody ever suggested he did it. The cops were looking for an Army enlisted man. They never found anybody, but they never looked too hard, either. Wilson said the place was overrun with AWOLs, deserters, guys on leave and pass, guys going in and out. He said it was an impossible case. But he remembers people around the office talking about the killings and that Bekker was . . . he was spooky. Since there were GIs involved, Bekker was in on the autopsies. He either did them himself or with a Vietnamese doc, Wilson couldn’t remember. But when he came back, it was like he was satisfied. Fucked out.”

  “Huh.” The printer burped up a number. Lucas glanced at it, then turned back to Sloan. “Did Bekker kill Stephanie? Hire it done?”

  Sloan pulled the wastebasket over to his chair and carefully snubbed out his cigarette. “I think it’s a major possibility,” he said slowly. “If he did, he’s cold: we checked on her insurance . . . .”

  “Ten million bucks?” Lucas’ eyebrows went up.

  “No. Just the opposite. Stephanie was starting a business. She was gonna sell architectural artifacts for restoring old homes. Stained-glass windows, antique doorknobs, like that. An accountant told her she could save money by buying all the family insurance through the company. So she and Bekker canceled their old life insurance and bought new insurance through the company. It specifically won’t pay off on any violent nonaccidental death—murder or suicide—in the first two years of coverage.”

  “So . . .”

  “So she had no insurance at all,” Sloan said. “Not that Bekker can collect on. A month ago she had a hundred grand, and she’d had it for a while.”

  Lucas’ eyes narrowed. “If a defense attorney got that into court . . .”

  “Yeah,” Sloan said. “It’d knock a hell of a hole in a circumstantial case.”

  “And he’s got an alibi.”

  “Airtight. He was in San Francisco.”

  “Jesus, I’d find him not guilty myself, knowing all that.”

  “That’s why we need you. If he’s behind it, he had to hire a hitter. There are only so many guys in the Cities who’d do it. You probably know most of them. Those you don’t, your people would know. There must have been a big payoff. Maybe somebody came into a big hunk of unexp
lained cash?”

  Lucas nodded. “I’ll ask around. What about the guy who was in the sack with Bekker’s old lady? Loverboy?”

  “We’re looking for him,” Sloan said. “So far, no luck. I talked to Stephanie’s best friend and she thought something might be going on. She didn’t know who, but she was willing to mong a rumor . . . .”

  Lucas grinned at the word: “So mong it to me,” he said.

  Sloan shrugged. “For what it’s worth, she thinks Stephanie might have been screwing a neighborhood shrink. She’d seen them talking at parties, and she thought they . . . She said they quote stood in each other’s space unquote.”

  “All right.” Lucas yawned and stretched. “Most of my people won’t be around yet, but I’ll check.”

  “I’ll Xerox the file for you.”

  “You could hold off on that. I don’t know if I’ll be in that deep . . . .” Sloan was standing, ready to leave, and Lucas reached back and punched the message button on his answering machine. The tape rewound, there was an electronic beep and a voice said: “This is Dave, down at the auto parts. There’re a couple of Banditos in town, I just did some work on their bikes. I think you might want to hear about it . . . . You got the number.”

  “I’ll Xerox it,” Sloan said with a grin, “just in case.”

  Sloan left and Lucas sat with a yellow legal pad in his lap, feet up, listening to the voices on the answering machine, taking numbers. And watched himself.

  His head wasn’t working right. Hadn’t been for months. But now, he thought, something was changing. There’d been just the smallest quieting of the storm . . . .

  He’d lost his woman and their daughter. They’d walked: the story was as simple as that, and as complicated. He couldn’t accept it and had to accept it. He pitied himself and was sick of pitying himself. He felt his friends’ concern and he was tired of it.

  Whenever he tried to break out, when he worked two or three days into exhaustion, the thoughts always sneaked back: If I’d done A, she’d have done B, and then we’d have both done C, and then . . . He worked through every possible combination, compulsively, over and over and over, and it all came up ashes. He told himself twenty times that he’d put it behind himself, and he never had. And still he couldn’t stop. And he grew sicker and sicker of himself . . . .