She turned and tried to run, a shuffling struggle against age and infirmity, gargling in terror. Bekker giggled, and the cats, hissing, bounded across the overstuffed furniture to the highest shelves. Bekker caught the old woman at the edge of the parlor. He put the heel of his left hand against the back of her skull, the cup of his right under her chin.

"But…" she said again.

A quick snap. Her spine was like a stick of rotten wood, cracked, and she collapsed. Bekker stared down at her, swaying, the brightener tab coming on.

"It is me," he said again.

Most visitors came through O'Dell's office; when the knock came at Lily's unmarked office door, she looked over the top of her Wall Street Journal and frowned.

There was another light knock and she took off her half-moon reading glasses-she hadn't let anyone see them yet-and said, "Yes?"

Kennett stuck his head in. "Got a minute?"

"What're you doing down here?" she asked, folding the paper and putting it aside.

"Talking to you," he said. He stepped inside the door, peeked through a half-open side door into O'Dell's office, and saw an empty desk.

"He's at staff," Lily said. "What's going on?"

"We've papered the town with the female Bekker picture," Kennett said, dropping into her visitor's chair. Small talk. He tried a smile, but it didn't work. "You know Lucas got it, the cross-dressing thing. It wasn't Fell."

"I thought maybe he did," Lily said. "He wants Fell to do well."

"Nice," he said, his voice trailing off. He was looking at her as though he were trying to see inside her head.

"Let's have it," she said finally.

"All right," he said. "What do you know about this Robin Hood shit that O'Dell is peddling?"

Lily was surprised-and a small voice at the back of her head said that was good, that look of surprise. "What? What's he peddling?"

Kennett looked at her, eyes blinking skeptically, as though he were reevaluating something. Then he said, "He's been putting out shit about Robin Hood, the so-called vigilantes. I've got the feeling that the fickle finger is pointed at my ass."

"Well, Jesus," Lily said.

"Exactly. There aren't any vigilantes. It's all bullshit, this Robin Hood business. But that doesn't mean he can't fuck me up. If they think they've got a problem…" He pointed a thumb at the ceiling, meaning the people upstairs, "And they can't find anybody, they might just want to hang somebody anyway, to cover their asses."

"Boy…" Lily shook her head. "I've got a pretty good line on what O'Dell's doing, but I don't know anything like that. And I'm not holding out on you, Richard. I'm really not."

"And I'm telling you, he's behind it."

Lily leaned forward. "Give me a few days. I'll find out. Let me ask some questions. If he's doing it, I'll tell you."

"You will?"

"Of course I will."

"All right." He grinned at her. "It's, like, when you're a lieutenant and down, you've got friends and lovers. When you're a captain or above, you've got allies. You're my first ally-lover."

She didn't smile back. She said: "Richard."

The smile died on his face. "Mmm?"

"Before I risk my ass-you're not Robin Hood?"

"No."

"Swear it," she said, looking into his eyes.

"I swear it," he said, without flinching, looking straight back at her. "I don't believe there is such a guy. Robin Hood is a goddamn computer artifact."

"How?"

He shrugged. "Flip a nickel five hundred times. The events are random, but you'll find patterns. Flip it another five hundred times, you'll still find patterns. Different ones. But the pattern doesn't mean anything. Same thing with these computer searches-you can always find patterns if you look at enough numbers. But the pattern's in your head; it's not real. Robin Hood is a figment of O'Dell's little tiny imagination."

Her eyes narrowed: "How'd you find out so much about what he's doing?"

"Hey, I'm in intelligence," he said, mildly insulted by the question. "The word gets around. I thought his little game was pretty harmless until my name started popping up."

She thought about it a minute, then nodded. "All right. Let me do some sneaking around."

Lucas called Darius Pike in Charleston and gave him the plane's arrival time, then met Sloan and Del downtown. They hit a sports bar, talking, remembering. Lucas was long out of the departmental gossip-who was kissing whose ass, who was shagging who. Sloan went home at one o'clock and Lucas and Del wound up in an all-night diner on West Seventh in St. Paul.

"… shit, I said, gettin' married was okay," Del said. "But then she started talking about a kid. She's, like, forty."

"Ain't the end of the world," Lucas said.

"Do I look like Life with Father? " Del asked. He spread his arms: he was wearing a jeans jacket with a black sleeveless tank top. An orange and black insignia on the sleeve of the jacket said, " Harley-Davidson-Live to Ride, Ride to Live." He had a five-day beard, but his eyes were as relaxed and clear as Lucas had ever seen them.

"You're looking pretty good, actually," Lucas said. "A year ago, man, you were ready for the junk heap."

"Yeah, yeah…"

"So why not have a kid?"

"Jesus." Del looked out the window. "I kinda been asking myself that."

Del peeled off at three o'clock and Lucas went home, opened all the windows in the house, and began writing checks to cover the bills that had arrived with the mail. At five, finished with the bills, and tired, he closed and locked all the windows, went back to the bedroom and repacked his overnight bag. He called a cab, had the driver stop at a SuperAmerica all-night store, bought two jelly doughnuts and a cup of coffee, and rode out to the airport.

The plane taxied away from the terminal at six-thirty. The stewardess asked if he wanted juice and eggs.

"I'm gonna try to go to sleep," he said. "Please, please don't wake me up…"

The fear got him as the takeoff run began, the sense of helplessness, the lack of control. He closed his eyes, fists clenched. Got off the ground with body English. Held his breath until the engine noise changed and the climb rate slowed. Cranked back the seat. Tried to sleep. A while later, he didn't know how long, he realized that his mouth tasted like chicken feathers, and his neck hurt. The stewardess was shaking his shoulder: "Could you bring your seat upright, please?"

He opened his eyes, disoriented. "I was sleeping," he groaned.

"Yes," she said in her most neutral voice. "But we're approaching Atlanta, and your seat…"

"Atlanta?" He couldn't believe it. He never slept on airplanes. The plane's left wing dipped, and they turned on it, and, looking down, he could see the city of Atlanta, like a gritty gray rug. Ten minutes later, they were down.

The Atlanta airport was straight from RoboCop, with feminine machine voices issuing a variety of warnings just below the level of consciousness, and steel escalators dropping into sterile tile hallways. He was glad to get out, though the flight to Charleston was bad. He fought the fear and managed to compose himself by the time the plane was on the ground.

Pike was waiting inside the small terminal, a stolid black man wearing a green cotton jacket over a white shirt and khaki pants. When his jacket moved, Lucas could see a half-dozen ballpoint pens clipped to his shirt pocket and a small revolver on his belt.

"Lucas Davenport," Lucas said, shaking hands.

"I gotta car," Pike said, leading the way. "How's New York?"

"Hotter'n here," Lucas said.

"This is nothin'," Pike said. "You ought to be here in August."