Lucas turned away from Smith and walked down the street to Fell. "I wish I could read lips," she said. "I'd give a lot to know what you just told him."

"I told him why I wanted to know if those were his guys who came after me," Lucas said.

"Tell me," she said.

"No. And I'm not Internal Affairs."

They spent the day walking through the Village and SoHo, drifting in and out of shops, talking to Fell's contacts on the street, chatting with uniform cops in Washington Square, watching the street action on Broadway. They found the bookstore where Bekker had been spotted, a long, narrow shop with a narrow front window and a weathered, paint-peeled door three steps up. A sign in the door said "Open All Night, 365 Nights a Year."

The clerk who had talked to Bekker wasn't working, but happened by on his bike a few seconds after they asked for him. A thin man with a goatee and a book of poetry, he looked like a latter-day Beat, his face animated as he told them about the encounter.

"He's a good-looking woman, I'll tell you that," the clerk said. "But you can look at somebody and know what kind of book they're going to buy, and I never picked her-him-out for the one he found. Torture and shit. I thought maybe he was, like, an NYU professor or something, and that's why he bought it…"

Down the sidewalk, Fell said, "I think he's real."

"So do I," said Lucas. "He saw him." He looked up at the red-brick buildings around him, with their iron stoops and window boxes full of petunias. "And he's somewhere close, Bekker is. He didn't drive any distance to get to a small bookstore. I can smell the sonofabitch."

He took her to the restaurant where Petty had been killed, sat and had Cokes, and almost told her about it.

"Not too bad a place," he said, looking around.

"It's all right," she said.

"You ever been here? Your regular precinct is around here, right?"

"Ten blocks," Fell said, poking a straw in her Coke. "Too far. Besides, this is sort of a sit-down place, not the kind of place you come to for lunch if you're a cop."

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

Late in the afternoon, while Fell browsed a magazine rack, Lucas stopped at a pay phone, dropped a quarter, and got Lily in O'Dell's car.

"Where are you?"

"Morningside Heights."

"Where's that?"

"Up by Columbia."

"I need to see you. Tonight. By yourself. Won't take too long."

"All right. How about nine, at my place?"

"Good."

When he hung up, Fell looked up from a copy of Country Home and said, "So. Are you up for dinner?"

"I'm talking to Lily tonight," he said. "I'd like to come around later, though."

"I hate to see you hanging around with that woman," Fell said, dropping the magazine back on the rack.

"This is purely business," Lucas said. "And look, could you stop by Midtown and pick up those file summaries? We've been floating around all day, listening to bullshit… maybe something'll come out of the files."

"All right. I'll haul them over to my place…"

Lily was sitting in a living room chair, her high heels in the middle of the carpet, her bare feet up on a hassock. The hassock was covered with a brocaded throw that seemed to Lucas to be vaguely Russian, or Old World. She was sipping a Diet Coke, tired smudges under her eyes.

"Sit down. You sounded tense," she said. "What happened?" Her head was back, her dark hair a perfect frame around her pale oval face.

"Nothing happened, not today, anyway. I just need to talk to you," he said. He perched on the edge of her other overstuffed chair. "I need to know about you and Walter Petty-your relationship."

She leaned farther back in the chair, wiggled once to settle in, laid her head back, and closed her eyes. "Can I ask why you need to know?"

"Not yet."

She opened her eyes and looked at him carefully and said, "Robin Hood?"

"I'm not sure. What about Petty?"

"Walt and I went back as far as you can go," Lily said, her eyes unfocusing. "We were born on the same block in Brooklyn, sort of middle-class brownstones. I was exactly one month older, to the day. June first and July first. His mother and mine were friends, so I suppose I first laid eyes on him when I was five or six weeks old. We grew up together. Went to kindergarten together. We were both in the smart group. Someplace along the way, sixth or seventh grade, he got interested in math and science and ham radio in that geeky way boys do, and I got interested in social things. After that we didn't talk so much."

"Still friends, though…"

She nodded. "Sure. I'd talk to him when I saw him around the block, but not at school. He was in love with me for most of his life. And I guess I loved him, you know, but not sexually. Like a handicapped brother, or something."

"Handicapped?"

She carefully set the glass on the table and said, "Yeah, he was socially handicapped. Walked around with a slide rule on his belt, his table manners went from bad to worse, he got weird around girls. You know the type. Sort of ineffectual, nonphysical. Really nice, though. Eager… too eager."

"Yeah. A dork. A nerd. The kind of kid that gets shredded by girls."

"Yes. Exactly. The kind that gets shredded," she said. "But we were friends… And whenever I needed something done-you know, get an apartment painted, or help fixing something-I could call him up and he'd drop everything and be there. I took him for granted. He was always there, and I assumed he always would be."

"Why'd he become a cop?"

" 'Cause he could. It was a job you could get with a test and with family connections. He was brilliant on tests and had the connections."

"Was he a good cop?"

"He was terrible in uniform," she said. "He didn't have that… that… cold spot. Or hot spot. Or whatever it is. He couldn't get on top of people-you ought to know about that."

"Yeah." Lucas grinned. "I don't know if it's hot or cold, though. Anyway, Petty…"

"So he was terrible on the street and they moved him inside. He was working guard details and so on. Then they tried him on dope. And Jesus, he was something else. I mean nobody, nobody would believe he was a cop. He'd make a buy and the backup would drop on the dealer, and they still wouldn't believe it. This dork couldn't be an undercover cop. Sometimes even the judges didn't believe it. Anyway, that's about the first job he ever did really well at; he was a bit of an actor. Then he got interested in investigation, in crime-scene processing. He was good at that, too. The best. He'd go into a crime scene and he'd see everything. And he could put it together, too. Then computers came along, and he was great with computers." She laughed, remembering. "Suddenly, the guy who fucked up everything, the nerd as big as the moon, was a hot item. And he was still good old Walt. When you needed your apartment painted, there he was. He had this great open smile, completely… geeky, but honest. When he looked happy to see you, he was happy to see you; he'd just light up. And if he got angry, he'd go off and start yelling, and then he'd maybe start crying or something; or you thought he would…"

Lily's lip was trembling, and she dropped her feet off the hassock and dropped her head.

"How'd he get the job looking for Robin Hood?"

"He knew computers and he'd worked with O'Dell, and we swung it for him. He could help us, and it was a chance for him to break out. And maybe I had something to do with it-he'd be working with me. Like I said…"

"Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

"Sounds like arrogance, or vanity."

Lucas shook his head. "Not really. Just life… You think he got close to Robin Hood?"

"He must have. Jesus, when he was killed, I couldn't stop crying for a week. I really… I don't know. There was no sexual impulse at all, but when I thought of him over all those years, that puppy-dog quality, that he loved me… It was like… I don't know. I loved him. That's what it came to."