Quickly, quickly, his mouth open, panting, he did the second eye, looking over his shoulder, twisting the knife . . . .

And he was free. He felt it, almost as if he were being lifted from the floor. He did a little step, Beauty coming on, and looked back at Druze.

The eyelids were open, wrinkled and pulled up, like fragments of dead leaves. His heart beating hard and with joy, Beauty reached out to smooth them down, round them carefully, the scalpel still in his hand. He stepped back.

“Cut his eyes, Mike?”

The voice broke on him like a bucket of ice water, crashing down, snatching his breath away, each word hurting, a sharp stone: CUT HIS EYES, MIKE?

Bekker whirled, the scalpel still in his right hand.

Davenport was there, leaning in the double doors, wearing a dark leather jacket, a pistol in his hands, pointed not at Bekker but to one side. He looked wired, his eyes wide, his hair dirty, his face unshaven. A thug. Another man came in from the left, and then a third, Stephanie’s dope-addict cousin, Del. The receptionist was behind them.

“ . . . ’Cause if you cut his eyes, Mike, we got you for the kids, too. We just dug them up today and the medical examiner says they were done with a knife just like that one, a scalpel. Is that a scalpel, Mike?”

Bekker stood speechless, the words bouncing through his brain, GOT YOU FOR THE KIDS, TOO, and Davenport moved in on him. One of the other cops, a thin man, said, “Be cool,” but Bekker had no idea what that meant.

Lucas moved in on him, the pistol in his hand. Bekker was startlingly beautiful in the soft light coming off the rose plaster, a violent contrast to the leathery patchwork face of the man behind him.

Lucas’ mind was pure ice: he could do anything when his mind was like this, he thought. Some of it was the speed. He’d been up three days now, but felt awake and in control, sharp, as sharp as he ever had. He reached Bekker, brushed past him, ignoring the scalpel, stretched past him, lifted Druze’s eyelids with his left hand, just as Bekker had. Bekker turned away.

Lucas, ice, stepped away from the coffin and glanced at Sloan.

“Cut them right through. Want to take a look?”

Lucas was crowding Bekker with his hip, and Bekker tried to move back, letting the scalpel slip from his fingers as he moved. It bounced off the deep carpet, the blade pointing at him like a steel finger.

“Got them both—really did a job,” Sloan said, bending over Druze’s body.

“What I want to know,” Lucas said to Bekker in a conversational tone, “is why you killed Cassie Lasch. Why’d you have to do that? Couldn’t you just have done Druze? Just gone in there, stuck the gun in his ear and pulled the trigger? You could have stashed the photos anyway and we’d have gotten the point . . . .”

Bekker’s mouth was open, but no sound came out.

“I need an answer,” Lucas said.

“Cool,” said Sloan, catching his coat sleeve.

“Fuck cool,” said Del, moving up on the other side of Bekker. He put his face four inches from the other man and said, “I knew Stephanie longer than you did, Mike. Loved that girl. So you know what?”

Bekker, caught between Lucas and Del, shrinking back against the wall, still didn’t answer.

“You know what?” Del screamed, his eyes wide.

“Hey, now,” said the Intelligence cop. He had Del by the coat.

“What?” Bekker croaked, half under his breath.

“I’m going to beat the snot out of you, m’boy,” Del said. His right hand came around in an arc and hit Bekker in the nose. Bekker slammed against the wall, his nose broken, blood gushing down his chin. He put his arms up, crossed his face.

“Wait,” Sloan yelled. He tried to step around Lucas, but Lucas pushed him; and before Sloan could recover, Del hit Bekker twice more, once with each hand, evading Bekker’s feeble block. Bekker’s head snapped back twice more, the back of it knocking the wall like a judge’s gavel, and another cut opened on his eyebrow. The Intelligence cop was on Del’s back, and Sloan wrapped him from the front and pushed him away. Bekker was moaning, one hand cupping his nose, a high, dying sound: “Eeeee . . .”

“That’s enough, that’s enough!” Sloan screamed. They hauled Del back, and Bekker dropped one of his covering hands.

“No, it’s not,” Lucas said quietly. He was less than an arm’s length from Bekker. Sloan and the Intelligence cop were struggling with Del but looking toward Lucas.

The pistol came around like a whip, the front sight leading the arc.

“ ’Member Cassie, motherfucker?” Lucas said, the words as much a groan as a scream. Saliva sprayed into Bekker’s face, and Lucas had him by the throat with his left hand. Bekker had time only to flinch before the sight sliced across his cheek and the side of his nose. A ragged furrow opened in its wake. Bekker grunted from the impact, a pain like fire ripping through his face.

Lucas, precise, quick, moving with the easy coordination of a speed-bag man, hit Bekker with the gun a dozen times, leading with the sight.

Ripped his forehead, twice, three times, opened his eyebrows, carved bloody canyons across his nose, the left cheek, then the right, sliced through his lips, his hands a blur . . .

Sloan hit Lucas in the back, wrapped up one arm. Lucas flailed with the pistol, a last wild swing ripping across Becker’s chin, opening the flesh as effectively as a chainsaw.

Lucas, mind blank, focused, could barely feel Sloan’s arms binding him, barely feel the Intelligence cop sweeping him off his feet, barely feel the uniforms barreling into the room, pinning him.

Even as he went down, his eyes were focused on Bekker, his hands straining. Sloan had the pistol, was twisting, his thumb under the hammer . . . .

Lucas was aware of weight on his chest, and Sloan, then of Sloan looking away, looking back up at Bekker, who was sliding a bloody path down the plaster walls. Sloan was looking at Bekker’s face, and Lucas heard Sloan say, “Oh Christ, ah Christ, ah sweet Jesus . . .”

The doctor’s face was a mask of blood and curling, wounded flesh. Even Druze might have turned away, had he been alive to see it.

In ten minutes, the world was moving again.

Lucas sat on a hard wooden bench in the entry, Sloan next to him.

Del was down the hall, his hands in his pockets. The Intelligence man, two uniforms and the paramedics were with Bekker. When they brought him out, on a gurney, one of the paramedics held a drip bottle above him, the line plugged into one of Bekker’s arms. He was conscious. One of his eyes was puffed nearly shut, but the other was open.

He saw Lucas, recognized him, and a noise came through his ruined lips.

“What?” Lucas asked. “Hold it . . . . What’d he say?”

The paramedics stopped and looked down. Bekker, struggling, one eye open, blood running into it, tried to sit up, put the words together . . . .

“You should have . . .” He lost it for a moment, then came back, a red bubble of blood on his lips.

“What?” Lucas asked. He stooped over and the blood bubble burst.

“You should have . . .”

“What, what, motherfucker . . . ?” Lucas shouted down at him, Sloan on his arms again.

“ . . . killed me . . .” Bekker tried to smile. His lips, cut nearly in half, failed him. “Fool.”

CHAPTER

32

Lucas sat outside Daniel’s office, six feet from the secretary’s desk. She had tried talking to him but eventually gave up. When the secretary’s intercom beeped, she tipped her head toward the office door and Lucas went inside.

“Come in,” Daniel said. His voice was formal, his office was not. Papers were scattered across the top of his desk and an amber cursor blinked on his computer screen, halfway down a column of numbers. A veil of cigar smoke hung in the room. Daniel pointed to the good guest chair. “What a fuckin’ week. How are you?”