“What can I do you for?” the bartender asked, drying his hands on a mustard-stained towel.

“Bottle of Leinie’s,” Lucas said.

The bartender fished it out of a cooler and dropped it wet on the bar: “Two bucks.” And then, tipping his head toward the back, “Looking for someone?”

“Yeah.” Lucas paid and sat on a stool. The back-bar mirror ended before it got that far down, and Lucas stared into the fake walnut paneling opposite his stool, hitting on the beer, trying to straighten his schedule out.

If he didn’t find Burrell quick, he’d have to stay over a day. Then he’d miss the early flight to Atlanta. Instead of getting into Charleston in the morning, he wouldn’t make it until the afternoon and probably wouldn’t get out until the next day. Then he’d have to think of an excuse for the New York people.

The hooker rapped on the bar with her knuckles, nodded at the daiquiri, got a new one. She wore a pale-green party dress, almost the color of the drink. She caught his eyes again, let her gaze linger this time. Lucas didn’t remember her. He’d known most of the regulars when he was working, but he’d been off the streets for months now. A week is forever, on the streets. A whole new class of thirteen-year-old girls would be giving doorway blow jobs to suburban insurance agents who would later be described in court documents as good fathers . . . .

Lucas was halfway through the beer when Johnson walked in, out of breath, as though he’d been running.

“Jesus, Davenport,” he said. “Missed the bus.” He looked down the bar at the hooker as Lucas swiveled on the stool.

“Where is he?” Lucas said.

Johnson’s face lit up. “What’d you mean, where is he? He’s right there.”

Lucas looked past the hooker to the back of the bar; all the pool players were white.

“Where?”

Johnson started to laugh, lifted a leg and slapped a thigh. “You sittin’ next to him, man.”

The hooker looked at Lucas and said, in a voice an octave too low, “Hi, there.”

Lucas looked at the hooker for a second, rereading the features, and closed his eyes. Transvestite. In a half-second, it all fell into place. Goddamn Bekker. This was how he got close to the women and the tourist males. As a woman. With the right makeup, at night, with his small, narrow-shouldered body. That was how he got out of the New School . . . .

God damn it.

“Did you tell Bekker how to . . . do this?” Lucas asked, gesturing at the dress. “The dress, the makeup.”

“We talked about it,” Thomas said. “But he was a sick motherfucker and I didn’t like talking to him.”

“But when you talked about it . . . was he real interested, or did you just talk?”

Thomas tipped his head back, looked up at the ceiling, remembering. “Well . . . he tried it. A couple of things.” He hopped off the bar stool and walked away from Lucas and Johnson, moving his hips, turned and posed. “It ain’t that easy to get just the right walk. If you forget halfway through the block, it ruins your whole image.”

The bartender, watching, said, “Are you guys gay?”

“Cop,” said Lucas. “This is official.”

“Forget I asked . . .”

“I won’t forget, honey,” Thomas said, licking his lower lip.

“You fuckin’ . . .”

“Shut up,” Lucas snapped, poking a finger at the bartender. He looked back at Thomas. “But did he do it? The walk?”

“Couple times, a few times, I guess. You know, we did talk about it, when I think back. Not so much about how good it feels, but how to do it. You know, gettin’ the prosthetic bras and like that. He’d make a good-lookin’ girl, too, ’cept for the scars.”

“You think so?” Lucas asked. “Is that a professional opinion?”

“Don’t dick me around, man,” Thomas said, flaring.

“I’m not. That’s a real question. Would he make a good woman?”

Thomas stared at him for a minute, decided the question was real: “Yeah, he would. He’d be real good at it. ’Cept for the scars.”

Lucas hopped off the bar stool, said thanks, and nodded to Johnson: “We owe you. You need something, talk to Sloan.”

“That’s all?” asked Thomas.

“That’s all,” Lucas said.

Lucas called Fell from the pay phone at the back of the bar. When she answered, he could hear the television going in the background, a baseball game. “Can you get to Kennett? Right now?”

“Sure.”

“Tell him we’ve figured out how Bekker is doing it,” Lucas said. “How he’s staying out of sight on the streets, getting out of the New School.”

“We have?”

“Yeah. I just talked to his former next-door neighbor at the Hennepin County Jail, name of Rayon Thomas. Nice-looking guy. Good makeup. Great legs. He’s wearing a daiquiri-green party dress. He gave Bekker lessons . . . .”

After a moment of silence, she breathed, “Sonofabitch, Bekker’s a woman. We’re so fuckin’ stupid.”

“Call Kennett,” Lucas said.

“You haven’t talked to anyone?” she asked.

“I thought you’d like to break it.”

“Thanks, man,” Fell said. “I . . . thanks.”

CHAPTER

20

Bekker could count the drops, each and every one, as the shower played off his body. The ecstasy did that: two tiny pills. Gave him the power to imagine and count, to multiply outrageous feelings by ineffable emotions and come up with numbers . . . .

He turned in the shower, letting jets of water burn into him. He no longer used the cold water at all, and the stall was choked with heat and steam, his body turning cherry red as the old skin scalded away. And as he turned, his eyes closed, his head tipped back, his hands beneath his chin, his elbows close together, on his belly, he could count all the drops, each and every one . . . .

He stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then, shivering, blue, annoyed, he leaped out. What time was it? He walked to the end of the room where he’d fitted a black plastic garbage bag over a barred basement window, and peeled back a corner of the plastic. Dark. Midnight. That was good. He needed the night.

Bekker walked back toward the bed, felt the stickiness on the soles of his feet and looked down. He needed to wash the floor. The sight of the dried blood on the floor reminded him of the cut. He looked at his arm, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. The cut was painful, but the ants were gone.

He caught sight of himself in a wall mirror, his furrowed face. He went into the bathroom and washed his face, grimacing at the sight of the scars. They were in long jagged rows, raised above the soft skin around them. The gunsight cuts had been sewn closed by an emergency-room butcher, instead of a qualified plastic surgeon.

He thought of Davenport, Davenport’s teeth, the eye-teeth showing, his eyes, the gun swinging, battering . . .

He sighed, came back, shaken, staring at his face in the mirror. He put the makeup on mechanically, but carefully. Cover Mark to hide the scars, then straight, civilian makeup. Max Factor New Definition. Cover Girl nail polish. Suave styling spritz, to pull his blond hair down to cover his jawline, which was a bit too masculine.

The lipstick was last. Lipstick the color of a prairie rose. Just a touch. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a harlot . . . . He made kisses at the mirror, smoothed the lipstick with his tongue, blotted it with toilet paper. Just right.

Satisfied, finally, he went to the chest, picked out underwear, got the prosthetic bra and sat on the bed. He’d shaved his legs the night before, and they were just getting prickly. Bekker was fair-haired, fine-haired: even if he hadn’t shaved, his legs wouldn’t have been a problem. But he did shave, to capture the feel. Rayon had said that was important, and Bekker understood—or he’d understood at the time. You had to live the part, feel the part. He flashed. A woman hurrying behind him, afraid of the dark parking ramp. Live the part . . .