“What? Fifteen minutes? Fuck it, I want him,” Lucas said.

“Lucas . . .” she wailed.

A cab pulled to the curb and Lucas hurried over, three seconds ahead of a woman who sprinted from a door farther up the street. He hopped in, leaving the door open. Fell was behind him, still in the street. “Get in.”

“We gotta call . . .”

“There’s more going on here than you know about,” Lucas said. “I’m not Internal Affairs, but there’s more going on.”

Fell looked at him for a long beat, then said, “I knew it,” and climbed in the cab. As the cab pulled away, the woman who’d run for it, back in the doorway, gave them the finger.

They inched silently uptown through the nightmare traffic, the rain growing heavier. Fell was tight-lipped, agitated. The cab dropped them on Houston, Lucas paid. A squad car rolled by, the cops looking carefully at Lucas before going on. They dodged into a convenience store, damp from the misty summer rain.

“All right,” said Fell, fists on her hips. “Let’s have it.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it could be weird,” he said. “I’m trying to catch Robin Hood. That’s why they brought me here, from Minneapolis.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you nuts?”

“No. You can either come along or you can take a hike, but I don’t want you fuckin’ this up,” Lucas said.

“Well, I’ll come,” she said. “But Robin Hood? Tell me.”

“Some other time. I gotta make a call of my own . . . .”

Lily was with O’Dell, just coming off the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, ten minutes from Police Plaza.

“Have you heard?” she asked.

“What?”

“Bekker was spotted at Washington Square, but took off. This was around three o’clock. We’ve got people all over the place, but nothing since . . . .”

“That sounds right, because I think we know where he is. Fell and me. And it’s up in SoHo.”

“What?” And he heard her say, “Lucas says he’s got Bekker.”

O’Dell’s voice replaced Lily’s. “Where are you?”

“We’re at Citibank and we’re stuck here. I think Bekker’s holed up with an old lady in SoHo, but I’m not sure. I’m going up there to take a quick informal look around before I call in the troops. I just wanted Lily to know, in case something misfires . . . .”

“Besides, if you called now and you’re stuck downtown, Kennett would get all the credit for the bust,” O’Dell said with his wet chuckle. “Is there any possibility that what you’ve done, whatever it is, has tipped off Bekker?”

“No. But it’ll take us a while to get up there; it’s raining here, and cabs are impossible.”

“Yeah, it’s raining here, too . . . . Okay, go ahead. But take care. Just in case there’s a problem, why don’t you give me the address, and I’ll get Lily to start a search warrant. That’ll help explain the delay, why you didn’t call it in.”

“All right . . .” Lucas gave him the address, and Lily came on the line. “Careful,” she said. “After your . . . look around . . . give us a ring. We’ll have the backup waiting.”

Lucas hung up, and Fell asked, “All right—what’s going on?”

“We’re gonna surveil for a while . . . .”

“Surveil what?” Another cop car rolled by, and again they got the look.

“This Lacey woman’s building, for a start. Bekker knows me, I don’t want to go right up front . . .”

“I know where we can get a hat,” Fell said. “And it’s on the way . . . .”

They dodged from doorway to canopy, staying out of the rain as much as they could. Fell finally led Lucas into a clothing store that apparently hadn’t changed either stock or customers since ’69. Every male customer other than Lucas was bearded, and three of the four women customers wore tie-dye. Lucas bought an ill-fitting leather porkpie hat. In the mirror, he looked like a hippie designer’s idea of an Amazon explorer.

“Quit grumbling, you’d look cute in the right light,” Fell said, hurrying him along.

“I look like an asshole,” Lucas said. “In any light.”

“What can I tell you?” she said. “You ain’t posing for Esquire.”

The rain had slowed further, but the streets were wet and slick, stinking of two centuries of grime emulsified by the quick shower. They found Lacey’s building, cruised it front and back. The back wall was windowless brick. A weathered shed, or lean-to, folded against the lower wall. The gate in the chain-link fence had been recently opened, and car tracks cut through the low spotty weeds to the shed.

Lucas walked to the edge of the lot, where he had the sharpest angle on the shed. “Look at this,” he said.

Fell peered through the fence. The back end of a rounded chrome bumper was just visible inside the shed. “Sonofabitch, it’s a Bug,” she breathed. She grabbed his arm. “Lucas, we gotta call.”

“Lily and O’Dell are taking care of it,” he said.

“I mean Kennett. He’s our supervisor. Christ, we’re cutting out the boss . . . .”

“Soon,” Lucas promised. “I want to sit and watch for a few more minutes.”

They walked around front, and Lucas picked out a store a hundred feet up the street from Lacey’s, on the opposite side, an African rug-and-artifact gallery. The owner was a deep-breasted Lebanese woman in a black turtlenecked silk dress. She nodded, nervous, and said, “Of course,” when they showed their badges. She brought chairs and they sat at an angle to the window, among draperies and wicker bookcases, watching the street.

“What if he goes out the back?” asked Fell.

“He won’t. There’re cops all over the place. He’s holed up.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“For some guys. Robin Hood and his merry men. If nothing happens in a half-hour, we go in . . . .”

“Would you like some cookies?” the Lebanese store owner asked, a touch of anxiety in her voice. She was twisting her hands, and looked, Lucas thought, remarkably like the wicked-witch stepmother in Snow White, if he had his Disney movies right. “Baklava, maybe . . . ?”

“No, thanks, really,” Lucas said. “We’re fine. We might want to use your phone.”

“Yes, surely . . .” The woman gestured at a black telephone next to the cash register and retired to the rear of the shop, where she perched on a high stool and continued to rub her hands.

“Eat her goddamn baklava and your nuts’d probably wind up sealed in a bottle with a genie,” Lucas muttered.

Fell glanced back and said, “Shh,” but smiled and shook her head. “Fuckin’ midwestern white guys, it must be something out there, wall-to-wall Wasps . . . .”

“Look,” Lucas said.

Two men in sport coats and slacks were walking up the street, not looking at Lacey’s building. One was beefy, the other rail-thin. Their sport coats were too heavy for a New York summer, the kind of coat called “year-round” by the department stores, too hot in summer, not warm enough in winter. The beefy one walked stiffly, as though something were wrong with his back; the thin one showed a cast on his left arm.

“Cops,” Fell said. She stood up. “They look like cops.”

“The sonofabitch with the cast is the guy who whacked me, I think,” Lucas said. Fell took a step toward the door, but Lucas caught her by the arm and said, “Wait, wait, wait . . .” and backed toward the counter and picked up the phone, still watching the two cops. They passed Lacey’s building, strolling, talking too animatedly, phony, walked on until they were in front of the next building, then stopped.

Lucas punched Lily’s office number into the telephone. She picked it up on the second ring. “I’m at Lacey’s place . . . .”

“How’d you get . . . ?”

“I lied. And the Robin Hoods just walked in, we’re watching them across the street. So it’s O’Dell . . . .”

“Can’t be. He hasn’t touched a phone.”

“What?”

“I’m with him now. In his office.”

“Shit . . .”

Across the street, the Robin Hoods had turned and had started back toward Lacey’s. One drew a pistol while the other dropped a long-handled sledge from beneath his jacket.