The hooker was bait. Del had found her working a bar in South St. Paul two days earlier and had dragged her ass back to Minneapolis on an old possession warrant. Lucas had put the word on the street that she was talking about Randy to beat a cocaine charge. Randy had shredded the face of one of Lucas' snitches. The hooker had seen him do it.

"You still writing poems?" Del asked after a while.

"Kind of gave it up," Lucas said.

Del shook his head. "Shouldn't of done that."

Lucas looked at the plastic flowers in the window box and said sadly, "I'm getting too old. You gotta be young or naive to write poetry."

"You're three or four years younger'n I am," Del said, picking up the thought.

"Neither one of us is a fuckin' walk in the park," Lucas said. He tried to make it sound funny, but it didn't.

"Got that right," Del said somberly. The narc had always been gaunt. He liked speed a little too much and sometimes got his nose in the coke. That came with the job: narcs never got out clean. But Del… the bags under his eyes were his most prominent feature, his hair was stiff, dirty. Like a mortally ill cat, he couldn't take care of himself anymore. "Too many assholes. I'm gettin' as bad as them."

"How many times we had this conversation?" Lucas asked.

" 'Bout a hundred," Del said. He opened his mouth to go on, but they were interrupted by a sudden noisy cheer from the back and a male voice shouting, "You see that nigger fly?" One of the black hookers at the bar looked up, eyes narrowing, but she went back to her magazine without saying anything.

Del lifted a hand to the bartender. "Couple beers," he called. "Couple Leinies?"

The bartender nodded, and Lucas said, "You don't think Randy's coming?"

"Gettin' late," Del said. "And if I drink any more of this Coke, I'll need a bladder transplant."

The beers came, and Del said, "You heard about that killing last night? The woman up on the hill? Beat to death in her kitchen?"

Lucas nodded. This was what Del had been leading up to. "Yeah. Saw it on the news. And I heard some stuff around the office…"

"She was my cousin," Del said, closing his eyes. He let his head fall back, as though overcome with exhaustion. "We grew up together, fooling around on the river. Hers were the first bare tits I ever saw, in real life."

"Your cousin?" Lucas studied the other man. As a matter of self-defense, cops joked about death. The more grotesque the death, the more likely the jokes; you had to watch your tongue when a friend had a family member die.

"We used to go fishing for carp, man, can you believe that?" Del turned so he could lean against the window box. Thinking about yesterdays. His bearded face drawn long and solemn, like an ancient photo of James Longstreet after Gettysburg, Lucas thought. "Down by the Ford dam, just a couple blocks from your place. Tree branches for fishing poles. Braided nylon line, with dough balls for bait. She fell off a rock, slipped on the moss, big splash…"

"Gotta be careful…"

"She was, like, fifteen, wearing a T-shirt, no bra," Del said. "It was plastered to her. I said, 'Well, I can see it all, you might as well take it off.' I was kidding, but she did. She had nipples the color of wild roses, man, you know? That real light pink. I had a hard-on for two months. Stephanie was her name."

Lucas didn't say anything for a moment, watching the other man's face, then, "You're not working it?"

"Nah. I'm no good at that shit, figuring stuff out," Del said. He flipped his hands palm out, a gesture of helplessness. "I spent the day with my aunt and uncle. They're all fucked up. They don't understand why I can't do something."

"What do they want you to do?" Lucas asked.

"Arrest her husband. He's a doctor over at the U, a pathologist," Del said. He took a hit of his beer. "Michael Bekker."

"Stephanie Bekker?" Lucas asked, his forehead wrinkling. "Sounds familiar."

"Yeah, she used to run around with the political crowd. You might even have met her-she was on the study group for that civilian review board a couple of years ago. But the thing is, when she was killed, her old man was in San Francisco."

"So he's out," Lucas said.

"Unless he hired it done." Del leaned forward now, his eyes open again. "That alibi is a little too convenient. I personally think he's got a loose screw."

"What're you telling me?"

"Bekker feels wrong. I'm not sure he killed her, but I think he might've," Del said. A man in a T-shirt dashed to the bar with a handful of bills, slapped them on the bar, said, "Catch us later," and ran three beers back to the TV set.

"Would he have a motive?" Lucas asked.

Del shrugged. "The usual. Money. He thinks he's better than anyone else and can't figure out why he's poor."

"Poor? He's a doctor…"

"You know what I mean. He's a doctor, he oughta be rich, and here he is working at the U for seventy, eighty grand. He's a pathologist, and there ain't no big demand for pathology in the civilian world…"

"Hmph."

Out on the sidewalk, on the other side of the one-way window, a couple shared an umbrella and, assuming privacy, slowed to light a joint. The woman was wearing a short white skirt and a black leather jacket. Lucas' Porsche was parked next to the curb, and as they walked by it, the man stopped to look, passing the joint to the girl. She took a hit, narrowed her eyes as she choked down the smoke and passed the joint back.

"Gotta get your vitamins," Del said, watching them. He reached forward and quickly traced a smiley face in the condensation on the window.

"I heard in the office… there was a guy with her? With your cousin?"

"We don't know what that is," Del admitted, his forehead wrinkling. "Somebody was there with her. They'd had intercourse, we know that from the M.E., and it wasn't rape. And a guy called in the report…"

"Lover's quarrel?"

"I don't think so. The killer apparently came in through the back, killed her and ran out the same way. She was working at the sink, there were still bubbles on the dishwater when the squad got there, and she had soap on her hands. There wasn't any sign of a fight, there wasn't any sign that she had a chance to resist. She was washing dishes, and pow."

"Doesn't sound like a lover's quarrel…"

"No. And one of the crime-scene guys was wondering how the killer got so close to her, assuming it wasn't Loverboy who did it-how he could get so close without her hearing him coming. They checked the door and found out the hinges had just been oiled. Like in the past couple of weeks, probably."

"Ah. Bekker."

"Yeah, but it's not much…"

Lucas thought it over again. A gust of rain brought a quick, furious drumming on the window, which just as quickly stopped. A woman with a red golf umbrella went by.

"Listen," Del said. "I'm not just sitting here bullshitting… I was hoping you'd take a look at it."

"Ah, man… I hate murders. And I haven't been operating so good…" Lucas gestured helplessly.

"That's another thing. You need an interesting case," Del said, poking an index finger at Lucas' face. "You're more fucked up than I am, and I'm a goddamned train wreck."

"Thanks…" Lucas opened his mouth to ask another question, but two pedestrians were drifting along the length of the window. One was a very light-skinned black woman, with a tan trench coat and a wide-brimmed cotton hat that matched the coat. The other was a tall, cadaverous white boy wearing a narrow-brimmed alpine hat with a small feather.

Lucas sat up. "Randy."

Del looked out at the street, then reached across the table and took Lucas' arm and said, "Take it easy, huh?"

"She was my best snitch, man," Lucas said, in a voice like a gravel road. "She was almost a friend."

"Bullfuck. Take it easy."

"Let him get all the way inside… You go first, cover me, he knows my face…"