"Anytime," Lucas said wistfully. He wanted to say more, but couldn't think of anything.

Carla took a last sip of coffee, pushed the cup, still half-full, into the middle of the table, and stood up.

"I better get going," she said. "The cab should be back."

Lucas sat where he was. "Well, it was real."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked as she retrieved her purse.

"That's what you say when you can't think of anything to say."

"Okay." She buttoned her coat. "See you."

"How come Jennifer didn't deliver the message?"

"We talked about that and decided I should do it. That'd make a clean break between us. Besides, she said you'd spend about a half-hour on some kind of Catholic guilt trip, then you'd go into a rage and kick stuff, then you'd try to call her on the telephone so you could yell at her. Then in about two hours you'd start laughing about it. She said she'd rather skip the preliminaries." Carla glanced at her watch. "She'll be over in two hours."

"Motherfucker," Lucas said in disbelief.

"You got that right," Carla said as she went out the door. A yellow cab was waiting. She stopped with the screen door still open. "Call you next spring. About the cabin."

It was more like three hours. When Jennifer arrived, she wasn't embarrassed in the slightest.

"Hi," she said when he opened the door. She walked past him, took off her coat, and tossed it on the couch. "Carla called, said the talk went okay."

"I'm pretty unhappy-" Lucas started, but she waved him off.

"Spare me. McGowan's going to network, by the way. It's all over town."

"Fuck McGowan."

"Better hurry," Jennifer said. "She'll be gone in a month. But I still think what you did was awful. McGowan's just too dumb to recognize it."

"Goddammit, Jennifer…"

"If you're going to yell, we could have this talk some other time."

"I'm not going to yell," he said grimly. He thought he might strangle.

"Okay. So I thought I might give you my position. That is, if you'd like to hear it."

"Sure. I mean, why not? You're running the rest of my life."

"My position is, I'm pregnant and the daddy shouldn't screw anybody else until the baby is born, and maybe"-she paused, as though considering the fairness of her proposition-"maybe a year old. Maybe two years old. That way, I can kind of pretend like I'm married and talk to you about the baby and what we did during the day and his first words and how he's walking and I won't have to worry about you fooling around. And then, when you can't stand it and start fooling around again, I can just pretend like I'm divorced."

She smiled brightly. Lucas was appalled.

"That's the coldest goddamn thing I ever heard," he said.

"It's not exactly an extemporaneous speech," she said. "I rewrote it about twelve times, I thought it was rather cogently expressed, but with enough emotion to make it convincing."

Lucas laughed, then stopped laughing and sat down. He looked haggard, she thought. Or harried. "All right. I give up," he said.

"All right to all of it?"

"Yeah. All of it."

"Scout's honor?"

"Sure." He held up the three fingers. "Scout's honor."

Late in the evening, Lucas lay on the surveillance team's mattress and thought about it. He could live with it, he thought. For two years? Maybe.

"That's weird. You see that?" said the first surveillance cop.

"I didn't see anything," said his partner.

"What?" asked Lucas.

"I don't know. It's like there's some movement over there. Just a little bit, at the edge of the window."

Lucas crawled over and looked out. The maddog's apartment was dark except for the faint glow from the night-light.

"I don't see anything," he said. "You think he's doing something?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing. It's just every once in a while… it's like he's watching us. "

CHAPTER 30

It was the winning stroke. If he had the nerve, he could pull it off. He imagined Davenport 's face. Davenport would know, but he wouldn't know how, and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it.

In some ways, of course, it would be his most intellectual mission. He didn't need this particular woman, but he would take her anyway. To the police-not Davenport, but the others-there would be a logic to it. A logic they could understand.

In the meantime, the other pressure had begun to build. There was a woman who lived in the town of Richfield, a schoolteacher with almond eyes and rich sable hair, wide teeth like a Russian girl's. He had seen her with a troop of her children in the basement level of the Government Center, installing an elementary-school art show…

No. He put her out of his mind. The need would grow, but he could control it. It was a matter of will. And his mind had to be clear to deal with the stroke.

He first had to break free, if only for two hours. He didn't see them, but they were there, he was sure, a web of watchers escorting him through the city's streets and skyways. His night watches and his explorations in the attic had been fruitful. He knew, he thought, where two of their surveillance posts were. The lighting patterns were wrong for families or individuals, and he saw car lights coming and going at odd hours of the night, always from the same two houses. One of the houses, he was sure, had been empty until recently.

They were waiting for him to move. Before he could, he had to break free. Just for two hours. He thought he had a way.

The law firm of Woodley, Gage amp; Whole occupied three floors of an office building two blocks from his own. He had twice encountered one of their attorneys in real-estate closings, a man named Kenneth Hart. After each of the closings, they'd had lunch. If someone had ever asked the maddog who his friends were, he would have mentioned Hart. Now he hoped that Hart remembered him.

At Woodley, Gage, status was signified by floor assignment. The main reception area was on the third floor, the floor shared by the partners. The lesser lights were on the fourth. The smallest lights of all were on the fifth. With a less-affluent firm, a client arriving at the third-floor reception area in search of a fourth- or fifth-floor attorney would be routed back down the hall to the elevators. With this firm, no such side trip was necessary. There was an internal elevator and an internal stairway.

Best of all, there were exits to the parking garage on all of the first eight floors. If he could go into Woodley, Gage on the third floor, and the cops didn't know about the internal elevator, he could slip out on five.

Before he could use Woodley, Gage, a preliminary excursion would be necessary, and it would have to take place under the noses of his watchers.

The maddog left the office early, drove his bugged Thunderbird south to Lake Street, found a place to park, got out, and walked along the row of dilapidated shops. He passed a dealer in antiques, peered through the dark glass, and breathed a sigh of relief. The fishing lures were still in the window.

He walked on another half-block to a computer-supply store, where he bought a carton of computer paper and headed slowly back to the car, still window-shopping. He paused at the antiques dealer's again, pretending to debate whether or not to enter. He should not overplay it, he thought; the watchers would be professionals and might sense something. He went inside.

"Can I help you?"

A woman emerged from the back of the shop. She had iron-colored hair tied back in a bun, her hands clasped in front of her. If she'd been wearing a shawl, she'd have looked like a phony grandmother on a package of chocolate-chip cookies. As it happened, she was wearing a cheap blue suit with a red tie and had the strained rheumy look of a longtime alcoholic.