"He's careful," Anderson said. They were gathered in Daniel's office.

"But he's moving right along," said Kieffer.

"He ought to be here. Or close," Lily said, looking from Lucas to Anderson to Daniel to Kieffer.

Kieffer nodded. "Very late tonight or sometime tomorrow, if he keeps pushing it. He's got Chicago in the way. He either has to go through it, or go way around it… He'd have to push like a sonofabitch to make it here tonight. It's more likely that he'd make it to Madison tonight and get into the Cities tomorrow."

"How far is Madison?" Lily asked.

"Five hours."

"He is pushing it," she said. "So it could be tonight…"

"We'll keep a watch," Daniel said. He looked around. "Anything else?"

"I can't think of anything," Lucas said. "Lily?"

"I guess we wait," Lily said.

CHAPTER 9

Lily went back to the surveillance post with Del, the undercover cop, while Lucas filled out the return on the search warrant. As he was finishing, Larry Hart walked in, carrying an overnight bag.

"Anything more?" Lucas asked.

"Nothing but a bunch of rumors," Hart said, dumping the bag against the wall. "There was something weird going on, just about the time of the bikers. There was a sun dance up at Standing Rock, but that was on the up-and-up. But there was maybe a ceremony of some kind at Bear Butte. A midnight deal. That's the rumor."

"Any names?"

"No. But the guys out there are asking around."

"We need names. In this business, names are the game."

Hart checked in with Anderson, then went home to clean up. Lucas filed the return on the search warrant, walked across the street to a newsstand and bought half a dozen magazines, then headed down to Indian Country.

Del was asleep on an inflatable mattress, his mouth half open. He looked exactly like a bum, Lucas decided. Two Narcotics cops were perched on matching aluminum lawn chairs, watching the street. A cooler sat next to the cop on the left and a boombox was playing "Brown Sugar." The FBI man was gone, although his stool was still there: the seat read L. L. BEAN. Lily was sitting on a stack of newspapers, leaning back against a wall.

"You guys are such a bunch of cutups," Lucas said as he walked in.

"Fuck you, Davenport," the two surveillance cops said in unison.

"I second that," Lily said.

"Anytime, anyplace," Lucas said. The cops laughed, and Lily said, "You talking to me or them?"

"Them," said Lucas. "Duane's got such a nice ass."

"Takes a load off my mind," said Lily.

"Puts a load on mine," said Duane, the fat surveillance cop.

"Nothing happening?" asked Lucas.

"Lot of fuckin' dope," Duane said. "I was kinda surprised. We don't hear too much about it from this area."

"We don't know too many Indians," Lucas said. He looked around the bare apartment. "Where's the feeb?"

"He went out. Said he was coming back. He seems kinda touchy about his chair, if that's what you were thinking," said the thin cop.

"Yeah?"

"Stacks of newspaper down the hall," Lily said.

One of the magazines had a debate on ten-millimeter automatic pistols. A gun writer suggested that it was the perfect defensive cartridge, producing twice the muzzle energy of typical nine-millimeter and.45 ACP rounds and almost half again as much as the.357 Magnum. The writer's opponent, a Los Angeles cop, worried that the ten-millimeter was a little too hot, tending to punch holes not only through the target but also through the crowd at the bus stop two blocks away. Lucas couldn't follow the details of the argument. His mind kept straying to the shape of Lily's neck, the edge of her cheek from the side and slightly behind, the curve of her wrist. Her lip. He remembered Sloan saying something about her overbite, and he smiled just a bit and nibbled at his own lip.

"What're you smiling about?" Lily asked.

"Nothing," Lucas said. "Magazine."

She heaved herself to her feet, stretched, yawned and wandered over. "Hot-hot-hot," she said. "It's a ten-MM?"

Lucas closed the magazine. "Dumb fucks," he said.

Anderson called on the portable a few minutes after one o'clock: The killer in Oklahoma City had vanished. Kieffer had talked to FBI agents in South Dakota about the rumors Hart had heard of a midnight ceremony, Anderson added, but nobody had much.

"There's some question about whether there ever was such a thing," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Kieffer talked to the lead investigator out there and this guy thinks the rumors came out of the confrontation with the bikers. One night the Indians surrounded Bear Butte, wouldn't let the bikers down the road around it. The bikers supposedly saw fires and so on, and heard drum music-and that eventually got turned into this secret-ceremony business."

"So it could be another dead end," Lily said.

"That's what Kieffer says."

"I could be watching The Young and the Restless," Lily said twenty minutes later.

"Go for a walk?" Lucas suggested.

"All right. Take a portable."

They went out the alley, two blocks to a 7-Eleven, bought Diet Cokes and started back.

"So fuckin' boring," Lily complained.

"You don't have to sit there. He probably won't be in until this evening," Lucas said.

"I feel like I oughta be there," Lily said. "He's my man."

On the way back, Lucas took a small gun-cleaning kit out of the Porsche. Inside the apartment, he spread newspapers on the floor, sat cross-legged, broke down his P7 and began cleaning it. Lily went back to her stack of newspapers for a few minutes, then moved over across from him.

"Mind if I use it?" she asked after watching for a moment.

"Go ahead."

"Thanks." She took her.45 out of her purse, popped the magazine, checked the chamber to make sure it was empty and began stripping it. "I break a fingernail about once a week on this damn barrel bushing," she said. She stuck her tongue out in concentration, rotated the bushing over the recoil spring plug and eased the spring out.

"Pass the nitro," she said.

Lucas handed her the cleaning solvent.

"This stuff smells better than gasoline," she said. "It could turn me into a sniffer."

"Gives me headaches," Lucas said. "It smells good but I can't handle it." He noticed that her.45 was spotless before she began cleaning it. His P7 didn't need the work either, but it was something to do.

"Ever shot a P7?" he asked idly.

"The other one. The eight-shot. The big one, like yours, has a lot of firepower, but I can't get my hand around the butt. I don't like the way it carries either. Too fat."

"That's not exactly a Tinker Toy you've got there," he said, nodding at her Colt.

"No, but the shape of the butt is different. It's skinnier. That's what I need. It's easier to handle."

"I really don't like that single-action for street work," Lucas said conversationally. "It's fine if you're target-shooting, but if you're only worried about hitting a torso… I like the double-action."

"You could try one of the forty-five Smiths."

"They're supposed to be good guns," Lucas agreed. "I probably would have, if the P7 hadn't come out first… How come you never went to a Smith?"

"Well, this thing just feels right to me. When I was shooting in competition I used a 1911 from Springfield Armory in thirty-eight Super. I want the forty-five for the street, but all that competition… the gun feels friendly."

"You shot competition?" Lucas asked. The cops at the window, who had been listening in an abstract way, suddenly perked up at an undertone in Lucas' voice.

"I was New York women's champ in practical shooting for a couple of years," Lily said. "I had to quit competition because it was taking too much time. But I still shoot a little."