His silence is as formidable as the tree they stand under.

"Remember when I got the ladder and propped it against this very tree." She looks heavenward, her vision caught in thick, dark branches and leaves. "Next thing I know, I'm stuck up there, too scared to climb higher or come back down. And you had to get me."

"I remember." His voice sounds as if nobody is home.

"Well, that's the way I feel right now," she goes on, trying to appeal to the part of him that shut down after his wife was murdered. "I can't climb up or down, and I need you to help me, Papa."

"There's nothing I can do," he says.

36

SZCZECIN'S SKYLINE IS PIERCED by antennas, the streets quiet, the downtown shabby.

Not one of the stores looks inviting, especially at this late hour, and the few cars out are old and worse for the wear. The Radisson is built of brick, the courtyard gray and red pavers, and a large blue banner out front welcomes a Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics meeting, and that is fortunate.

The more people in the hotel, the better, and Lucy used to program robots and can talk technology with anybody if need be. But it won't be necessary. She has a plan, a very good one in all respects. She finds a spot to park several streets down from a Fila store, just past a delikatesy.

Flipping down the mirror on the visor, she quickly applies makeup and puts on gold hoop earrings. She yanks off her tennis shoes and pulls on black satin cowboy boots that are disgustingly necessary should someone spot her inside the hotel. She struggles into a black blouse, linen and wrinkled, and tucks her tactical baton up its sleeve. She unbuttons it low enough to show off cleavage. Transformed into a sexy young woman who is staying in the hotel, Lucy is sufficiently disheveled and alluring to pass for a typical convention attendee who has been out having a good time half the night. Throwing on a windbreaker and cursing her boots, she walks quickly to the hotel beneath the dim auras of streetlights.

This Radisson is self-service, as Lucy calls hotels where she carries her own bags, uses her magnetized room key to let herself into the gym and fills her own ice bucket, and where the housekeepers are shocked when left a tip. There is no doorman or bellman at this hour, only a young woman reading a Polish magazine behind the front desk. Lucy stays outside in the dark, glancing around, making certain no one suddenly walks up and sees her. In that unlikely event, she will dig inside the small leather satchel looped over her shoulder, pretending to look for her room key. She waits restlessly for ten minutes before the bored, weary desk clerk gets up and walks off, perhaps to the ladies' room, perhaps to find coffee. Lucy strolls across the lobby and disappears inside the elevator, pushing the button for the fifth floor.

Rudy is in room 511. It is not his room. He got inside the hotel very much the same way Lucy did, only he got a good break, got to walk in with a crowd of businessmen returning from dinner. Fortunately, he was smart enough to wear a suit and tie. Rudy is an odd breed. Former HRT comrades envied his beautiful muscular body and accused him of taking steroids, which he has never touched. Lucy would know, because Rudy may have his flaws, but he is so honest and sincere that she sometimes calls him girlfriend. She knows every detail of his diet, vitamin and protein supplements, and grueling workout routines, and his favorite magazines and television shows. She can't remember the last time he read a book. She also understands why he sexually assaulted her in the Tire House and, if anything, feels bad that she broke his nose.

"I thought you were hot for me, too. I swear," he explained with the most pitiful expression on his face. "I guess I got all excited rolling around between tires and shooting, and you were right there with me with cartridge cases pinging everywhere, both of us dirty and sooty, and you looked so good I couldn't stand it, so I asked you that question-when I shouldn't have-and then you said you wanted sex whenever you could get it. I thought you meant with me."

"Right that minute?" Lucy said. "You really thought that?"

"Yeah. That you were hot and bothered too."

"Now and then you should watch something besides action movies," Lucy replied. "Walt Disney, maybe?"

They had this conversation inside her room at the FBI Academy, both of them sitting on her bed because she was not afraid of Rudy and never has been. He was the one with stitches below his lip and a broken nose that required the skills of a plastic surgeon.

"Besides, and I know this may sound like bullshit to you, Lucy, but I'd had it with what the other guys were saying. Maybe I wanted to prove something-prove you weren't what they've been saying."

"I get it. If we had sex, then you could go back and tell them all about it."

"No! I didn't mean it like that. I wouldn't have told them anything. It's none of their business!"

"Hmmm. Let me sort through this. Having sex in the Tire House would have proven to the other guys that I'm into guys-even though they wouldn't have known about our having sex in the Tire House because you're too honorable to kiss and tell."

"Ah, fuck." Rudy stared dejectedly at the floor. "I'm not saying it right. I wouldn't have told them a thing, but next time they bad-mouthed you, accused you of being gay or frigid or whatever, I could have given them a look, done something to indicate they didn't know what they were talking about."

"I appreciate that your intention was my welfare as you tried to rip off my clothes and rape me," Lucy replied.

"I wasn't trying to rape you! For Christ's sake, don't use a word like that! I thought you were turned on, too. Shit, Lucy. What do you want me to do?"

"Never try a stunt like that again. Or next time I'll break more than your nose."

"Fine. I won't ever do anything again unless you start it. Or change your mind."

He resigned from the Bureau and eventually came to work for her at The Last Precinct. Rudy is a perplexing mix. In some ways, he is the big, handsome dope incapable of making a commitment to any woman he has ever claimed to desperately love (and his choices, as far as Lucy knows, demonstrate appallingly bad judgment). But as a crime fighter, he is as meticulous and skillful as he is as a helicopter pilot. Rudy isn't selfish or narcissistic. He rarely drinks and never touches drugs, not even aspirin.

"One good thing about it." Rudy looked up at Lucy as they sat on her bed. "When the plastic surgeon was fixing my nose, he went ahead and shaved that little bump off it." He gently touched the splint on the bridge of his nose. "He says I'll have a perfect Roman nose. That's what he called it, a Roman nose."

He paused, slightly perplexed. "What exactly is a Roman nose?"