by John Lutz
Pearl thought that if Millie Graff could somehow know about it she’d be horrified.
Quinn rang the bell of the rehabbed brownstone not far from where he lived on the Upper West Side and waited. An intercom crackled and a male voice asked who was at the door. Quinn found the talk button and identified himself.
The same crackly voice told him to come in, and a raspy buzzer sounded. He opened the heavy door with its built-in iron grille and stepped into a small, carpeted vestibule that smelled faintly of cat urine.
A door beside him opened, and a small, stooped man with a wild sprout of curly gray hair stared out at him. Quinn immediately thought of Albert Einstein, but he said, “William Turner?”
“Bill will be fine,” the man told him in a high, phlegmy voice. “You said you were a detective?”
“Yes. Name’s Quinn.”
Watery blue eyes brightened. “Ah, the renowned serial-killer hunter.”
“I’m flattered,” Quinn said.
“I admire your work. Your entire career, in fact.” The hallway’s odor-cat urine-seemed to waft also from the man’s clothing. “You see, I’m kind of a cop groupie. I’ve always admired the police.” He emitted a high, peculiar laugh. If birds could laugh, this was how they’d sound. “Listen, I had a good working relationship with the police in my day.” Suddenly, as if on a whim, he moved back and motioned for Quinn to step inside. “I won’t ask for identification,” he said. “I know you from your many newspaper photographs.”
“You keep a scrapbook?”
The high laugh again, not quite a giggle. “No, I don’t go that far in my idolatry.”
Quinn stepped into what could only be called a parlor, and suddenly it was 1885, about the time the brownstone was built. And the year when Quinnn’s own brownstone was constructed. The ceilings were at least twelve feet high, with intricate crown molding. Long red velvet drapes puddled on the patterned hardwood floor. The walls were a soft cream color, and a large brick and tile fireplace was flanked by floor-to-ceiling shelves full of ceramic pottery.
“I collect the stuff,” Turner said, observing Quinn’s interest. “Nineteenth-century American.”
“Impressive,” Quinn said. He noticed that Turner’s clothes were expensive but threadbare, and one of his shirt buttons was missing. Around his scrawny neck was a red paisley ascot.
“Sit down, please,” Turner said. He motioned toward a flowered beige sofa with wooden inserts in its upholstered arms.
Quinn sat and looked around again. “Nice place. I’ve got an old brownstone myself, trying to bring it back.”
“Great ladies, worth preserving,” Turner said.
Quinn’s gaze fell on an antique Victrola record player with a crank and louvered mahogany doors. “You collect old records, too?”
“Not really. Mostly furniture, when I’m not buying pottery. That’s what the Victrola is to me-quality antique furniture, wood with a patina you can’t find on anything new. But she still plays.” Turner did a little old man’s shuffle in leather moccasins, as if dancing to the musical strains of the Victrola. Quinn saw that the moccasins were actually house slippers with fleece linings. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Nope,” Quinn said, “just some answers.”
Turner smiled with yellowed teeth, but his eyes grew brighter. Not Einstein, maybe, but there was an active intelligence behind those eyes.
“Back in the sixties and seventies, you managed Socrates’s Cavern on the West Side,” Quinn said.
“Sure did. I was manager and part owner.” Turner sat down on the edge of a brown wing chair that looked as if it might engulf him if he leaned back. “Listen, the kind of business we were in, I saw a lot of the cops. But we never stepped over the line. Nothing illegal. Consenting adults only. That was something we diligently checked.”
“Ever see any of your old friends from those days?”
“Naw. We were just in business together. Then the business kind of ran its course. Our business, anyway, not the S and M business.” He gave a hapless shrug with narrow shoulders. “Hell, the way it is now, with the Internet and all, everything’s changed.” Caught in another of his sudden mood swings, he waved his arms exuberantly. “S and M’s gone international!”
“Like the House of Pancakes,” Quinn said. “Anything like your club still operating in the city?”
“Oh, you know how it is. Sex clubs are here and there. Always will be. But nothing as big as we were. In some ways, society was lots more open back then.” He squinted at Quinn. “You look old enough to remember.”
“I do remember. Especially that place over on East Fiftyninth that was doing snuff films.”
Turner raised both hands palms out. “None of that in my end of the business. Not for real, anyway.” He shook his head in disgust. “Jesus!” He sat even farther out on the chair’s large cushion so that it looked as if it might flip up and hit him in the back. “Listen, most of this stuff is with, for, and about grown-ups. You follow me? Alternative lifestyles. We Americans like to exercise our freedom to pursue happiness however we want. Long as we don’t get in the way of somebody else’s parade and there’s no kids or animals involved. Free country, thank God!”
“Amen,” Quinn said.
Turner stared at him to see if he might be joking and seemed to decide he wasn’t.
“I’m here to investigate a murder,” Quinn said, “not find out who was whacking who on the ass in your club back when people were wearing Mao jackets.”
“Yet you ask me about the club.”
“Yet I do. The name Philip Wharkin mean anything to you?”
“No… can’t say it does.”
“He was a registered member of Socrates’s Cavern.”
“So were lots of people. Folks you’d never imagine.”
“Somebody-maybe another Philip Wharkin-wrote his name in blood on the bathroom mirror in Millie Graff’s apartment after he killed her.”
“You don’t say? I never read that in the paper.”
“It hasn’t been released to the press.”
“Well, if you want, I’ll keep mum. I was always ready to work with the cops. Hell, you’d be surprised the off-duty cops that came into the club.”
“I doubt that I would,” Quinn said. “But don’t spread the name Philip Wharkin around. What I would like is for you to contact some of the old friends you told me you didn’t have, and ask if they know anything about Millie Graff.”
“If I can locate them, I’ll sure do that. Was Millie a bad girl?”
“Straight as Central Park West, far as we can tell.”
“That don’t mean anything,” Turner said. “People outside the S and M world don’t have a clue.”
“That’s why I want you to ask around inside,” Quinn said. “Find me a clue.”
He stood up from the sofa with some difficulty, understanding why Turner didn’t scoot all the way back in his chair. He gave Turner one of his cards. “Leave a message if I’m not in, okay, Bill?”
“Sure, I will. Cops and me, we were always tight. Fun was what it was all about in those days. A certain kinda fun, anyway.” The frail-looking little man stood up with surprising nimbleness and escorted Quinn to the door. “Listen,” he said, when Quinn’s hand was on the knob. “You’re on this case because of the police commissioner, right?”
“That’s so.”
Turner adjusted his brightly colored ascot as if it might be tightening like a noose. “I mean, he ain’t gonna have my ass if he finds out I’m asking around about this Millie Graff, is he?”
“Not a chance,” Quinn said. “He’s very understanding.” And in a lower yet harder voice: “So am I.”
11
Hogart, Missouri, 1991
Wham! Milt Thompson hit a home run into the left-field upper deck of Busch Stadium in St. Louis and the crowd stood and roared.
So did Roy Brannigan.
Beth Brannigan watched her husband sit back down and guzzle the last of his can
of beer as he watched the Cardinals-Pirates ball game on their old console TV. He was slouched on the sagging gray sofa. On the wall behind him was a huge, roughly hewn wooden crucifix that had been created with a chain saw. He’d bought it at a flea market for ten dollars. Beth had seen him pray before it for the Cardinals to win. Jokingly, he pretended, but he didn’t fool her. In Roy Brannigan’s mind, it wasn’t the cardinals in Rome who counted. They couldn’t hit a curve ball.
Beth was a sweet-looking woman with a heart-shaped face and guileless blue eyes. She had a brown fleck in one eye that gave her a kind of intense look that somehow added to her appeal. Her figure was trim and shown to advantage in a red tank top and short Levi’s cutoffs. She was barefoot. Beth had once overheard a man describe her as fetching. She thought that was fitting, the way she fetched for Roy.
Roy’s idea of marriage was based on the Old Testament, and he spun it with his own interpretation. He insisted they attend church every Sunday, as they had this morning. After church they’d have a big meal at home, and Beth would clean up afterward. If the Cardinals were playing a day game, which they seemed to do most Sundays during the season, she’d make sure the kitchen was cleaned up before Roy finished smoking his after-meal cigar out on the porch. She’d have a cold beer waiting when he came back inside to watch the game. Religious though he might be, he had no qualms about Beth working on the Lord’s day.
Nor did religion keep Roy from accumulating a large cache of pornography, of which he thoroughly disapproved. He fancied himself a student and critic of erotica. He would from time to time write reproachful letters to the publishers, excoriating them for publishing such filth. But he bought most of his collection by mail, and often an order form and the letter to the publisher would be posted simultaneously.
This televised contest was a night game, part of a twilight double-header to make up for a rainout earlier in the season. Beth had been busy most of the day, and they’d had snacks as well as their usual midday meal.
She was used to tending to Roy’s needs. Beth didn’t really mind the hard work, when he treated her well. When he was gentle with her.
Which wasn’t all the time.
Her mom and dad over in Hawk Point had suspected Roy might be abusing Beth. But her dad had lung cancer, and her mother was too afraid of Roy and the bleak future to interfere other than to warn Beth not to let things go too far. They never had come right out and said what “things” were. But then, neither had Beth.
Even the impotent support of her mother and father disappeared last October when both Beth’s parents were killed in an auto accident on Interstate 70. Their car had run headon into a pickup truck speeding the wrong way. The driver of that vehicle had been killed, too. The autopsy showed he’d been legally drunk.
Beth had mourned hard and been comforted by Roy and his well-worn Bible. They’d prayed together fiercely at home, and with the tiny congregation at the Day of Heavenly Atonement Church.
And then one day Roy acted as if he’d decided she’d mourned enough. It was time to get on with life, he’d informed her, and quoted the appropriate verse in scripture.
Not about to challenge the Bible, Beth had allowed her relationship with Roy to resume its bumpy course.
The pain of grief had lessened, but the course never smoothed. It had led here, to the squalid living room of their ramshackle house and a ball game televised from St. Louis.
“You want some more beer, hon?” she asked.
There was crowd noise from the TV and he didn’t hear her. He was suddenly up again from the sofa, in a fury. He hurled his empty beer can so it bounced off the screen door.
“That wasn’t a foul ball!” he yelled, pointing at the TV. “That umpire’s gonna burn in hell.”
“All of ’em, probably,” Beth said.
“Yeah.”
She thought he was agreeing with her, then realized he’d meant that yeah, he wanted another beer.
“Well,” she said, “we’re all out.”
“Man’s gotta be blind not to see that wasn’t a foul ball,” Roy said.
“I thought all umpires were blind,” Beth said. “Figured it was a requirement for the job.”
Roy was pacing, still angry at the bad call in St. Louis. “Blind or crooked, is what they are. Doggone all of ’em!”
“God’ll see they get what’s comin’ to ’em,” Beth said. “Or the devil.” At this juncture, God appeared to favor the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“Do I have to tell you?” Roy asked.
“Tell me what?”
“You say we’re outta beer, so go get some more. There’s money in my wallet on the dresser.”
Beth was already on the way. Roy’s anger at the umpires might easily be redirected toward her.
Her blue-soled rubber thongs flapping on her feet, and a ten-dollar bill tucked low in the back pocket of her Levi’s cutoffs, she set off along Pick Road toward Willis’s Quick Pick Market. It was about a quarter of a mile away, near the sometimes busy county road. Though it was dark and shadowy along Pick Road, she could see the combination convenience store and gas station ahead like a bright oasis of light in the night.
Pick Road was paved, but the blacktop had broken up, and Beth couldn’t make out some of the cracks until she’d stubbed a toe or come close to turning an ankle. It was no place to walk with floppy thongs. She moved off the narrow road and made better time on the grassy shoulder, but it was still slow going.
In the dark woods that spread out behind the store, a man stood in the dim moonlight and watched Beth’s progress. He was wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt. A bulky man, he had long dark hair hanging lankly to below his shoulders, and a big belly that overhung his jeans.
As he watched Beth, he shook his head in wonder on his bull neck. What the hell was a piece like that, with those legs and tits, doing out wandering around by herself at night? She could be a hooker who worked the trucks that stopped at the convenience store or to gas up. That was always possible. But she didn’t look like a hooker, didn’t walk like one. Wasn’t even carrying a purse, like almost all hookers did.
No, she didn’t look like a working girl.
What she looked like was what he needed. He took a swig of beer, watching the roll of the woman’s hips, and smiled. Nice…
Then he thought, The hell with it. What the girl looked like was trouble.
But trouble appealed to him. That had been his problem all his life. It was almost as if he had to get himself in trouble to validate the kind of screwup he was. Trouble always tugged at him like a magnet, even though he knew in his heart that trouble was… trouble.
And this leggy creature in the Levi’s shorts certainly represented trouble.
At least she was the kind that could be avoided. If a man wanted to avoid her.
He retreated back into the shadowed woods in case she might glance over and see him.
Wouldn’t want to scare her away.
When Beth reached the store, Willis smiled at her as he always did. He was old enough to be her father, but she’d seen him glance at her in that way now and then, so she was careful around him. She acted like a lady. Didn’t want any kind of negative word getting back to Roy.
“Six-pack do you?” he asked, when she plopped down a carton of cold beer on the counter.
“It’ll do Roy,” she said.
Willis laughed. “Won’t he drink a brand comes in a carton with a handle? That’s six-pack’s gotta be plenty heavy, by the time you walk all the way back to the house.”
“Get real, Willis. Six little beers?”
“Well, you ain’t no Charles Atlas.”
“Who’s that?”
“Before your time,” Willis said. “Unfortunately, not before mine.” He rang up the six-pack of Wild Colt beer and fit it into a paper sack so it would be easier for her to carry.
Beth stuffed the change, including the coins, into a back pocket, then smiled a thanks to Willis and went out the door, carrying the beer tucked
like a football beneath one arm. He could see the outline of the coins against the taut denim that covered her ass.
That religious nut Roy doesn’t know what he’s got, he thought, wishing he were twenty years younger.
Ten, even.
Beth hadn’t gone far when she realized Willis was right-the beer was getting heavy. And Pick Road was just as rough to walk on going back toward the house as it had been going toward Willis’s. And the weedy, rocky ground along the shoulder was just as uneven. Burrs now and then worked between her rubber thongs and the soles of her bare feet, causing her to stop and balance on one leg while she let the thong dangle and shook her foot until the burr dropped out.
But worst of all, because she was making slow time, the beer was getting warm.
Roy didn’t countenance warm beer. In fact, he liked it cold enough that there were tiny flecks of ice in it.
She stopped and looked up at the moon. It was half full and tilted like a luminous boat. There should be enough light for her to take the shortcut through the woods. She might pick up a few scratches from branches, but she could reach the house twice as fast that way.
But what really made her decide to take the shortcut was that despite herself she felt a little afraid of the dark woods, and she resented that fear. She was afraid of Roy, but that was different-he was her husband. And she had to admit that the punishment he meted out was just and not applied very often. There were only so many things in life that Beth would or could allow herself to fear. The woods at night wasn’t one of them.
She was nearing the narrow path leading into the trees, so there would soon be no turning back. That would make less sense than anything she might do.
The phrase entered her mind: Point of no return.
With another reassuring glance up at the moon floating in the cloudless summer sky, she entered the woods.
12
New York, the present
Nora Noon rode the subway to within two blocks of her apartment. All the way on the crowded train, she’d had the feeling she was being observed.