by John Lutz
Pearl was the one who’d decided to move out.
She’d quit the NYPD shortly after Quinn retired, before she could be fired for insubordination. Fired ten times over. Pearl had moved in with Quinn, who had a more than adequate income, between his pension and interest and dividends from the settlement. It had taken years to get the settlement and full exoneration. It had been worth it.
They’d been happy for a while, then Pearl had gotten restless. She missed the action. Now she lived across town and was a bank guard. Some action there. Stand around and look stern for the depositors. But she seemed content enough. Maybe it was the gun on her hip. Quinn wondered.
He was a great reader of people, but he truly didn’t understand Pearl. Another facet of her charm.
The buzzer over the intercom blasted away like a wasp whirring menacingly nearby.
Pause, then again.
No pause.
Whoever was leaning on the button wouldn’t let up.
Hell with them. Let them get tired and go away.
Quinn drew on his cigar, exhaled, studied the smoke.
The buzzing continued unabated. Must be hard on the thumb.
Who’d be doing this? Trying to aggravate him, if he did happen to be home and not seeing visitors, which was his right. Legal right.
He glanced at his cigar, then propped it in the ashtray on the table alongside the chair and stood up. He was wearing faded jeans, a wrinkled black T-shirt, worn moccasins, needed a shave, and looked more like a motorcycle gang member than an ex-cop. Lean-waisted, broad-shouldered, and ready to rumble.
Whoever was outside leaning on the button didn’t seem to care what he was stirring up. His mistake. Quinn didn’t go to the intercom to answer. Instead he opened his door to the first-floor hall and took a few steps so he could look through the inside glass door and see who was buzzing him.
The man leaning on the button was big but sagging in the middle, with a dark blue suit that didn’t fit well. He was fat through the jowls, balding, had purple bags beneath his eyes, and looked one part unhappy and two parts basset hound.
Deputy Chief Harley Renz.
Quinn strode down the hall to the glass door and opened it.
Renz smiled at him and leaned back away from the buzzer.
In the abrupt silence, Quinn said, “Get in here.”
Renz’s smile didn’t waver as he followed Quinn into the apartment.
Renz looked around, sniffed the air. “You’re still smoking those illegal Cuban cigars.”
“Venezuelan.” Quinn motioned for Renz to sit in a small, decorative chair that no one found comfortable.
“If I had a beer,” Renz said, “I’d tell you a story.”
“Could it be told by phone?”
“You’d miss the inflections and facial expressions, and sometimes I use my hands like puppets.”
Quinn went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He found a very old can of beer near the back of the bottom shelf and opened it for Renz. He didn’t bother with a glass.
Back in the living room, Quinn settled again into his armchair, held but didn’t smoke his cigar, and watched Renz take a pull on the beer and make a face.
“That your breakfast?” Quinn asked.
“Brunch. This beer must be over five years old.”
“Close.”
“You still off the booze?” Renz asked.
“Down to just the occasional drink. I was never an alcoholic.”
“Sure. Well, I can tell by this brew you aren’t chugging it down soon as you buy it. Besides, I know you’re off the sauce in any meaningful way. I checked.”
“Must’ve been disappointed.”
“Yeah. I wanted to be your enabler.” Renz glanced about casually. “Pearl around?”
Another question whose answer you already know.
“Pearl doesn’t live here.”
“Oh. I forgot. Hey, you got another one of those cigars?”
“Only one. I’m gonna save it for later.”
Renz shrugged. “I don’t blame you. What the hell, all the way from Venezuela.” Another pull of beer. No face this time. The stale brew was growing on him. “Reason I asked about Pearl is I thought she might be interested in hearing this, too.”
“I’ll pass it on, but without the hand puppetry.”
Renz looked around. “Not a bad apartment, but it smells like it could use a good cleaning. And it looks like it was decorated by Rudyard Kipling. Needs a woman’s touch.” He pointed toward a framed print near the old fireplace that wasn’t usable. “Ducks flying in formation in front of a sunset. That one never goes out of style.”
“I hope this is a one-beer story,” Quinn said.
“Ah! Your tactful way of suggesting I get to the point.”
“Get to the point.”
Renz leaned closer in the tiny chair that looked as if it might break under his weight. “Dead women are the point. Two of them.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, as if they might be overheard. “Only you and I know about them now, plus a few trusted allies in the NYPD.”
“And the killer.”
“Did I say they were killed?” Renz shrugged. “Well, I’ll let you make up your mind. The first was Janice Queen, here on the West Side. The second Lois Ullman. Both single, attractive, in their thirties, brunettes-what you might call the same type.”
“So you think it was the same killer?”
“Oh, yes. Both women were drowned in their bathtubs, and there were traces of the tape that was used to bind and gag them beforehand. Then they were dismembered with surgical precision, their body parts stacked in the tubs in the same ascending order: torsos, thighs, calves, arms, and heads. The killer ran the showers, using whatever liquid shampoos or other cleaning agents were available on the body parts, until every visible trace of blood disappeared down the drains, leaving only the pale remains of the victims.” Renz leaned back. “I see I have your rapt attention.”
“Rapt,” Quinn admitted, and drew thoughtfully on the cigar, feeling like a character in a Kipling story.
“The killer sent me a brief note, taunting several of our city’s homicide detectives, even included your name. I guess he didn’t know you retired. He assured me there would be more such victims.”
“If anybody in the NYPD knows this,” Quinn said, “it’s sure to explode in the media soon like a hand grenade.”
“We need to be ready for that.”
“We?”
“I’ve decided you are the man,” Renz said. “Serial killers are your specialty. You brought down the Night Prowler, and you can bring down whatever the media decide to call this sick creep.”
“You left out the part about me being retired.”
“I can work it out so you and your team will be doing work for hire. It’ll be the way you like it, with all the resources of the NYPD at your disposal, through me, and all the advantages of working outside the department.”
Quinn knew what Renz meant-the advantages of being able, if necessary, to work outside the law.
“Who’s on my team?” Quinn asked.
“The same people who helped you nail the Night Prowler. Pearl and Fedderman.”
“Pearl’s working as a bank guard. Fedderman’s living down in Florida, learning how to play golf.”
“They’ll say yes to you, Quinn. Just like you’ll say yes to me.” Renz waved an arm toward the window that looked out on the sidewalk. “Ever notice how much that ironwork resembles prison bars?”
“Never.” Quinn looked at Renz through a haze of cigar smoke. “You thought you’d be chief by now.”
“Instead I was demoted, but I’m back up to deputy chief.”
“I heard. Also heard that’s as far as you’re going.”
“I’m like you, Quinn. I don’t quit. I don’t stop climbing. What the hell else is there in life? I think you understand.”
“Sure. We nail this sicko, and you get the credit and promotion. Life’s been breathed back into y
our career.”
“And you save the lives of the killer’s future victims.”
“Don’t go altruistic on me, Harley.”
“Well, okay. Then your answer is yes.”
“Was that a question? I didn’t hear a question.”
“Since we both know the answer, a question isn’t necessary.”
“Have you talked to Pearl or Fedderman?”
Renz smiled. “I thought I’d let you do that. One way or another, you can talk anybody into anything.”
“Not Pearl,” Quinn said.
Renz thought about that and nodded.
“I’ll talk to them,” Quinn said. “But no promises.”
“Good!” Renz was careful to place his beer can on the table where it would leave a ring, then stood up. “I’ll get the murder books to you, then try to find you some office space near the closest precinct house. Something without dust and mold where you won’t feel at home.”
Quinn didn’t get up. Far too busy with his cigar.
At the door, Renz paused. “I’m serious about nailing this asshole, Quinn, or I wouldn’t have put a hellhound like you on his track. We’ve both seen a lot, but mother of God, if you’d seen those two women���”
“Is this where you cross yourself?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, I don’t blame you for being skeptical, keeping in mind your devious nature and coarse cynicism.” Renz bowed his head, closed his eyes, and for a second Quinn thought he actually might cross himself.
“You do compassion really well.”
Renz gave him a sad and sickly smile. “We’re gonna find out how well you do it.”
When Renz was gone, Quinn settled back in his chair to finish his cigar before he phoned Pearl and Fedderman.
He glanced over at the print of ducks flying in a tight V formation against a vivid sunset and decided he still liked it.
The cigar was only half gone when he picked up the phone.
3
“Something’s different,” Pearl said.
“You took a lot of the furniture with you,” Quinn said. “I had to move a few things around.” He was seated in his leather armchair, not smoking a cigar.
Pearl was in the chair she used to sit in all the time, but it was on the other side of the room now. She had on jeans and a jacket this morning, Saturday, when the bank was closed. Her hair was blacker than anything Quinn had ever seen. Raven-colored, he guessed they called it. Not much makeup, if any, but still her dark eyes and lips were in sharp contrast to her pale skin. “You redecorated,” she said.
“More like made do.”
“I smell cigar smoke, Quinn.”
“I have one infrequently.”
“Not good for you.”
You not being here isn’t good for me. “I stay within limits.”
“Not like you.” She sat back and smiled with her large, perfectly aligned, very white teeth. “So what did you want to see me about?”
“Harley Renz came by yesterday and talked to me.”
Her smile disappeared. “He still such an asshole?”
“More than ever. I was thinking he should be our boss again.”
Pearl gave him an odd look, as if he’d just spoken in an unfamiliar language.
“That’s not gonna happen,” she said. “But go ahead, try to talk me into it.”
He told her what Renz had said, watching her closely as he described what the killer had done to his victims. The odd look never completely left her face.
“What if I say I want no part of this?” she asked, when he was finished.
“I forge ahead with Fedderman. He wasn’t cut out for golf in Florida. Last time I talked to him on the phone he said the game was driving him crazy.”
“And you think he’ll throw away his irons and woods and fly up here and join forces with you and Renz to hunt down a serial killer?”
“That’s his real game,” Quinn said, “not bogies and birdies. It’s yours, too. Not standing around Fourth National-”
“Fifth.”
“-with a gun you’ll never fire.”
“And never want to fire. Fedderman will tell you exactly what I’m going to tell you.”
“His wife left him, you know.”
“I know. Last year.”
“He’s lonely.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Pearl looked away from him. “Don’t try that crap with me, Quinn.”
“Well, think about it before you give me a definite answer.”
“Okay. I’ve thought about it. Answer’s no. There’s a time for everything, Quinn, and the time for us to track a killer who slices and dices his victims is way past.”
“You have to feel for those women.”
She let out a long sigh, he thought a bit dramatically. “Feeling. That’s something else I’m past.”
“Pearl-”
“I’m content, Quinn. Screw happiness. Contentment is enough. I get up and get through my days in a pleasant enough way, do my chores, live my life, not pulled this way and that like a���I don’t know what.”
“Like you were with me?”
“Yeah. Like that. I need to be self-sufficient, Quinn. So do you. That’s why we didn’t make it together. Why we shouldn’t work together. I want no part of Renz’s operation.”
“Sounds almost final.”
She smiled and stood up from her chair, then walked over and leaned down so she could kiss his forehead. “What a hard case you are, Quinn.”
“You, too.”
She didn’t deny it.
He watched her walk out the door.
Before calling Fedderman in Florida, Quinn fired up a cigar and sat down at the desk in the spare bedroom that had become his den.
He leaned back and listened to the phone ringing in what was probably an empty condo in Boca something or other, Fedderman being out on the golf course, dazed and chasing a little white ball in the sun.
He was about to hang up when Fedderman picked up.
“Quinn?”
“How’d you know, Feds?”
“Caller ID. There’s a widow I’m trying to avoid.” Fedderman had been alone since his wife left. Their grown kids had moved out several years before. If Quinn remembered right, the girl was working in Philadelphia; her brother was one of those people who never wanted to leave college and was away somewhere on a scholarship working on yet another degree.
Quinn propped his cigar in the square glass ashtray on the desk corner. The ashtray was from the old Biltmore Hotel, maybe a collector’s item. “I thought you’d be out on the golf course.”
“I gave up golf. It was driving me insane. Now I’m deep-sea fishing, but that’s driving me nuts, too. You ever see the shit you pull out of the ocean? Most of it doesn’t even look like fish.”
“Harley Renz came to see me yesterday.”
“He still such an asshole?”
“That’s what Pearl asked. The answer’s yes.”
“How is Pearl? You two still-?”
“We’re not together. She’s still Pearl.”
“Hmm. Who did the leaving?”
“Pearl.”
“Hmm. So what’d Renz want?”
Quinn told him.
“I’m in,” Fedderman said.
Quinn was surprised by how quickly the answer had come. He’d thought Fedderman liked at least some part of retirement and would prefer it to looking at dead bodies and maybe being shot at.
“So when can I expect you?” Quinn asked.
“Soon as I can catch a flight to New York. That’s the thing about condo living, you can turn the key in the lock and leave. Don’t have to worry about the weeds taking over the lawn. I’m looking forward to seeing you and Pearl.”
“Pearl’s not in.”
“You serious?” Fedderman sounded amazed.
“She said she’s happy being a bank guard.”
“Banks don’t need guards. She knows that. Time I get to New York
she’ll have changed her mind.”
“Pearl doesn’t change her mind.”
“She did about you.”
Quinn felt a stab of annoyance. On the other hand, this was what he liked about Fedderman. They’d worked together a long time and were completely honest with each other. Fedderman had a way of driving to the truth and to hell with the cost.
“I’ll call you when I get into town,” Fedderman said. “Meantime, you work on Pearl.”
He hung up before Quinn could reply.
Quinn replaced the receiver in its cradle and picked up his cigar from the ashtray on the desk. It had gone out. He relit it and settled back in his chair, thinking about what Fedderman had said. Thinking about Pearl. He’d worked with her, slept with her, lived with her, knew her.
Pearl doesn’t change her mind.
He watched the smoke rise like a spirit and catch a draft up near the ceiling.
Pearl doesn’t change her mind back.
4
Ida Ingrahm had a date.
Normally she wouldn’t have made one with somebody she’d just met in a bar, but Jeff was different.
No, really different.
Seated at her mirror in her West Side apartment, she smiled at her reflection. Not unattractive, she thought. Full face with dark brown hair worn in bangs that made it look fuller. Not fat, mind you. And the rest of her was slim, except she didn’t have much of a waist. Small breasts, legs okay. Especially with the right shoes.
Why do I have to appraise myself like this?
Ida knew the answer. Once they’d slept with her, men tended not to stick around. And she was way, way over thirty now. On the slide.
Time to panic?
She gave her reflection a brighter smile and decided, not yet. Hope lived. It wasn’t that she wanted to get married. A lasting relationship was her goal. Modest enough, she thought. She saw other people achieve them. Meanwhile, life wasn’t so terrible.
She liked her job as graphic designer for Higher Corporate Image, a company that produced promotional and motivational material for retail chains. It paid on the low side, if you didn’t figure bonuses that were no sure thing, but there was a future. There was no glass ceiling at HCI. She could see her life ten years out, and it was okay, and would be better than okay if she had somebody steady. Somebody who cared about her.