by John Lutz
No one was there.
After a few seconds she heard a click, and then the dial tone.
Deena hurried to her small desk in the living room and checked caller ID on her other phone. She pecked out the unfamiliar number and waited.
Her call was answered on the fifth ring with a man’s tentative, “Hello ...”
“Who the hell are you?” Deena asked.
“I don’t think you need to know, lady. Who am I talking to?”
“You know damn well.”
“This is a public phone, dumb-ass. It was ringing so I picked it up. Thought maybe somebody might be in trouble. You in trouble?”
Deena didn’t know what to say.
“Listen, are you in trouble?”
Deena hung up.
Someone was deliberately doing this to her.
Definitely, someone is messing with my mind.
For laughs?
Or something else?
Who do you call about a missing cat that isn’t missing?
No one, she decided. There was no one to call for help. No one who’d believe her, anyway.
... Am I in trouble?
Am I?
27
The Q&A office, 9:15 PM.
Sultry despite the rattling air conditioner mounted in the window with the iron bars, illuminated in yellow light from the glowing desk lamps.
They were talking about murder.
Quinn was behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, his fingers laced behind his head, as he listened to Sal and Harold describe the neighboring super’s sighting of a woman emerging from the boarded-up apartment building where Ann Spellman was later murdered. Then the conversation with Spellman’s neighbor in her building, Audrey Ackenheimer.
Quinn said, “Why do they keep doing it?”
“You mean killing people?” Harold asked.
“No. Why do the neighbors only remember later seeing something that might be useful to us, and then never remember seeing the faces of the possible perpetrators?”
“If they saw the faces, they might remember.”
Quinn stared at Harold. The guy looked like a malnourished accountant, with his slightly stooped figure and oversized graying mustache. Quinn could understand why he got on Sal’s nerves. But he knew Harold was smart, and a tough enough cop. It intrigued Quinn, the way sometimes the most unlikely people were the ones who could reach deep inside and find what they needed in a crisis. Quinn knew that one of those people was Harold Mishkin, however he was wrapped.
“The woman was described as older than Spellman,” Sal said. “But then, Spellman was only twenty-four. Most of the three hundred million people in the country are older than her.”
“Narrows it up,” Harold said.
Quinn couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Any info on whoever might be shadowing Pearl?” Sal asked.
“No. But Pearl’s hardly ever wrong about something like that. If she says she’s got a shadow, there is one.”
“You think she should have two?” Harold asked.
It took Quinn a few seconds to understand what he meant. “I suggested we should take shifts in watching her back. Pearl said definitely not. Doesn’t wanna spread us thin while we’re on the trail of a serial killer.”
“Maybe we should ignore what she wants,” Sal said.
Harold looked at him and swallowed.
“We should,” Quinn said, “except that if we do put a second tail on her, she’ll know. And she’s right: if this is the killer, we wouldn’t want to spook him before she gets some kind of line on him.”
“Still and all ...” Harold said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Quinn said.
“Jody Jason,” Professor Elaine Pratt said, when Chancellor Schueller asked why she’d come to his office.
Schueller remained seated behind his desk, absently using both hands to play with a yellow number-two pencil. Elaine noticed that it had an extremely sharp point.
“You did say she accepted the Enders and Coil internship,” Schueller said.
“She accepted, then took a train into the city for an interview. When she returned we talked, and she was unsure again.”
Schueller was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Do you suppose the murder of Macy Collins is giving her pause? I mean, we couldn’t blame her for that.” The chancellor shivered as if the office had turned cold. “It must have been like being attacked by an animal.”
“I think she feels like most of the students about that,” Elaine Pratt said. “They regard it in the way they would if Macy had been struck by lightning.”
“An apt comparison. It’s a tragedy they’ll have to put behind them.”
“They’re young enough to do that,” Elaine said.
Schueller touched the tip of the pencil as if testing for sharpness. “So our sticking point is simply that Jody is a fickle one.”
“Not usually,” Elaine said. “Coil wasn’t there, and Jack Enders interviewed her. He didn’t make a good impression.”
“I thought Jody was supposed to worry about impressing them.”
“She seems not to see it that way.”
Schueller smiled. “What did he say or do that turned her off?”
“She knows the firm is representing a client who owns three blocks of property in lower Manhattan. Old warehouses and deserted office buildings. Also a couple of rundown apartment buildings. The client wants to finish clearing the property so work can be started on a new complex of office buildings. Jody knows there’s a holdout tenant who refuses to move, preventing them from razing one of the buildings.”
The chancellor frowned, troubled. “She knows about Meeding Properties already?”
“Yes, but not much. That sort of thing is a matter of record and can’t be kept secret within the confines of the firm. Not telling her would arouse her suspicions later on. And the firm has taken extra steps to hide Waycliffe’s involvement.”
“Those eminent domain cases,” Schueller said, “don’t they always end the same way?”
“Not always. This woman claims her lease has a clause that precludes them from making her move in the event of eminent domain.”
“Doesn’t eminent domain by its nature transcend that kind of lease?”
“Her argument is that it doesn’t. It’s a specious legal position, but not so much that she can’t tie up the project for months if not years.”
“So if she’s got a case, they make her an offer.”
“She’s refused all offers. She and her late husband lived in the apartment for twenty years, so it’s an emotional thing with her.”
“Money can also be very emotional,” Schueller said. He began tapping the sharpened pencil on the desk, making a constant slight ticking sound. When he realized what he was doing, he drew his briar pipe from his pocket, tamped down the tobacco in its bowl with a forefinger but, as usual, didn’t light it. “So our young idealist has sided with the old lady.”
“I don’t think the tenant is an old lady,” Elaine said. “That’s the problem. She seems to be an attorney in her forties. Sophisticated and eager for the fray.”
“Still, she’s the underdog.”
“Yes, and that’s what’s bothering Jody. Meeding Properties.” The big development company was an Enders and Coil client. “But she knows only so much. What we expected.”
“Davida against Goliath,” Schueller said. “Starring Jody as Davida.”
“Something like that.” Professor Pratt moved closer to Schueller. “I know Jody. She and Enders and Coil are on the same page we’re on. It’s just that sometimes she doesn’t realize it. I understand our students, young girls especially.”
“If you feel that way, Elaine, I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“Enders and Coil need to feel that way. And so do you.”
“There’s no need to have any doubts about how I feel. I’m aware that Jody is wicked smart. The same youthful idealism that’s causing her to hesitate wi
ll also cause her to review the fact that everyone deserves legal counsel. That’s the beauty of our system. She’ll realize that Enders and Coil clients are true and deserving citizens being targeted simply because they have money.”
“I hope you’re right,” Elaine said.
“They’ll realize what an asset she can be.”
“Jody’s a stubborn one. And there’s something else. She didn’t like the way Jack Enders looked at her.”
Schueller clamped the unlit pipe between his teeth. “He was coming on to her?”
“She thinks he was. Or that he almost surely will.”
“Well, she’ll have to learn how to handle that.” He sucked on the pipe stem. “You know, Elaine, you were the one who recommended Jody to me to parade for Enders and Coil.”
“I don’t regret it,” Elaine said. “Jody’s an idealist, but she’s also smart, practical, and in some ways cynical.”
“Yet you come to my office because now there are doubts.”
“I thought you should be kept up to date,” Elaine said. Schueller removed the pipe from his mouth and smiled. “And up to date I am,” he said.
When Elaine Pratt was gone, he sat for a while and thought about Jody Jason, and whether she could be a fit at Enders and Coil. She was hamstrung so much by idealism. But then, that was the condition of so many bright young people. Sooner or later, they learned. And the sooner the better.
Idealism, he mused, was the bane of his existence.
He swiveled in his chair and looked out the window. Whatever clouds there’d been had fled, and the sky was a soft, unbroken blue.
A perfect day for flying, he thought. When he was in the air, things on the ground seemed so much more patterned and controllable.
More and more, he enjoyed flying.
28
Quinn was going to stay late at Q&A. Pearl left the office by herself.
The evening was pleasantly cool and she was walking to the brownstone. There was leftover pizza in the fridge there, along with diet soda and the makings of a salad. Also, she was sure there was an unopened bottle of blush wine. That could be enough for them tonight, unless Quinn wanted a late supper out.
Pearl had crossed Amsterdam when she noticed the woman again. She didn’t have on the yellow dress this evening. Instead she was in jeans and a blue blouse. Pearl caught a glimpse of springy red hair poking out from beneath a blue baseball cap. Changing her appearance so Pearl wouldn’t recognize her. Pathetic. The way the woman stopped and turned away with feigned casualness to look into a show window where real estate flyers were taped to the glass was so obvious. There was no doubt in Pearl’s mind that the woman was on her tail.
Pearl picked up her pace, which was easy to do because her blood was up. She crossed the street, walked in the opposite direction, went in one door of a store, and out another. The woman stayed with her. She was either an amateur with a gift for being sticky, or she wanted Pearl to know she was back there like a persistent shadow. That last possibility bothered Pearl. It was the kind of game the killer might play, openly stalking his prey, instilling a fear that could eventually grow potent enough to paralyze.
Was Pearl amusing herself by leading her shadow on a merry chase, or was her shadow the one controlling the game?
Either way, Pearl had had about enough of this being-followed business.
Dusk had enveloped the city, but there was still enough light for the woman to see her. Pearl didn’t glance back as she turned down a side street. There was very little traffic there, and only a few people on the street. Half a block down, Pearl slipped into a narrow walkway between two gray stone apartment buildings.
The woman behind her would figure her to pick up speed once around the corner, and if the narrow passageway went through, to dash to the next block and finally shake herself free. The smart thing for the woman to do was to run to the corner and cut to the next block, rather than pursue Pearl into a possible ambush. Or try to get close enough so she could follow her through the passageway.
Pearl stopped a few feet into the passageway and stood still, pressed against a brick wall. Beyond her she could see a chain-link fence and some stacked plastic trash bags. She couldn’t get through to the next block if she had to. Was she the one who’d been outsmarted?
She fished into her small leather strap purse and pulled out her nine-millimeter Glock.
She waited, gun at the ready. You never knew what might come around a corner.
The rapid tapping of what sounded like flapping leather sandals sounded faintly on the pavement, drawing nearer.
Pearl waited.
The footfalls ceased, nearby. She could hear rapid breathing.
Waited silently ...
The woman rounded the corner, said, “Huh!” as Pearl lowered a shoulder and went into her hard, knocking her back against the brick wall. She braced her left forearm against the woman’s throat and pointed the Glock at her head so she could see it. The woman was all high-pitched breaths that were almost shrieks. Impossibly round blue eyes. Her blue baseball cap fell off, a Mets cap. Pearl kicked it away in disdain.
“Turn your ass around,” Pearl said, as she withdrew slightly and spun the woman so she was facing the wall. She made her place her hands high and wide against the wall and then with a series of short, abrupt kicks moved the woman’s feet back and apart so she was braced at an angle against the wall and couldn’t make a sudden move.
“Why are you following me?” Pearl asked.
“I wasn’t.”
“Bullshit!” Pearl grabbed a handful of springy red hair and held it. “You’ve been behind me for blocks, crossing every street I crossed, turning every corner I turned.”
“You say.”
“Damned right I say. You were wearing a yellow dress yesterday.”
“Wasn’t.” Angry now, like a petulant teenager.
“ Was.”
“I don’t own a yellow dress.” The woman started to push herself away from the wall to get more comfortable. Pearl tightened her grip on her hair and shoved her back into position, hard. “Knock off that stuff!” the woman said. “I’ll report you.”
“You’ll report me? I’m going to place you under arrest for harassing a police officer.”
“I want to talk to my mother.”
“You get one phone call.”
“What’s your number?”
29
“Bullshit!” Pearl said.
“You keep saying that,” the woman told her.
Pearl no longer had the young woman with the springy red hair up against the wall and was pacing, fast, three steps each way, breathing hard and glaring at the woman. She wished her heart would stop hammering.
The woman bent down and retrieved her Mets cap that Pearl had knocked off her head and then kicked. She dusted it off on her thigh, then put it on perfectly straight and tucked strands of unruly hair beneath it.
“Cody’s girl,” the woman said calmly, staring straight at Pearl from beneath the cap’s curved brim.
The past came rushing at Pearl and hit her like a wall. She’d been twenty, pregnant, and in love with Cody Clarke, who studied music at NYU and supported himself playing saxophone in night spots around the city.
Cody Clarke. The first one. Jesus!
Pearl’s mother had warned her not to try living on her own in New York. Warned her about this very thing. How could Pearl have gone home to New Jersey and told her what happened? That she’d made the biggest, most blundering mistake possible?
Pearl could see Cody now in the clarity of time, sitting in his underwear on the mattress laid out on the floor, the covers bunched around him, his wild red hair a jumble of curls. The roach-infested apartment’s ancient radiator was hissing and spitting. Why am I remembering that?
“We can’t get married, babe,” he’d told her.
“That wasn’t in my mind,” she’d lied. She went to him, sat down next to him on the mattress, and they hugged each other.
“You’re
sure?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me that. Of course I’m sure.”
“You been—”
“To a doctor? Yeah. He confirmed it.”
“I know another doctor,” Cody said.
“Don’t even think about that.”
“Okay, I won’t.” Breezy Cody. “I gotta leave next week for California. The tour with the guys.” The guys were Happy, Joey, and Tex. Happy played the drums, Tex the bass guitar. Joey played about everything. They were all mediocre musicians except for Cody, who could play saxophone like a wild man. Cody was the glue and the draw. He had to go to California.
“So go,” Pearl said. “Don’t let me interfere with your plans. You’re not gonna interfere with mine.”
He looked at her almost as if he loved her. “What are your plans, babe?”
“Adoption.”
He squeezed her. “That could be hard on you. I know a girl who ...”
“What?”
“Never mind. Are you gonna tell your mom about this?”
“I won’t have to. She’ll know. But we’ll never talk about it. She doesn’t want to disown me.”
“God, Pearl!”
“I’m gonna have the baby, Cody. Don’t try talking me out of it.”
“I wouldn’t do that. It’s your choice.”
“You don’t have to worry.”
“About what?”
“Child support, whatever. I’m gonna put it up for adoption. Not even gonna look at it.”
“You might change your mind about that,” Cody had said.
But she didn’t. The next week she saw him and the guys off to California in the beat-to-hell Volkswagen bus they’d found somewhere. Somebody had painted yellow stars all over the thing. She could see it now. And hear it. And feel the tug of the parting. Cody ...
“Pearl?” The woman’s voice. Her daughter’s. The bittersweet past was gone.
“Yeah?”
“You do believe me, don’t you?”
I believe you. I dreamed about you. I searched for you during the first few years of your life. When I look at you, every part of me believes you.