Pulse

by John Lutz

  She apparently liked prostitution, and before she was twenty she was in New York, working for one of the big escort agencies. She was twenty-nine now, and probably rich in her own right, because she’d never been a fool.

  Renz knew she was simply doing her job, keeping the police commissioner—a very important client indeed—off her employer’s back.

  She and Renz had become something like friends one night, not while they were screwing, but while they lay in bed together afterward, talking.

  Renz knew it was all bullshit, pumping him for information. This woman was smart and knew information was power and protection, so she wanted some about him. He didn’t care. He knew what not to tell her while telling her plenty. He realized he would never really possess a woman like Olivia. Not all of her, anyway. No one could.

  They talked more and more often, sharing each other’s secrets. Or so it seemed. Most of what Renz told her were lies, and he wondered if she ever checked to see if any of it was true. She seemed so trusting, but he knew she wasn’t.

  She emerged from the bathroom nude, still rubbing her short blond hair dry with one of the hotel’s huge white towels. The brisk action with the towel made her breasts jiggle.

  “Wanna come back to bed?” Renz asked, wondering if he’d be able to get it up again so soon after the last time.

  “You’re insatiable.”

  “For that I need inspiration,” Renz said, “and that would be you.”

  Olivia smiled.

  Still holding the towel, she walked over to the bed and kissed his forehead. He felt her bare nipple brush his arm.

  “Really,” he said, “why don’t you hang around for a while? We can talk.”

  “I would if I could, baby, but I promised a girlfriend I’d babysit her two kids for her.” She glanced over at the clock on the dresser. “And I’m running late already.”

  Renz nodded and smiled. Oh, you beautiful liar.

  He watched her finish getting dressed, and they kissed good-bye before she left.

  Renz had over an hour before checkout time, so he lay back on the linens that still smelled of sex and rested peacefully, forgetting about the pressure on him from the pols and higher-ups, the sicko Daniel Danielle (Quinn’s problem), the blizzard of paperwork that was his constant annoyance, his plush but lonely penthouse apartment in the Financial District.

  He thought only about Olivia and their relationship. About how they gave each other exactly what they both needed and didn’t ask too many questions, knowing the answers would be lies anyway.

  What could be better than that?

  Renz’s cell phone played a trumpet cavalry charge in his pants pocket. The trouble was, his pants were folded over the back of a chair across the room. He hesitated, then decided the call might be important and reached the phone in three large steps away from the bed, reaching it just before the charge was over. His pants dropped to the floor as he dragged the phone from their left-side pocket. They’d be wrinkled now, which irritated Renz.

  He glanced down and saw that the call was from Q&A. Quinn.

  When the connection was made, Renz said, “We need to make this fast, Quinn. I’m at a meeting.”

  “Sure. Sal and Harold widened their canvass in Vess’s neighborhood and came up with a witness that saw a woman who came around the victim’s apartment.”

  “You mean when the victim wasn’t home?”

  “Could be,” Quinn said. “And her actions were furtive. What I want from you are some uniforms to really cover that neighborhood and see if anyone else has something to add. I’d like to put this woman with Vess, and maybe get a better description.”

  “Whaddya need, six officers?”

  “That would do it,” Quinn said, surprised by Renz’s generosity.

  “Anything else?”

  “No, I’ll let you get back to your meeting.”

  “It’s over now,” Renz said, glancing down at his flaccid self. “But there’ll be another one pretty soon.”

  Hanging up the phone, Quinn thought that was an odd thing for Renz to say. He supposed that as police commissioner, Renz’s life had become one meeting after another.

  Renz had stepped out of the shower and was toweling himself dry when he heard his cell phone again. He’d brought the phone into the bathroom with him and rested it on the edge of the washbasin. The trumpet charge was deafening bouncing off all that tile.

  He reached the phone with a wet hand and squinted at it to see who was calling. Quinn, maybe. Wanting something more.

  But he saw that the caller wasn’t Quinn. It was an aide to the mayor, no doubt calling for a progress report on the Daniel Danielle investigation. Pressure, pressure.

  Renz’s puffy cheeks rounded with his slight smile. He knew how to deflect pressure. And where to deflect it.

  And who would feel it next.

  44

  The knocking on Neeve’s apartment door turned out to be a middle-aged man with the looks and bearing of someone thoroughly beaten down by life. He asked for Herb Moranis.

  Neeve informed him that Moranis had lived on the first floor but moved away last month. He looked crestfallen, thanked her for the information, and walked meekly toward the stairs.

  Neeve stood with her hand still on the knob of the closed door. See, what you were so afraid of? Nervous Neeve.

  Someone had chided her with that long ago in her childhood. She couldn’t remember who.

  Nervous Neeve.

  “I’ve read about your organization in the papers,” Penny said.

  Genna Sinclair, a stern-looking woman of forty-five who looked as if she should be carrying a yardstick and terrorizing students, smiled in a way that caused her chin to jut out and convey a definite menace. “Shadow Guardians is having an effect,” she said. “We make it safer for the individual police officer by phoning in crime as we see it develop. Our central office has direct lines to every precinct house in the city.”

  Keeping her voice low, since they were in the library, Penny said, “But I don’t know exactly what you mean by crime developing.”

  “Say someone is getting bullied on the subway and it looks as if it’s going to develop into a fight or beating. Or a car alarm goes off and you see someone walking away, and the owner of the car hurrying to catch up. Or someone has shoplifted something in a jewelry store and you know the store’s security is going to confront him on the sidewalk, and the security is an old man unarmed. Those kinds of things. You realize they happen more often than you think, once you learn to look for them. And if the police know soon enough about crimes developing—or just committed—they’ll be able to close on the spot sooner and in greater numbers, and be safer.” Genna tapped a button on the dark lapel of her business suit, lettered SOONER IS SAFER.

  “It makes sense,” Penny said.

  “Too many cops get hurt or killed because they arrive on the scene without proper backup following in time. And when they get there one at a time, it emboldens the bad guys. A cop might be the only one who knows what’s going down, find himself alone and outnumbered, and bang.”

  “That’s my recurring nightmare,” Penny said.

  “You contacted us, so you must think our kind of organization is needed.”

  “I saw you interviewed on TV and decided to look at your website.”

  “And?”

  “It seems to make sense.”

  Genna flashed her indomitable chin-out smile. “You should come to one of our meetings, then make up your mind. If you think our police should be safer—”

  “I do,” Penny interrupted. “My husband is a sort of cop.”

  “Sort of?”

  “He’s an ex-homicide detective. Now he’s private, with Quinn and Associates Investigations.”

  Genna nodded. “Q and A.” She seeming impressed.

  “In a way,” Penny said, “it’s more dangerous than regular police work.”

  “Then you should definitely attend one of our meetings. We tend to snuff out viole
nce before it has a chance to begin. Preventing violence is the key.”

  “Where do you meet?”

  “Different places. Sometimes libraries.” She glanced around. Hit Penny with the smile again.

  “We don’t have much space,” Penny said, “but maybe after closing time.”

  “That would work. I’ll let you know when the next meeting’s scheduled.”

  “Fine. Anything I’ll need? I mean, to join?”

  “I know it’s hard to get a license,” Genna said, “but it might be a good idea if you owned a gun.”

  45

  “Meeding is getting impatient,” Jody heard Jack Enders tell someone in his office as she walked past the door.

  The words made Jody slow down, then stop a few feet beyond the closed door.

  She went back and stood near the door and pretended to be shuffling through the papers she’d been taking to the printer, listening and watching. It wouldn’t do for a lowly intern to be caught eavesdropping on one of the partners.

  She could neither see nor hear clearly. The standing figure she assumed was Enders’s visitor was a dark shape on the frosted-glass window in the door. The two voices were muddled and barely understandable.

  Jody stayed very still, trying to tune in. Hearing but not comprehending. Sometimes catching phrases she wanted to hear.

  The voice that definitely wasn’t Enders’s did say clearly, “She has a cat, right?”

  Enders said something about the cat keeping her spirit up. The “her” might well be Mildred Dash.

  “It’s keeping her building up, too,” the other voice said.

  “What if—”

  “Lose something?” Dollie the receptionist asked Jody. She’d approached Jody unheard.

  “I might have.” Jody shuffled through the papers faster, the transcript of a boring deposition in an illegal corporate takeover case. “I need to make a copy of this.” She held out the sheaf of papers. “You do that while I go back to my desk and see if I forgot or dropped one.”

  Dollie wasn’t quite sure if an intern outranked a receptionist, but she couldn’t take a chance. Her expression made obvious what she thought about Jody giving her instructions. That was fine with Jody. Dollie’s irritation was what Dollie would remember most about their encounter in the hall near Enders’s office door.

  Dollie visibly fumed for a few seconds, then snatched the papers from Jody’s hand and strode away in the direction of the copy machine.

  Jody returned to her desk, in what was more a cubicle than an office. From where she sat she had a glimpse of the hall, but when Enders’s visitor left she caught only a brief look at him from the back. He was average height if a little on the short side. Slender but fit. His body contained strength. In the few seconds that she saw him, Jody thought his walk was vaguely familiar. She thought, but couldn’t imagine who the man might be. Someone with Meeding Properties? More likely, someone who couldn’t be traced to Meeding Properties. Or to Enders and Coil.

  Jody noticed Dollie approaching with the copies and originals of the deposition transcript she’d handed her. Dollie kept her expression neutral as she laid the neatly stacked papers on Jody’s desk. “I wasn’t mad at you a few minutes ago,” she said. “It’s just that seeing you like that ...”

  “Like what?”

  “Somebody else kind of sneaked around here like you for some reason.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “She’d have said that, too.”

  “Who we talking about here?”

  “You know ... Macy Collins.”

  Jody felt a tremor run through her body. “You saying Macy—”

  “I’m not saying anything about anyone,” Dollie interrupted, and then turned and left the cubicle.

  Which didn’t prevent Jody from finishing her sentence.

  “—found something that got her killed?”

  At lunch that day, Jody sat in bright sunlight at an outdoor table at a corner restaurant. She picked at her Cobb salad, mulling over the brief snatch of conversation she’d heard wafting from Enders’s office. Something beyond Mildred Dash’s cat had been mentioned—possibly. Jody had heard the muted exchange just before Dollie had approached in the hall.

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d made out the words Waycliffe College.

  She’d overheard those words in an earlier conversation at the firm, but in a hushed manner, and not in any context she understood. There seemed to be some kind of need for secrecy that excluded even a future alumna like her.

  Maybe, she thought, she was making a fool of herself, sneaking about eavesdropping and leafing through files. She could do the simple and obvious thing and ask Jack Enders or Joseph Coil what work the firm was doing for Waycliffe.

  But she had a strong suspicion that would be a mistake. Instead she would keep studying the files that she’d copied from the firm’s computers. Most of it was stultifying legal boilerplate, but now and then a crack of light shone through.

  She did know what she had to do about what she’d overheard today. Jody had something like a photographic mind and remembered Mildred Dash’s phone number from the Meeding Properties file.

  She got her anonymous throwaway cell phone from her purse and pecked out the number. It was no surprise when she got no answer.

  Jody knew the number had to be to a cell phone. There hadn’t been landline phone service to Dash’s apartment for weeks. That was part of the strategy of isolating her.

  Jody called the number again and texted a simple message: if u have a cat don’t let it out.

  When she’d replaced the phone in her purse, she finished her salad and ordered a wedge of chocolate cake.

  Diet and dessert in one meal.

  Fighting fat to a draw.

  But she knew better.

  “Ms. Culver,” Fedderman said to the head librarian, “I’m Larry Fedderman, Penny’s husband.” They’d met before, but being in the vicinity of Ms. Culver seemed to call for a measure of formality.

  “Of course you are. I congratulated you after your wedding,” Ms. Culver said, from behind a formidable stack of books she was sorting. Her round rimless glasses reminded Fedderman of some kind of military equipment allowing her to see into the enemy’s mind.

  “Er, yes,” Fedderman said. “I remember.”

  Ms. Culver managed a smile, but it seemed forced. “Penny seems to have made a good choice.”

  Fedderman was surprised. “In husbands, you mean?”

  “Of course. What did you think I meant? Suits?”

  “No, no,” Fedderman said, wondering if he’d just been insulted as well as complimented with one swipe. “What I wanted to talk to you about was Penny’s mood lately.”

  “Must we stay in the past tense, Larry?”

  “Everyone calls me Feds.”

  “You wish to talk to me about Penny’s moodiness.”

  “Her fear,” Fedderman said.

  “She’s afraid of you?” Ms. Culver seemed to find that less than credible.

  “For me,” Fedderman said. “She fears I’m going to get shot. Or hurt some other way. You know, my job ...”

  “Ah, the policeman’s wife’s dilemma. I believe we might have that one in stock.”

  “I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen it plenty of times in other marriages.”

  “What usually happens?”

  “Divorce.”

  “And the alternative is?”

  “Pen needs to learn to live with her fear,” Fedderman said. “To put it aside. Like all of us do about something.” He wondered what fears Ms. Culver might be putting aside, hiding behind her books.

  Ms. Culver smiled. “You’ve apparently given this some thought, Larry.”

  “Plenty of thought.”

  “And you think everyone must learn to set aside some fear or other?”

  “Sure. That’s life. There’s risk in everything, which means possible fear. We simply have to learn to live with it.”

  “Or
divorce it.”

  “Or accept it. Like you’re going to have to do with e-books.”

  A stiff smile from Ms. Culver. “I’m aware that Penny thinks I’m obsessive about e-books. But they are something to fear.”

  “Something to accept.”

  “Ha! Shelley and Shakespeare for ninety-nine cents!”

  “But you lend them out free here.”

  “We lend books. Not bits and bytes of electronic impulses, or whatever they are.”

  “It’s text,” Fedderman said. “Stuff people read rather than watch like pictures.”

  Ms. Culver stared at him.

  “We have to embrace the future,” Fedderman said. “We’ve got no choice.”

  “I accepted that you married my friend Penny.”

  Fedderman thought that was an odd thing to say.

  Ms. Culver adroitly adjusted her glasses, as if bringing him into sharper focus. It made Fedderman uneasy. “I think what you’re suggesting,” she said, “is that I set an example for Penny. I’ll no longer walk around in fear of e-books, and she’ll take my example and no longer walk around fearing that some night you won’t come home from work.”

  “Something like that,” Fedderman said.

  “Do you think these fears are comparable?”

  Fedderman shrugged. “Fear is fear.”

  “Is love all the same?”

  “More or less.”

  Where was Ms. Culver going with this conversation? It seemed to be getting more and more obscure.

  “And you’re sure you love Penny?” she asked.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

  That creepy stare again. It was unnerving.

  “What?” Fedderman asked.

  “Nothing,” Ms. Culver said. “Just an unfinished thought. You’re right. I’ll try to set an example. We do have to learn to put our fears aside. We have to learn to do that with lots of emotions.”