by John Lutz
“So you hit a dead end.”
“Not necessarily. One of the other silencers might have been bought somewhere else and transported to the New York area. Maybe even from another country.”
Quinn didn’t bother to say he’d pointed that out to Renz weeks ago. Enough about the silencer.
“You sure nobody else knows about my hospital stay?” Quinn asked.
“Not in the department, no. And I won’t tell anyone. It’s not that I don’t have a heart myself, but I’m thinking of the greater good. It’s my duty to protect the public, and you’re our best bet to nail this fucking Night Prowler.”
“You were born to command, Harley.”
Renz chuckled. “To serve, you mean.”
“Whatever you’re doing, the condition of my heart’s the last thing you better discuss with the media or anybody else.”
“Not to worry, Quinn. It’s between you, me, and your arteries.”
Quinn broke the connection.
Pearl looked over at him. “What was all that heart talk?”
“Renz knows about my night in the hospital. He’s got a connection there who told him.”
“Is he pulling you off the case?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. He doesn’t know what a heart is, because he doesn’t have one.”
“He’s not going any further with the information,” Quinn said. He gave Pearl a look she hadn’t seen before. One that scared her. “And neither are you.”
Pearl nodded and put the car in drive.
She thought about the expression on Quinn’s face, what was in his eyes. Her breathing was coming a little hard. She’d been on the Job long enough to know people, and men in particular. The genuinely bad guys. The flip side. This Quinn had healed stronger where he’d been broken and was not a man to be messed with. The real and dangerous deal.
Pearl rather liked that about him, but she decided it would be wise to pull in her horns.
Until he loosened up, anyway, with her help. And she could help him because she knew how guys like him thought, and they all thought the same way. Quinn couldn’t throw away the rage because he thought it made him strong.
It was something she’d have to change.
That and some other things.
49
Fedderman joined Quinn and Pearl for lunch at the Diner on Amsterdam. They had a booth that looked out on the street. The sun blasting through the spotted window made the place too warm. It was also noisy and the food wasn’t very good. There were dead flies on the windowsill.
Pearl was afraid to eat the tuna sandwich she’d ordered. Quinn picked at his egg-white omelette. Fedderman voiced doubts about his meat loaf sandwich but devoured it, anyway. Pearl suspected it would make him sick. She said they weren’t coming back here—ever. Neither man disagreed with her.
“So what’d you get out of Janet Hofer?” Quinn asked Fedderman, sipping diet Pepsi through a straw, certain the guy behind the counter had screwed up and given him the real stuff.
“Nice woman, sells jewelry. I bought this from her.” Fedderman lifted his wadded brown suit coat from the seat beside him and held it out to show a bejeweled red, white and blue top hat pinned to the lapel.
“Patriotic,” Pearl said.
“It cost less than you think.”
“You have no idea what I think.”
“Hey! Easy, Pearl.”
“Stick to the job, Feds, so we can get outta this shit hole as soon as possible. I don’t wanna hear about goddamn lapel pins.” She looked at Quinn, who was obviously struggling not to laugh. Pearl frowned.
“She’s right,” Quinn told Fedderman. The wink was in his voice, and it made Pearl even madder, but she said nothing.
Fedderman told them about his interview with Janet Hofer. It didn’t add anything, but it corroborated Abby Koop’s account of the conversation the three women had at lunch. Lisa Ide had been receiving anonymous gifts, including expensive jewelry and her beloved caviar. Lisa Ide had received yellow roses. Lisa Ide was dead, along with her husband.
Since it was no secret, and was going to be in the news if it wasn’t already, Quinn told Fedderman about the shots that had been fired, and how he’d almost caught up with Luther Lunt last night. He didn’t mention the chest pains or the night in the hospital. Neither did Pearl.
“Renz is feeding the information to the media,” Quinn said. “Along with details about clues left behind in the Lisa and Leon murders.”
“That’s gonna pressure Lunt,” Fedderman said in a concerned voice, “and he’s already hunting for you.”
“That’s another way of saying he’s being flushed out into the open.”
“Or that he’s doubled back on his trail like a tiger and is about to ambush the hunter.”
Pearl looked at Fedderman. “I didn’t know you knew anything about hunting.”
“I do about hunting people,” Fedderman said, “and the people I hunt. And our Night Prowler’s about ready to crack. News reports that we’re practically inside his clothes with him are gonna drive him up the wall.”
“Nothing there but the ceiling,” Quinn said.
Fedderman nodded. “That’s my point. No place to go next but out the door, and we’re between him and it. Especially you, Quinn.”
“That’s the idea,” Quinn said, “to bring him and us together.”
“I hear you,” Fedderman said. “And for the first time I think it’s really gonna happen.” He shook his head. “But, at this point, who can predict what this sick freak is gonna do? All that pressure—”
“On everybody involved,” Pearl said. She took a sip of her iceless iced tea and made a face. “Something’s gotta crack someplace soon.”
“Or somebody,” Fedderman said, giving her an appraising look.
Another of those composite drawings, all distressingly black and white. They thought they knew everything about him now, Quinn and his loathsome companions. They did know about the anonymous gifts, what the anchorwoman called my—his—sick obsession. The Night Prowler made a mental note of the woman’s name and the local channel she appeared on, and the red, red of her full lips carefully shaping her black vowels. Maybe someday he’d demonstrate to her about obsessions, make her obsessive about dying because it was better than living another moment under his hand.
He knew what Quinn was doing, trying to increase the pressure on him to crack, like those serial killers in all the films and novels. Didn’t the fools ever stop to think it seldom happened in real life? Almost always it was chance that led to such a killer being caught—unpaid traffic tickets, official black on white, an improbable crossing of paths with an unknown witness, a call to jury duty, a neighbor’s complaint about noise…. Minimize those kinds of risks and the police might chase their blue tails forever.
But he knew it was true that the dark, cold pressure, the unreasonable fear that was being brought to bear, might lead to one of those minimal risks actually working for the law. What might not have been a mistake early in his magnificent run of victims might be a fatal error further down the road of rage and redemption.
And maybe it didn’t have to be a mistake. Yesterday on Columbus Avenue the Night Prowler had encountered an old man he used to play chess with in Central Park. Wilhelm Whitmire had been old when they’d first met, and seemed ancient now. In their conversation he mentioned that the police had talked to him recently about a silencer he’d bought and then thrown away months ago.
The Night Prowler recalled hearing about the silencer when it had been discarded, then secretly digging it out of Whitmire’s trash still piled at the curb. It was the silencer he’d used when he’d shot the Elzners. He was sure it wasn’t traceable, but still the law had talked to Whitmire. They’d gotten that far. They were in the neighborhood.
Quinn again, getting closer, turning the screws.
He suddenly found himself yearning for an end, for green closure.
God! Not closure! How he hated that overused
and abused word! When would people learn that closure was a temporary state? That people never “got on with their lives” except in the sense that they had no choice? Time would pass; they would grow old and overwhelmed and die along with their fears and dreams and become dust.
The Night Prowler wasn’t dust and didn’t intend to become it anytime soon. He knew what he had to do, what time and events demanded.
There were many ways to deal with pressure. He liked his way best.
Claire?
No, the time isn’t right; the fruit isn’t ripe. There’s a critical point in every marriage. A testing point. Time like a blade. Everything in the balance. Both parties know it. On the edge of the knife…
He reached for the folded cloth at his side, then held it expertly to his nose, little finger extended, and breathed in deeply.
White! White to the horizon…the narrow fine line of the horizon cleaving earth from sky, bone from flesh, present from past, one world from another…
The fire in the marrow, the edge of the knife.
50
Ready for the chess game.
Dr. Rita Maxwell was standing behind her desk as usual as David Blank entered her office. It was best to be standing, smiling, and putting the patient at his or her ease, yet still maintaining a position of authority.
“David, it’s good to see you again.”
He smiled back. “Same here, Dr. Maxwell.”
How amiable and cooperative we are this afternoon. “Why don’t you sit down, David, the clock is running.”
He grinned wider. “Isn’t that the truth, Doctor?”
She sat down on the sofa this time, very informal, as he lowered himself into the recliner he liked, tilting the backrest so he was lying almost horizontally. He watched her from that position from the corner of a narrowed eye, almost like someone feigning sleep.
“We’re in the truth business,” she said, keeping it conversational and meaningless for now. She was determined to make appreciable progress this session, to peel back another of the layers concealing the real David Blank. David Blank—who wasn’t in the phone directory, who didn’t appear on any of New York’s public records she could access on her computer. Who are you?
Again he nudged her off balance. “I’d like to apologize for being evasive,” he said, his eyes closed lightly. “I’ve been avoiding the truth, lying to you.”
“I suspected,” she said, keeping the irony from her voice.
“This is difficult for me,” Blank said without changing expression. His eyes were still closed, as if he were napping and talking at the same time.
“Like a confession?” Dr. Maxwell asked. She wondered if he might be playing her, setting her up for an even bigger lie than the ones he’d told earlier. If that were possible.
“Well, maybe…Why would you describe it as that? A confession?”
“To be honest, I interpreted some of what you’ve told me as a manifestation of guilt.”
“What kind of guilt?”
“There is only one kind.”
“Ah, that’s wonderful, Doctor! You know! Guilt is like every color always, a dreadful buzzing gray.”
“That’s very descriptive. Really. I do want to assure you that confession here will be confidential and liberating. And between us only, I promise you.”
“Liberating…” He seemed to taste the word as he said it. “Do you believe that?”
“Oh, yes. It’s why I’m here.”
Dr. Maxwell liked that answer. She glanced at the tiny recorder on the corner of her desk to make sure it was running. Though it was soundless, its red pinpoint of light glowed reassuringly.
“We might start,” Dr. Maxwell said, “with you telling me your real name.”
“Your real name is Rita.”
Deflection. And unabashedly obvious. He wasn’t quite in a mood to relinquish control. “Yes, of course it is.” Keeping her tone neutral.
His eyes remained closed as he spoke. There was no sign that the pupils were moving beneath the thin flesh of his eyelids. “If a person did have something he wanted to confess, Rita…say, that he had to confess, if you know what I mean…”
“I know, David.” Keep talking, keep talking.
“Say, like a serial killer who secretly yearns to be stopped, to be caught; how would a serial killer deal with the sly pressure, the self-destructive danger of his increasing need for confession?”
Whoa! “That’s quite a question.”
“Do you have quite an answer?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Not yet.”
“I do.”
Dr. Maxwell found herself glancing at the closed office door. It wasn’t often that she’d been frightened during her sessions. And she wasn’t ready to admit she was frightened now.
Uneasy, yes…
“What is your answer, David?” She felt a chill as she asked. She was playing his game, she knew, finding herself being led. To where? “What would such a person do?”
“Obviously, he’d find someone other than the police to confess to.”
“To what effect?”
“Why, then the buzzing would stop, the pressure would ease, and he’d be unburdened, liberated, and free to kill and kill and kill.”
My God, it made sense! A horrible kind of sense, but sense.
“Anyone he’d confess to would have to notify the police,” Dr. Maxwell said. “Even a priest. Even a psychoanalyst. Of course, we’re speaking hypothetically,” she added hopefully. Knowing on some level, beneath so many layers of her own, that she’d lost control of what was happening here.
His eyes were open now and he was looking directly at her. His right hand crept beneath his unbuttoned sport coat and emerged holding a long-bladed knife. The blade had obviously been wiped recently, but there was still a smear of what looked like blood on it. Dr. Maxwell’s mind darted to her receptionist in the outer office.
Hannah! If I can somehow alert Hannah!
If he hadn’t…
“Only one of us is speaking hypothetically, Doctor.” His voice was calm, and somehow different. This was the real David Blank, whatever his name, whatever his ancient name, and he terrified her.
“Hannah?”
“She’s in the closet, where no one coming into the office will notice her. The phone’s disconnected, but it doesn’t matter. She won’t be booking any more appointments.”
Dr. Maxwell heard herself swallow, a sound like tiny bones breaking beneath flesh. Words froze in her throat. She didn’t know what she was trying to say, anyway.
David Blank sat up and swiveled his body on the recliner so he was facing her, holding the knife up and out so she could see and appreciate the length of its gleaming blade.
“We have another twenty minutes, Doctor.”
She swallowed again.
He smiled. “All these weeks are about to pay off. You’ve gotten what you wanted. We’ve finally made a real breakthrough. I’d like you to hear my confession.”
Dr. Maxwell knew that this time none of it would be lies.
Her insatiable need to learn, the driving curiosity that had propelled her to a scholarship to one of the toughest, most prestigious universities on the East Coast, then through a near-fatal bout of meningitis, then through medical school and a grueling internship, and all the way here, to a plush office on Park Avenue, somehow found its way through her horror.
“Why don’t we start with your real name?” she managed to croak.
Dying to know.
51
“The part’s good and the money’s good enough,” Jubal said to Claire over his glass of wine at the Café Caracole on West Fifty-seventh.
Claire took a sip of ice water—no alcohol for her while she was pregnant—and nodded agreement. Jubal’s “almost sure thing” as a soldier in Winding Road had fallen through without explanation, as so often happened in their business; hot could become cold in less than a minute.
Now, undeniably, it made sense for him to accept this
role of the helpful and romantic neighbor in As Thy Love Thyself at a theater near Chicago. It was just that right now, especially right now, Claire didn’t like the idea of being alone.
“Who’s going to put on his shoes and run out at midnight to bring me my blueberry muffins?” she asked. During the last few weeks she’d developed a craving for the oversize, shrink-wrapped muffins sold by the deli down the block.
Jubal stared at her, then realized she was joking and laughed, dribbling wine onto his good green tie. He shook his head and dabbed at the wet spot with his napkin, but she knew the tie was probably ruined. Merlot was like grape paint.
“I should have known you were joking,” he said, “but women, all of them, seem to lose a measure of logic during pregnancy.”
“You’re saying we think with our hormones?”
“Pregnant women do. Temporarily. Nothing wrong with that. Mother Nature.”
“Mother Nature makes me want you to stay here in New York, even though I know you’re right. The part’s a real opportunity for you; it suits you.”
“I suit it.”
“Whatever. Our lives can’t be freeze-framed until I deliver, and I’m only into my third month.”
“And it doesn’t even show.”
“No need for bullshit, Jubal. It’s beginning to show too much. I know you should accept this offer. Go to Chicago, do the part, and don’t worry about me—us. I’m still getting by with the help of wardrobe and oughta be able to fake it until the end of your run.”
“Then we can be unemployed together.”
“But with more than enough money to get by, and with bright prospects when we feel like finding day care and going back to work.” Day care. She couldn’t imagine it. Not with her—their baby. But she knew it would come to that someday soon. Other women managed the painful, early parting, the surrender of some of their responsibility for what was so precious to them. She’d be able to handle it when the time came, she was sure. She thought about how that first day must be, the looks, the puckered mouth, the tears, the leaving behind….