by John Lutz
“I don’t know. What’s Balamore say?”
“He says they don’t. They don’t have an average IQ between the three of them. But in this day and age, with Law & Order reruns playing around the clock on TV, how can anybody not know to lawyer up?”
Quinn simply shook his head.
“Law and order,” Renz said. “As if they go together.”
But Quinn did sense a cosmic mechanism beginning to shift at the core of events. An old cop’s instinct feeling imbalance and movement without yet quite knowing what it all meant, where the momentum would take them.
It was often that way before the dominoes started to fall.
Stone worked late in his office. Not that he actually had work to do. He thought that probably the stress was getting to him. Or was it that he actually felt more at home here, in his place of business?
More and more lately, his office seemed a sanctuary from the encroaching menace of Quinn and his detectives. He’d never met Quinn, but he’d met other Quinns, men who simply wouldn’t quit, who in another era would have been hunters of the most dangerous game. Who were, in fact, in this era hunters of the most dangerous game. But Palmer Stone didn’t feel dangerous. He was no predator. He felt more like prey being run to ground.
Never for a second had Quinn believed Coulter was the Torso Murderer.
Stone sat behind his desk and passed his fingertips over the fine mahogany finish. Wood, the warmth and solidity of it, was reassuring. Here behind his desk he used to feel as if he could solve any problem, surmount any obstacle. It was different now. Quinn had made it different.
He used the remote to switch on his flat-panel TV mounted on the opposite wall. It was tuned to the financial channel. He switched it to the news.
There was the now familiar mug shot of Cathy Lee Aiken.
The TV went to split screen and in contrast to the disheveled and frantic-looking Cathy Lee was the same impeccably groomed blond anchorwoman who had first broken the news to Stone about the confederate of Coulter’s killers being apprehended.
“Authorities say Cathy Lee Aiken is talking,” the anchorwoman proclaimed, as Stone turned up the volume. “And talking and talking and talking. Her two partners in crime, allegedly, are also said to be cooperating with police. More and more doubt is accumulating about the late Tom Coulter actually being the man who committed the Torso Murders.” The camera zoomed in on perfect pale features grown suddenly appalled. “Which means, of course—”
Stone pressed the red button on the remote and watched the beautiful bearer of bad news fade with her voice into nothingness.
Right now, nothingness seemed like a welcome state of being.
Palmer Stone was alone again in his office. Alone with his thoughts and not liking them.
The police, Quinn and his minions, were relentlessly tightening the noose. Despite the daily security sweep Stone conducted in his office, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t bugged. Technology these days quickly overwhelmed technology, like a beast that kept devouring itself.
Technology, the science that made E-Bliss.org possible, had turned against Stone.
Victor was on his assignment to delete Jill Clark. But despite Stone’s reassurances to Victor, Stone knew the Clark woman’s cloying best friend, Jewel, might pose a problem.
The new Madeline Scott, Maria Sanchez, was like a hand grenade waiting to explode. Should she also be deleted? She was a special case, a grave danger. But E-Bliss.org had never, ever, deleted a special client. It was a violation of Stone’s business ethics.
Then there was Victor. Another worry. Victor, who seemed to be sinking into some kind of degeneracy and sadism. His collection of literature on Vlad the Impaler, his apparent state of nervousness that always lay just beneath the surface. It was all very disturbing. And Gloria was no longer around to control Victor. For all Stone knew, Gloria might never come out of her coma.
And if she did regain consciousness, would she have all her mental faculties? Would she know what not to say if authorities questioned her?
The business, Stone’s precious business, was unraveling like the people who were at its heart.
It was all so hopeless, so out of control. Stone did feel like a cornered prey animal docilely waiting for the predator’s jaws to close.
He buried his face in his hands, his fingers slowly becoming claws leaving red indentations on his forehead and around his eyes.
He began to sob.
When finally he stopped and was calm again, his expression was blank. He had obviously made up his mind about something.
He opened a bottom desk drawer and reached inside.
72
Quinn was having dinner with Linda at a Vietnamese restaurant in her neighborhood when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
Linda, about to take a sip of her tea, paused and watched him pull out the phone, flip it open, and press it to his ear. He’d only glanced at the caller ID.
“Go,” he said, then listened.
They were near the door to the kitchen, and pungent spices were thick in the warm air. The buzz of conversation around them was no concern; they’d automatically asked for an isolated table, knowing Quinn might receive a call.
After about thirty seconds, he said, “Make sure that’s where he’s going; then wait outside her building. Be sure and let me know if anything else develops.”
Quinn broke the connection and immediately used his forefinger to peck another number into the phone. He glanced meaningfully at Linda. She nodded her understanding of his polite apology for the interruption of their evening. No words needed between them. Getting familiar.
“Was that Pearl?” she asked while Quinn waited for his call to be answered.
“Weaver,” he said.
“Who are you calling now?”
“Fedderman.”
Fedderman apparently answered. Linda could see Quinn’s attention turn away from her a moment before he spoke.
“Feds, Weaver just called. I’ve had her watching E-Bliss’s offices. She said she tailed Victor Lamping from there to his apartment, and he left about an hour later to go shopping. He bought a broom.”
Linda stiffened as she looked at Quinn.
Quinn met her eyes and quickly looked away. “Right,” he said. “Then he returned home. A while later he went out again in his car. Weaver thinks he might be headed for Jill Clark’s apartment. Yeah. I’m across town. ’Kay. See you there.”
He snapped the phone closed and slid it back into his pocket, then gazed beseechingly at Linda. She thought he looked like a small boy eager to go out and play rather than finish dinner. Kick the can. Hide-and-seek.
Is that all we are, people playing a grown-up game? A serious game, lives at stake, but a game nonetheless?
Of course it’s a game. And someone has to play it. If that person thrives on it, all the better for the rest of us.
Quinn thrived on it. He was a hunter, a predator. If she doubted it before, she didn’t now, looking into his intense green stare. Now it seemed not so much like the eager stare of a beseeching child. It was the eye of a tiger. She’d always laughed at the expression. She understood now what it meant, and she almost felt sorry for Victor Lamping.
Then she remembered Quinn’s words: He bought a broom.
She knew that no matter what she said, Quinn was leaving her to play the game.
“I’ll stay here and finish my dinner,” she said, “and you can call me when you get a chance.”
“Linda—”
“Go,” she said. “It’s your job.”
It’s your life.
He stood up, leaned across the table, and kissed her cheek. Then he laid some bills next to her plate and hurried toward the door.
He’d left his car parked in a garage, and they’d walked to the restaurant from her apartment. She watched him through the length of the restaurant and out the glass door, watched as he hailed a cab. Watched the cab drive away.
Watching through glass.
&
nbsp; This is what it’s like to be a cop’s wife.
She finally took that sip of tea.
After ten minutes in the cab, Quinn’s cell phone vibrated again. He picked up.
Weaver’s voice. “Damn it, I lost him, Quinn.”
Quinn was surprised. It wasn’t like Weaver to lose someone she was tailing. “Where and how?”
“In heavy traffic near Times Square. He’s driving that big black Chrysler sedan. We were in the theater district, and it was almost curtain time. Big black cars were all over the damned place. I just a minute ago realized I got mixed up and started following the wrong one.”
“You sure of that?”
“Oh, yeah. The car I was following pulled up to valet parking in front of a restaurant. Two women and a guy who looked to be about a hundred got out and went inside.”
“Where are you now?”
“Way uptown on Broadway. Long way from Jill Clark’s apartment. If that’s where Lamping was going.”
“It’s where he was going. He’s on his way there. I feel it.”
“So do I,” Weaver said honestly. “And with that goddamned broomstick.”
“And a twenty-two pistol.”
“What about Pearl? Is she guarding Jill?”
“She’s there.”
“So should Victor be, about now,” Weaver said in a sad and frustrated voice. She would beat herself up over this for months. If it turned out the way it might, maybe all her remaining years.
The cab slowed, then stopped in heavy traffic. Horns began to blare. Their varied, urgent tones echoed in discord among the tall buildings. Everyone in the city of dreams and doom was frustrated. Quinn leaned to the side and squinted out the window up at a street sign near the corner. He still had blocks to go. “I’ll never get there in time.”
“What about Fedderman?”
“He was home when I called. He won’t make it, either.”
“Better call Pearl,” Weaver said. “Or get a radio car over to Jill’s apartment.”
But Quinn had already closed the phone lid, ending the conversation.
Traffic moved and the cab broke loose and picked up speed. Slowed, stopped, crept forward.
Quinn sat staring at the phone. If he called and had a radio car sent to Jill’s apartment, the siren or the sight of uniformed police might well scare Victor away.
If he called Pearl rather than the police dispatcher, Victor would walk into a trap. Wasn’t that why they were using Jill? For bait?
And there was always the slight chance that Quinn might reach Jill’s apartment in time to apprehend Victor before he had the opportunity to use his weapons of choice. If he had a sharpened broomstick with him, and the gun that had fired bullets into the hearts of the Torso Murder victims, Victor would be nailed solid and as good as convicted.
A slight chance.
Quinn leaned forward and tapped on the Plexiglas divider across the back of the front seat. When the cabbie turned, Quinn held his shield up so the man would see it.
“Drive faster,” Quinn said loud enough to be heard on the other side of the Plexiglas. “Put a wheel up on the curb if you have to, but just get there.”
The driver did exactly as Quinn instructed, bumping his cab’s left-side tires over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Quinn slid sideways in the seat.
They passed half a dozen stopped cars that way. Then, at the intersection, they were stalled in gridlock.
The driver looked back over his shoulder and gave an exaggerated shrug.
The cab sat motionless.
Quinn held the phone in the glow from a streetlight and pecked out Pearl’s cell phone number.
Fedderman thought he had a chance to get to Jill Clark’s apartment in time. He had the unmarked and was using the flashing lights behind the grill. Vehicles in New York seldom got out of the way as they should have when their drivers saw flashing lights, maybe because they had no place to go. Fedderman would give them a short, deafening blast of siren, and they’d find a way to let him pass. He was doing okay.
Near Fifth Avenue, brake lights suddenly flared on the delivery van he’d been tailgating.
Both vehicles had been building speed and were doing around thirty. As Fedderman stood on the brake pedal and yanked hard on the steering wheel, the unmarked’s right front fender clipped the van. The steering wheel came alive and spun in Fedderman’s hands.
He managed to gain control and avoid hitting a man walking a dog. While his attention was diverted, the car’s right front tire caught on a curbstone sticking a few inches into the street. A hubcap went spinning out in front and crossed the street in a graceful glittering arc, causing a lot of rubber screeching and horn blaring. Then both the unmarked’s right-side tires shredded their sidewalls along the edge of the curb.
“Shit!” Fedderman said just before the car jolted over a storm drain and his head bounced hard off the side window.
The car shuddered and bucked before coming to a stop near a NO PARKING HERE TO CORNER sign.
Fedderman sat dazed for a while.
When he came around he saw concerned and curious faces peering in at him through the car windows, saw beyond them people running toward where he sat in the crippled vehicle.
He thought he’d better call Quinn, then abandon the unmarked and commandeer a cab.
It was after business hours. The midtown building where E-Bliss.org had its offices was almost completely unoccupied. The windows facing the street were dark.
All but one, where a faint light filtered through closed drapes.
The inside of the building was quiet. Peaceful. The nighttime janitor service wouldn’t show up for hours. The corridors were silent and empty, their waxed floors flat and gleaming dully like perfectly still waters.
There was no one around to hear the sharp, single shot.
It might as well have been a domino falling.
73
Victor had figured out a way to follow Palmer Stone’s instructions, and make Jill Clark’s death look like an accident. Gloria, the expert on accidental death, would be proud.
He parked the Chrysler a block down from Jill Clark’s building and walked back. He was wearing khaki pants and a blue pullover shirt, well-worn jogging shoes. On his head was a Mets cap, not cocked at an angle like a younger man might wear it, but square on his head like someone trying to be unrecognizable on security tape would. People passing on the sidewalk didn’t give him a second glance. If asked later to pick him out of a lineup, they’d have a problem. He didn’t want to make a memorable impression tonight except on Jill Clark, and she’d remember him for the rest of her life.
In his right hand was a navy blue duffel bag with a Nike swoosh and a web handle. Mr. Average, possibly returning home from a workout at the gym. The bag contained two rolls of duct tape, pruning shears, dental floss, and a package of single-edged razor blades. Protruding from its almost zipped opening was the blunt end of a wooden broomstick, redolent of the way tennis racket handles jutted out of club bags. The other end of the yard-long length of broomstick, inside the bag, was carved and sanded to a point. Not too sharp a point; Victor had learned not to create immediate extensive internal bleeding, so his subject’s agony would be prolonged.
As he strolled, he smiled. Jill would cooperate rather than die right away. Everyone scratched every way they could for those last precious seconds of life, for something as opposed to nothing.
Nothing was forever.
Jill would write her good-bye note within the first ten minutes, and then the real fun would begin. Victor had to concentrate on Gloria and her tragic state in order not to have an erection and attract attention.
After he was finished with Jill, Victor would pour cleaning solvent over her, which he knew was stored beneath her sink. Then he’d extinguish the pilot light on her old gas stove and turn on all the burners.
Before leaving, he’d set Jill, and then the draperies, on fire.
Within minutes of his exiting the building, the blaze
should be steady and strong. The gas would continue to seep until it, too, was ignited. By the time the fire department arrived, the apartment would be an inferno.
He’d take the broomstick with him. With a fire, you never could tell what might not burn completely—and where the broomstick would be, it might not burn at all.
Victor didn’t have a full erection, but he was tumescent as he entered Jill’s building. He hoped that if anyone did happen to see him, they wouldn’t notice.
Gloria!…
Pearl’s cell phone in her purse played the first four notes of the old theme from Dragnet. Although it was muted, she still heard it and removed the phone, saw that it was Quinn calling.
“Everything okay there, Pearl?” he asked.
“Just another night in paradise,” Pearl said. “I’m in the bedroom trying not to be a pest.”
“And Jill?” There was an unexpected concern in Quinn’s voice.
“She’s in the living room watching TV. Some sitcom rerun about a bunch of neurotic misfits living in an apartment in New York.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’ve seen the episode four times and don’t want to see it again.”
“Victor Lamping is on his way over there,” Quinn said.
“He’s probably coming as Tony Lake. Nothing new there. He’ll be tickled to see me.”
“He was seen buying a wood-handled broom earlier today,” Quinn said.
“Oh…. Who’s on him?”
“Weaver was. She lost him. Listen, Pearl. Feds and I might not be able to get there in time to help you.”
“Weaver lost him?”
“Don’t be catty, Pearl.”
“Could be he’s just coming over to try again to bed Jill. Poor bastard’s balls have probably turned blue from trying and failing.”
“A broom, Pearl. He’s not going to be Tony Lake tonight.”
“Maybe he just needed a broom. To sweep.”
“Pearl…”
“I can handle things here, Quinn. You know I can.” Not like that screwup Weaver.