by John Lutz
“Thanks so much,” the widow told him, glancing up with reddened and grateful cat’s eyes.
“Something like what happened to your husband,” Fedderman said, “reminds us that we’re all in this together.” There was a catch in his voice.
Pearl observed all this and felt a stab of pride. These guys are good. And I’m part of the team. Just then, the idea of standing around in her gray uniform, hour after hour, in a walnut and marbled quiet bank lobby wasn’t so appealing.
“He didn’t seem exactly afraid,” June muttered into the Kleenex between sniffles.
“Pardon me, dear?” Quinn sounded casual, even distracted, as if he might have misheard a remark about the weather.
“Not what I’d describe as afraid,” June said, more clearly.
Quinn nodded his understanding. “But he must have felt something at least somewhat out of the ordinary. At least sometimes, or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But—”
“What, then?” he asked gently.
“I don’t know…” She sobbed some more, dabbed at her nose and eyes some more.
“Did he seem uneasy?” Quinn asked.
“No, not exactly.”
“Anxious?” Fedderman suggested. “Did your husband seem anxious?”
The widow looked at him. “Well, yes…I suppose you could describe it that way. But ‘uneasy’ is more like it. Sometimes on a case he used to get like that.”
There was something here. They could all sense it. Sitting there in Joe Galin’s Barcalounger, Pearl was wondering how a guy like Galin would act if he were involved with another woman, having a hot affair. He might act suspiciously around his wife, even a guy his age, with his experience and the elbows and who knew what else he’d rubbed over the years. Retired narc in love. And secretly loving the danger. Missing the danger.
“Anxious how?” Fedderman asked.
“I didn’t say—“
“Elated?” Pearl asked.
The widow’s head snapped around. She’d known what Pearl was thinking, and had to admit she might be right.
“Elated,” she said in a hoarse whisper. She’d almost strangled on the word. Then she made a face as if she didn’t like its taste and was considering spitting it out. Instead, she swallowed.
Quinn moved closer and gently patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. You’re with friends.”
She gazed up at him with moist, surgically widened eyes. “If Joe was elated, it was about something he didn’t share with me.”
Pearl stared at her, feeling a strange pang of pity.
It isn’t okay yet to hate your husband. Not with him so recently passed from this world of the living and still a resident of the morgue. It isn’t allowed.
“Nervous,” June said. She’d found a word, a concept, she could handle. “Yes, I suppose that’s the best way to put it. The last week or so before his…his death, Joe seemed nervous. Not afraid, but nervous.”
“Anxious,” Fedderman said again.
She looked at him, defeated. “Anxious,” she conceded.
Feds had worn her down.
Pearl showed a thin smile when the widow wasn’t looking.
Elated.
Interesting.
12
Jerry Dunn remembered a time in London when he’d sat in his hotel room awaiting the arrival of a prostitute. It had felt something like this.
It wasn’t morning then, as it was now. And he’d been sitting on the bed then, not in a chair as now. The chair was armless and uncomfortable, before a low wooden desk on which was a phone and a gold-embossed leather folder stuffed with flyers explaining the amenities at the Mayerling Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The Mayerling was almost plush enough to be called luxurious, with a vast blue-carpeted lobby and marbled steps leading to a long registration desk. Arranged about the lobby were half a dozen conversation groupings of high-quality cracked leather chairs and heavily grained wooden tables. The main elevators were almost invisible in a decorative wall of polished oak and veined marble. Beyond an array of potted plants was a discreet entrance to a lounge. Jerry had noted that the lounge also had a street door, so that you could enter or leave it without passing through the lobby. That was an important fact that Jerry logged in his memory.
Jerry had a good memory. A good mind. And he was damned good at writing advertising copy. He knew he looked like an average kind of guy—mid-forties, dark hair just beginning to thin, pleasant features, nice smile. Always up, was Jerry, at least on the outside. If they were casting him for movies he’d never be the leading man. He’d get the roles Tony Randall used to get, or Gig Young. Clean-cut, handsome guys, but not quite leading men. That was how Jerry figured people saw him, not quite ready for stardom, ever.
He glanced at his gold Rolex watch. It was an imitation Rolex with a quartz movement inside a gold-plated case. It didn’t cost as much as a real Rolex, of course, but unless you examined it carefully it could pass for the real thing.
The real thing.
Is that was this is about? What I have to find out? Am I the real thing?
It was amazing. The heightening anticipation was almost the same as with the London prostitute. Heather had been her name. The name she’d used, anyway. She’d looked something like Sami, Jerry’s wife. That had put Jerry off at first, but only at first.
He gazed out at the morning sunlight blasting through between the tall buildings across the street and making his eyes ache. It was still early. Sami would be back from driving the kids to school. Or maybe not. She might have stopped off somewhere, to pick up some groceries, or maybe to have a coffee at Starbucks with her friend Joan. Sami of suburbia.
Jerry made a soft, snorting sound. He shouldn’t feel that way, he knew. He should like their life out in the burbs. He did like it. And where else were you going to raise kids? Not in this shitpot city. The things that happened here…
He laughed nervously. You should talk.
The room was cool enough, but he realized he was perspiring.
Damn that sun! They oughta tint those windows.
He stood up, walked over, and closed the heavy drapes just enough to block the direct light. Then he sat down again at the desk and thought about Sami, putting her in Starbucks, seated at a table sipping a mocha latte, a medium one, or whatever Starbucks was calling medium these days. Maybe leisurely leafing through a newspaper, browsing for sales.
She thought he was at an advertising convention in Los Angeles. The convenient thing was that there actually was an advertising convention in that city at the time of Jerry’s stay in New York, and his firm of Fleishman and Gilliam was represented. Mathers was there. The Beave would cover for him if Sami did happen to phone L.A. The Beave would tell Sami her husband was on a side trip with some reps, or off to some other place where he couldn’t be reached. Sure, he’d tell Jerry to call her when he saw him. Might not be right away, though, since the convention hotel was overbooked and Jerry was at another hotel a few blocks away.
Jerry smiled. The Beave would think of something, and would know how to elaborate on his lie so it would be believable. Most of the other people from the firm would do the same. The guys, anyway. They were used to covering for ol’ Jer’. They’d figure he was off on another of his sexual escapades and provide a good story for Sami, stay in tight with him. They knew Jerry might be called upon to do the same for them someday. Those advertising conventions were fuck-fests. Some of them, anyway.
He looked again at his watch. It was almost time to leave the hotel.
He began to tremble.
Since he still had a few minutes, he went into the bathroom and emptied his bladder. He should have known better than to drink so much morning coffee.
He zipped up and then washed his hands, looking at his image in the mirror as he dried them. He forced himself to smile and said aloud to his image a line from a song in one of his favorite musicals.
“I believe in you.�
��
His image tilted up its chin and smiled back.
I believe in you.
When he left the room, the trembling began again.
13
Pedestrian traffic was heavy and moving fast. Everyone on Manhattan Island seemed to walk fast. It amused Pearl sometimes to think that if everyone just kept walking fast the direction they were going, it wouldn’t take long for all of them to reach the water. Then what would they do? Simply keep going like lemmings and all drown? Or mill about until the mood grew ugly and violence would ensue? The smokers would die first.
Pearl was irritated. Fedderman was supposed to have picked her up this morning in an unmarked and driven her to Quinn’s apartment, where the three of them were to discuss developments and plan the day.
But Fedderman hadn’t shown. Most likely he’d overslept, having drunk himself to sleep last night. Not that Pearl knew or had heard anything about Fedderman being in the bottle, but why wouldn’t he be? Pearl figured that in his place she’d probably become an alky herself, living a solitary life in some ten-by-ten condo in Florida, going outside now and then so the sun could bake your brain.
Different strokes…
She wished she could stroke Fedderman with a baseball bat.
Pearl had taken the subway uptown, and was now walking the remaining few blocks to Quinn’s apartment. It was a hot morning. The sun seemed to burn with an extra fierceness and cast long, stark shadows that emphasized angles. Traffic gleamed like multicolored gems strung along streets. Bagged trash was still piled curbside. Some of the plastic bags had burst or been cut open to get to the contents. New York could smell sweet and rotten on a morning like this.
She was standing with half a dozen other people waiting for a traffic light to change, everyone starting to perspire like her in the building morning heat, when her cell phone played its four solemn notes from the old Dragnet TV show. She fished it from her pocket and answered it a second before checking caller ID to see who was on the other end of the connection.
She was a second too late. She’d expected Quinn, wondering where she was and what was keeping her. Instead she saw letters spelling out Sunset Assisted Living. Pearl’s mother was calling from her modest but specially equipped apartment.
“Milton Kahn says you have something on your neck,” her mother said, without preamble. “Just behind your ear.”
Pearl wasn’t surprised. It was the way her mother often began phone conversations.
“I’ve got Milton Kahn on my back,” Pearl said, about the former lover she was trying to shed.
“He cares deeply about you, dear.”
“Mom, we tried. We’re simply not compatible. It wasn’t a take. Kaput! It’s over.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Pearl?”
“That I’m at work and don’t have time to talk.”
“Even about your future, God willing that you have one.”
Huh? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The thing on your neck, Pearl—Milton Kahn says it might be serious, and he of all people should know, the necks he looks at. Not that it’s critical now, but such things should be kept in check, dear, through regular visits to your doctor.”
“In this case my doctor would be Milton,” Pearl said. She knew the game. Milton Kahn was a dermatologist. He and Pearl had been the object of a matchmaking maneuver involving Milton’s aunt, also a resident of Sunset Assisted Living, and Pearl’s mother.
“Milton and I had a fling,” Pearl said, “that’s all. It can never be anything more.”
“Fling, schming,” her mother said.
“Almost all schming,” Pearl said, not even knowing what she meant.
Actually Pearl had enjoyed their brief, exploratory affair, but Milton Kahn could never be the steady lover of a cop, much less the husband that his aunt and Pearl’s mother envisioned. Pearl had broken off the affair. Milton didn’t want it to stay broken. Now he was apparently plotting to get Pearl concerned about what appeared to be a simple brown mole on her neck, just behind her right ear. The last time they’d seen each other, at a mutual friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, he’d brought the mole to her attention, feigning what she now knew to be great concern. The tiny mole had been there—well, she didn’t know how long. How often does anyone look behind his or her right ear? Knowing her medical insurance was scant, Milton was hoping to lure her to his office and place her under his care, then under him.
Pearl smiled as the light changed and she stepped down off the curb to follow the herd across the intersection. Dr. Milton Kahn only thought he was devious.
“Pearl?”
“I’m here, Mom. The mole on my neck hasn’t killed me yet.”
“Of these things you shouldn’t joke, Pearl. Mrs. Edna Langstrom—I don’t think you ever met her—didn’t have the chance, poor thing. She was a resident here in the nursing home—“
“Assisted living,” Pearl reminded her.
“Assisted hell, is what. But she was a resident like me, and she had this reddish rash on her neck, not far from where Milton says your mole is, and she tried to alert the medical staff here, but naturally they were too busy to pay attention—or so they claimed, though I often see them in their lounge drinking coffee—and the rash became larger and started to itch, and before dinner one night—pot roast night, your favorite—she fell over dead.”
“From the rash?”
“From a car backing up the driveway to let out Mrs. Lois Grahamson, another resident. The car was driven by her grandson Evan, poor man.”
“A car killed Mrs. Langstrom?”
“While she was distracted scratching her rash.”
“The point being?”
“That you should be careful, Pearl. Take precautions, such as seeing your doctor.”
“My doctor being Milton Kahn.”
“He’s a dermatologist, Pearl. You could do worse if you had a rash. You could do worse in many other respects.”
“I don’t have a rash.”
“A mole could become a rash, or worse, if you don’t take—”
“Mom, Milton Kahn tried and tried hard. He doesn’t do anything to scratch my itch.”
“Pearl!”
“He and I aren’t a match. We made an effort. It wasn’t a bad idea. It simply didn’t work.”
“Milton thinks it might yet.”
“Milton is wrong.”
“But you will do something about your rash.”
“I don’t have a rash.”
“Yet.”
“I’ve got to hang up now, Mom. Crime calls.”
“Don’t joke about your health, Pearl.”
“You’re breaking up, Mom.”
“Nothing is funny.”
Pearl held the phone away from her head, but didn’t raise her voice. “Mom, you’re brea…”
She broke the connection, figuring her mother had it wrong. It was Pearl’s mental health that concerned Pearl. She expected and even thrived on the pressure of the job she’d taken on, but she didn’t like the additional pressure applied by her mother, and now by Milton Kahn. He had a nerve, trying to use her mother so he could get back into her pants. Pearl’s pants.
Pearl realized she was on Quinn’s block. She made herself slow down. She’d been walking faster and faster as she talked on the phone, taking long strides for such a short woman. Now her heart was pounding away, and she was slightly out of breath. Unconsciously, she raised her right hand to her neck as she walked, tracing the area of the mole with her fingertips. The mole was there, all right. She could barely feel it.
She put it out of her mind.
“Traffic,” Fedderman said, seated in his usual chair in Quinn’s den, enjoying a cup of coffee.
“That’s why you didn’t come by my apartment and pick me up?” Pearl said. “You were caught in traffic?” She’d been about to sit down, but continued standing, as if considering springing at Fedderman. “You could have called.”
“I tried,”
Fedderman said. “Got the machine at your place. You must have already given up on me and left. I couldn’t get through on your cell, either. You oughta keep the line clear when you know somebody might be trying to reach you.”
Pearl glared at him, then sat down and seethed.
“Something wrong, Pearl?” Quinn asked from behind his desk.
Pearl didn’t look at him. “My mother.”
“She okay?” Quinn asked in a concerned voice, misunderstanding.
“She is. I’m not.”
“Oh.” Quinn knew about the relationship between Pearl and her mother. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and pour yourself a cup of coffee? It’ll help you calm down.”
Now Pearl aimed her laser look at him. “Coffee does that? Calms you down?”
Fedderman was grinning. He held up his own cup, and then held out his free hand to demonstrate its steadiness.
“If you don’t want a cup, then we’ll get down to business,” Quinn said in a voice that Pearl knew. His warning voice. She could take her bad mood further and risk serious confrontation, or she could back off. He shot a look at Fedderman, too, causing the grin to fade. “Either one of you seen the papers this morning?”
“Haven’t had time,” Pearl said. “Had to subway and walk all the damned way over here.”
Quinn stared at the folded newspapers on his desk, as if the sight of Pearl might be too much for him. “Feds?”
“Haven’t seen them, either. Had to drive, fight traffic, call on the cell phone,” Fedderman explained, looking at Pearl.
“What you can do with your cell phone—”
“Did you say hello to your mother for me?” Quinn interrupted. That was his calm-but-about-to-explode tone.
Pearl seemed to adjust herself to a calmer setting. “I always do,” she lied.
Quinn looked at her, regretting that she was so damned beautiful when she got her ire up. Seeing her that way reminded him of what he’d lost.
“Okay,” he said, and opened the top paper, the Post, and held it up so the headline showed: .25-CALIBER KILLER STALKS CITY. Then Quinn held up the Times to demonstrate the same news in a less sensational fashion.