by John Lutz
In Harold’s coat pocket was a packet of religious pamphlets proclaiming the Rapture would be next November the third, when the world would come to an end. Harold thought that if he was following someone who seemed to suspect he was a cop, he could pull out the pamphlets and start handing them out to his fellow passengers. That would allay suspicion.
It might work, if he was sure he’d been spotted and pegged for the law.
Harold had never mentioned this fallback plan to anyone.
Sal would shoot him if he knew about the pamphlets.
The killer sat in the sunlight on a bench at the edge of one of the area’s urban “pocket” parks. He didn’t mind Carlie and Jody leaving a similar bench facing another direction. He knew where to find them.
He had for the last ten minutes flirted with an attractive blond woman struggling to straighten her slightly bent front bicycle wheel. She had her legs spread for leverage, and with her short skirt was creating quite a show. She didn’t suspect that he’d stuck out his foot and given her bike a shove to cause her wobble and crash.
The killer’s gaze didn’t linger on her legs for long. It was her face that most interested him. Her blue eyes held a kind of cruel light, and her square chin lent her a vaguely defiant expression even at rest.
My type.
The killer watched Jody and Carlie stand up and leave, undoubtedly still being trailed by the overconfident but not very bright cops who were assigned to watch and protect them.
They were so predictable that the killer almost yawned. Now the women would go to the same subway stop, take the same train. They would get off at separate stops, close to their respective homes. That’s when their guardian angels would also split up, to make sure each woman would make it home alive, Carlie to her apartment, Jody to the brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. The killer had to smile.
Blondie with the bike thought he was smiling at her. She tried again, feebly, to straighten the bike’s handlebars, then gave an elaborate shrug.
The killer got up, walked lazily to her, and easily aligned the handlebars. “Good as new—almost,” he said.
She said, “Fiona.”
The killer gave her the kind of amiable grin that was every salesman’s ambition.
“Is that the password?” he asked.
“That’s my name.”
“Is that the password?” he asked again.
She laughed.
“First or last name?” he asked.
“I thought, after the kind of looks you were giving me, that by now we could be on a first-name basis.”
“First names are good enough. I’ve met a Betty and a Zelda while I’ve been sitting here. You’re the first Fiona.”
“It’s not a common name.”
“You’re not a common girl. That’s Fiona with an F?”
“Uh-huh.” As if he has to make sure. What did he expect, a PH? “You friends with the women who just left?”
So she’d noticed he’d been watching Jody and Carlie. He didn’t like that.
“No. I thought I knew one of them from work.”
She leaned on her bike, flexing her legs to put on a show. “Let me guess—you’re an advertising executive. Or a trader who works on Wall Street.”
The killer smiled. “I was thinking you might be one of those things. Or an important CEO of an international company.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Most men assume I’m some kind of executive. Even dressed casually, riding my bike, I just look . . . businesslike.”
“I’ll say.”
“It’s a curse.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I guess not if you mean business,” she said, grinning. She got a plastic water bottle from a bracket on the bike and unscrewed the cap. She held the bottle out to the killer, who shook his head no, he wasn’t thirsty. She was. She tilted back her head and guzzled water. He watched her throat work, fascinated.
She noticed his interest and gave him what she no doubt thought was a dazzling smile as she capped the water bottle and replaced it on the bike.
“We on a first-name basis?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it doesn’t often happen that I fall off my bike, much less in front of a perfect stranger who I have to admit I’m drawn to.” She shrugged, making it cute. “It could be fate.”
“Or you ran over a rock.”
“I’d rather go with fate.”
“It certainly makes life more interesting,” he said. “It’s Brad.”
She tilted her head as if rolling the name around in her mind. “I’m not surprised. That’s a nice name, Brad. And you look nice. Like you’d be nice, anyway.”
“Oh, I’m known for nice.”
“You in the area?”
He grinned. “Sure. I’m right here.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. Do you live in or around here?”
“Nope. Upper East Side.”
“That’s what men say when they want me to think they’re rich.”
“I’m rich.”
“That doesn’t matter to me. I only care about your mind.”
“I’m nice as well as rich.”
“That’s why I’m drawn to you, Brad. That and your modesty.”
“Are you rich?”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “And I also live on the Upper East Side, near Second Avenue.”
“That’s why we’re here tonight in SoHo, isn’t it?”
“ ’Splain, please.”
“Hooking up with someone who isn’t from our very expensive neighborhood,” the killer said. “Though God knows it’s gotten expensive enough around here. Taxes are going up like an elevator.”
Fiona got her water bottle and helped herself to another drink, doing things with her tongue the killer couldn’t help but notice.
“I wouldn’t care to agree with that,” she said, then smiled. “Even though it’s true.”
“About the property taxes?”
“No. The hooking up. That’s why most of the people here come to this little park, though they’d never come right out and admit it. This park has sort of a reputation.”
That was news to the killer. He made a mental note of it.
“You can admit it to me,” he said. “We’re on a first-name basis.” He touched the back of her hand lightly with the tip of his forefinger and traced a gentle pattern. “We’re both here looking for someone interested in a first-name-only relationship. We both found someone.”
“You speak the simple truth, Brad.”
“Oh, always. Another truth I sense is that we should get to know each other even better. Who knows where it might lead?”
“Maybe nowhere beyond tonight,” she said. “I like to keep that option open.”
“It’s open, for both of us.”
She leaned toward him, and her loosely buttoned white blouse parted, showing considerable cleavage. “I believe in fate,” she said.
“So do I.”
“I’m glad I’m not a Betty or a Zelda.”
“Who are they?”
“The women you decided not to pursue. The ones you were watching earlier.”
“Oh, them. Do you know them?”
“Enough to know they aren’t for you.”
“I did talk to them earlier. They gave me different names.”
“Ah! Already they fibbed to you.”
He liked the way this woman lied. So smoothly and confidently. Kindred spirits.
“Fate led you to a Fiona,” she continued. “There aren’t many of us, and I’m the one you approached. Not a Mary or a Sandra or a Sondra, but me, a Fiona.”
“You approached me. Fell down in front of me on your bicycle, anyway.”
She shrugged. “Well, you weren’t approached by a Frances. That might have made a difference.”
“Maybe. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t care if Frances happened to be your name.” He touched her hand again. “Not that I don’t believe in fate
. Fate and I are old friends. He’s done me another favor tonight.”
“You are so nice. But sometimes fate needs a little help. Now it’s up to us to acquaint ourselves with each other.”
“What we should do along that line is visit each other’s apartments, see how the other half lives.”
“Yes, that would facilitate our relationship,” Fiona said.
The killer considered kissing the hand he was touching, but decided that would be oddly inappropriate with this frank and unapologetic liar. “Your place first,” he said. “If things work out okay, my place next time.”
“Why start with my place?”
“I’d like you to be comfortable, surrounded by familiar things. You could know you were safe.”
Her lips arced in a wide smile. “You are so very nice.”
He moved closer and gently took the handlebars from her so he could walk the bike.
“You know what my ambition for tonight is?” he asked as they walked.
“Hmm. I think so.”
“It’s to make sure you don’t change your mind about that ‘nice’ remark.”
“See,” she said, smiling wider. “What a nice thing to say.”
But he seemed to be thinking of something else.
A Zelda. Doesn’t that boggle the mind?
43
Quinn and Pearl visited their fourth antique shop of the day. This one was actually a mall, with various dealers renting stalls stuffed with merchandise. It was on Second Avenue, near a diner where they’d stopped for lunch.
Prices here were high, as they’d been at the other three antique shops. In front of Pearl was a set of Fostoria crystal champagne flutes for three hundred dollars per stem. A Stickley chair that looked god-awful uncomfortable had an asking price of a thousand dollars. Pearl thought it would be a good place to sit a suspect down for interrogation. Anyone would confess to anything just to get out of the chair.
“Beautiful stuff,” Quinn said.
“You’re talking about me?”
Quinn smiled. Having Jody and Carlie around had certainly lit some kind of fire under Pearl. As if youth were contagious.
“It should be beautiful,” Pearl said, “at three hundred dollars per stem.”
“I wasn’t talking about your legs. I was talking about the chair.”
“Really something,” said a man’s voice. It belonged to a chubby, balding man in a suit patterned in olive-green plaid. What hair the man had was gray and combed in wings above his ears. The grayness picked up the green in the suit.
The suit itself was outrageous, yet somehow the chubby guy pulled it off. Pearl figured that was because the material was so obviously expensive that the outfit had to be taken seriously despite the ludicrous pattern.
“It looks uncomfortable,” Pearl said.
“I was talking about the Mayan bust,” the chubby guy said. “It’s pre-Columbian.”
Quinn had had enough of this. He showed the man in the absurd suit his ID. “What we’re really in the market for are answers.”
The man handed Quinn a richly embossed white business card with gold printing. “I’m Jacob Thomas,” he said, and the card confirmed that. Thomas smiled. “I sort of thought you were police.”
“So you have an eye for more than antiques,” Pearl said.
As if she’d just requested it, Thomas gave her another of his cards. “I have an eye for what I know about,” he said. “No one has all-encompassing knowledge of antiques and their value.” He pointed. “The Mayan bust, for example, is a museum-quality piece. It’s been verified by an expert in pre-Columbian statuary.”
“Museum quality means expensive,” Quinn said.
“Means desirable, which is pretty much the same thing.” Thomas motioned toward the bust with a well-manicured hand. “Myself, I think it’s rather ugly. But there’s no denying that it’s old and rare.” He looked around the wide area and smiled. “We don’t sell junk.”
“Maybe expensive junk?” Pearl asked.
“Not knowingly.” Thomas frowned. “I have a feeling you might think we have some stolen merchandise here. If we do, it’s quite by accident, I assure you.”
“No,” Quinn said, “we want to ask you questions about somebody you might know.” He grinned in a way that was oddly menacing. “Unless you’d like to unburden a guilty conscience.”
“No, no!” Thomas waved his hand as if swishing away a pesky insect. “It’s just that in this business, there are imitations. And sometimes excellent ones. Now and then we get fooled.” He shuffled his feet and looked nervous. “Have we been fooled?”
Quinn laughed and rested a huge, rough hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Not that we know of, Mr. Thomas. By the way, how do you obtain your merchandise?”
“We have various sources. We purchase estates, deal with heirs, buy from other dealers, or at auction. There’s a surprisingly fast turnover with items in this price range. They tend to increase in value over time, whatever the economic news. Investors as well as collectors are among our customers. And we do sell to some museums.”
“Your obviously upper-crust inventory,” Pearl said, “suggests you deal with upper-crust sellers and buyers.”
“We run some items through Sotheby’s or Christie’s, if they show well in their catalogs, and if the market is right.”
“Have you heard the name Dred Gant?” Quinn asked.
“Why would you ask that?”
Quinn and Pearl were surprised.
“You’re not supposed to answer a question with a question,” Pearl said. “You’ve seen the TV cop shows and know the rules.”
Thomas smiled, but he looked worried. He made a sweeping motion with his arm, inviting them over to a small, carpeted area where there were two armchairs and a mauve upholstered love seat, a conversation area for hushed negotiations.
Quinn and Pearl sat in the chairs, Jacob Thomas in the love seat. He rested one arm of the extreme suit over the scrolled wooden back, obviously hoping to appear at ease.
“We find it best not to reveal ourselves when we purchase merchandise at auction,” Thomas said. “So we use telephone buyers, sometimes nameless, faceless proxies, to relay their bids to representatives at the auctions. You’ve no doubt seen anonymous bids phoned in at auctions.”
“Only in the movies,” Quinn said. “I don’t hang out at Sotheby’s or Christie’s.”
“Until a year ago Dred Gant was a buyer for us,” Thomas said. “He’d travel to various places and relay our bids.”
“Secret bids?”
“As to the identity of us as the perspective buyer, certainly. The people who ran the auctions knew of course who we were, but none of their clientele knew. When the item would go up for sale in our shops, no one would associate it with the auction—or the auction price.”
“I can see the reasoning,” Quinn said. “When did you hire Gant to do this?”
“We never actually hire such a person,” Thomas said. “Not only would Dred bid via phone for us, he would appear now and then with a valuable piece that we bought from him to add to our inventory. He was self-employed in that capacity. Then, when we came to know and trust him, we used him as a telephone negotiator assessing merchandise and relaying bids.”
“You said until a year ago,” Quinn said.
“Yes. Last summer it seemed he simply disappeared. As if he left the area.”
“Without contacting you?”
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t that a bit unusual?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if he was a nine-to-five employee in an ordinary office job. But still, yes, it was unusual.”
“Did you ever hear from him? In any way? From anywhere?”
“No. We called his cell phone number, but everything went to voice mail and he never replied. And then the number went out of service.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Almost a year.”
“You never reported his disappearance to the police?”
Thomas shrugged. “It wasn’t that kind of business arrangement. He was a freelancer. He came and went. Like some of the others. Usually they pop up again somewhere in the world of antiques, maybe in foreign lands. The antique scene, in this price range, is world-wide.”
“How lucrative is it?” Pearl asked.
“For someone as shrewd and experienced as Dred Gant, it could be very lucrative.”
“Six figures?”
“Maybe seven.”
“What do you have concerning him?” Quinn asked. “Surely you had him bonded.”
“No. We looked into him, but couldn’t get back very far. We did a credit check on him, made sure he lived where he said.”
“Which was?”
“In the Village, on Bank Street. He’s moved from there. We checked. No forwarding address.” Thomas looked at both of them. “This isn’t so strange. We didn’t want him bonded because we wanted our private negotiations to stay that way. You’d be surprised how people snoop.”
“Us?” Pearl said, acting surprised.
“But surely you had a file on him,” Quinn said.
“Certainly. We still have it.”
“Does it contain a photograph?”
“Sure,” Thomas said. “Wait right here and I’ll get it for you.”
Jacob Thomas went to a small cubicle of an office that contained a desk and chair, and a laptop computer lying open on a table. On another, smaller table, sat a combination printer, tax machine, etc. Quinn contemplated the technological smorgasbord and wondered if it also brewed coffee.
Thomas walked over to a bank of square black file cabinets with hidden drawer handles. The entire open and visible modern office, surrounded by all the antiques, looked as if it had dropped there from the future.
Quinn didn’t see what Thomas did, but he’d obviously pressed a button or in some way triggered a signal, because the second drawer on the nearest cabinet slid smoothly open.
It didn’t take Thomas long to find the file on Dred Gant. It was fat and legal sized, contained in a green folder. Thomas laid it on the otherwise bare desk and flipped it open. He withdrew a five-by-eight photograph from the file’s front pocket.
Quinn picked up the photo, and he and Pearl stared at it.