by John Lutz
Quinn waited. "No dramatic pauses, Pearl. Please."
"I'm not being theatrical," she said. "I'm just thinking, trying to decide if it's plausible."
"Let us decide along with you," Fedderman said.
Pearl looked at Quinn. "I think the killer chose you as his opponent."
"That might be plausible," Quinn said, "except Renz did the choosing."
Pearl kept him trapped with her dark eyes, wouldn't let him go. "The last victim, Ida, was killed in my apartment. You think that's some wild coincidence?"
Quinn had to answer honestly. "No. But that doesn't necessarily lead me to your conclusion."
"It wouldn't me, either," Pearl said, "except for the victims' last initials, in the order of their deaths: Janice Queen, Lois Ullman, Ida Ingrahm."
"Q, U, I," Fedderman said, staring at Quinn. "Almost spells--"
"It does," Quinn said, standing up from behind the desk. He started to pace, but tripped over one of the wiring-clump mushrooms growing on the floor and almost fell.
"The next victim's name will start with an N," Pearl said.
"She's right," Fedderman said.
Quinn didn't have to be told. Pearl wasn't always right, but almost always.
She was almost surely right this time: The killer was choosing victims whose last initials spelled out Quinn's name.
"Think we oughta tell the media?" Fedderman asked. "Be our asses if we don't."
"He's got a point," Pearl said. "Women with N surnames have a right to know."
Quinn picked up the phone again.
"Who you calling?" Fedderman asked.
"Renz. Then Nift. He knows a journalist who's already been on this, a woman named Cindy Sellers, with City Beat."
"Never heard of her or it," Fedderman said.
"You will after they scoop this story," Quinn said.
As he was pecking out Renz's number with his forefinger, Pearl got up from her chair and stood with her hands on her hips, looking around.
"We gotta get a coffee machine."
Pearl arrived at the office early the next morning with a sack containing a bag of gourmet ground Columbian beans, a pack of filters, and a brand-new Mr. Coffee that was still in the box.
Under her other arm were the murder files, which she'd taken home for a closer read last night.
She placed the Mr. Coffee on the computer table, the beans and filter next to it.
The files she laid on Quinn's desk. Ida Ingrahm's was on top.
"I wish you'd told me yesterday about that vibrator phone," Pearl said.
Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other. Fedderman, slumped in a chair in front of the desk, said, "Pearl, Pearl."
"I don't have one," she said, not blushing, "but I happen to know where they're sold. A little shop in the Village. Intimate Items."
"How would you know that, Pearl?" Fedderman asked.
"I shop there sometimes, asshole. The place isn't as risque as you might think. It's erotica that's mostly for women."
"Ah," Fedderman said, "no whips and chains."
"Well, some. But mostly stuff like those Dial In phones."
"Dial In?" Quinn asked.
"That's the brand name, even though they're not really phones and have a fake keypad. I haven't seen them anywhere but in that shop. We can check and see if they have a record of Ida buying one there, or maybe they'll recognize her photo."
"How would that help us?" Fedderman asked.
"She might not have been alone when she bought her phone."
Quinn tried not to smile. Pearl a step ahead of Fedderman. Old and familiar patterns taking form. They were again becoming a team.
"Drop Feds and me off at Ida Ingrahm's apartment," Quinn said, "and we'll reinterview some of her neighbors, see if anybody's memory can be jogged. Then you drive the unmarked down to...what's it?"
"Intimate Items," Fedderman reminded him.
"Yeah. Talk to the clerk, or whoever." He handed her a morgue photo of Ida Ingrahm. "Nift faxed this here this morning."
"It's a head shot," Fedderman said.
Pearl looked at him in disgust. "Jesus, Feds." Her expression was unchanging as she glanced at the photo. She reached for the murder files she'd laid on the desk. "I'll take photos of the other victims, too. Just in case."
"No coffee this morning?" Fedderman asked, looking over at the packages Pearl had piled on the computer table.
"No time," Pearl said. "You guys can make some tomorrow."
Quinn stood up from behind his desk.
"I'll drive," Pearl said, "since I'll be going on down to the Village."
"Seat's all the way back," Quinn said, "so I might as well drive to the apartment." So we get there alive.
He and Fedderman knew how Pearl drove--as if she'd learned by watching The French Connection.
Fedderman glanced over at Quinn, smiling slightly, but like Quinn, he held his silence.
Familiar patterns.
8
On the drive to Ida Ingrahm's apartment, Fedderman tried to talk Quinn into sending him along with Pearl to follow up on the cell phone lead. Quinn knew this would be more for Fedderman's amusement than anything else, so he'd nixed it and told Pearl to take the unmarked and return to pick them up later. So here Pearl was alone, without having to cope with Fedderman and vibrator cell phones simultaneously. Pearl considered it a gift.
Intimate Items was a block off Broadway, and wasn't the kind of blatant sex shop its name might suggest. The merchandise was varied but mostly ran toward sexy lingerie, massage potions, aphrodisiac incense, romantic CDs, and other mood makers. Pearl thought the mannequin in Intimate Items' display window was dressed more for a romantic night at the Hilton than a session at an S&M club. Satin rather than leather, lace rather than Velcro. Make the mannequin's see-through gown more opaque, her panties bikini instead of thong, and she might fit right in flaunting her stuff in the windows of midtown department stores.
Opening and closing the door set off a soft chime somewhere in the shop. A hidden sachet made the place smell faintly of cinnamon. The design and decor were those of an upscale boutique, racks of clothes down one side, harder merchandise and a sales counter on the other. Changing rooms and full-length triple mirrors up on a low, carpeted podium were at the far end. Vibrators were kept out of sight beneath the counter. The shop's customers were almost exclusively women.
At the moment, Pearl was the only customer.
A young, primly dressed woman in a high-necked white blouse, with a sweet face that looked swollen from too much sleep, smiled puffily at her from behind the glass counter.
"May I help you?"
"Cell phone vibrators," Pearl said.
The woman, maybe still in her twenties, appeared faintly surprised by Pearl's request. Then the puffy smile widened, doing something to her eyes and making her appear Asian. "Dial Ins?"
"Those are the ones."
"I'd like to help you, but you're too late."
"I'm not even forty," Pearl said.
The clerk ducked her head and looked embarrassed. "No, ma'am, I didn't mean that."
"I know," Pearl said, then dipped into her purse and flashed her shield. "My job infects people with a strange sense of humor."
"You think mine doesn't?" the clerk said, glancing at the badge before Pearl put it back out of sight.
"Point taken. What about those vibrators?"
"We haven't handled them for a few months. Not that they didn't sell, but we got a few customer complaints. Some people thought they'd also bought functional phones."
"Yuck," Pearl said.
"I thought the phone-vibrators were a great idea for the shop. They let you travel without being embarrassed by some security or customs character rooting through your luggage and coming across a vibrator he just knew wasn't for your stiff neck."
"Seems like an item that'd be right up your alley," Pearl agreed.
The woman frowned.
"A discreet, intimate item," Pearl explained.<
br />
The sales clerk seemed satisfied that Pearl hadn't been exercising cop humor.
"So you returned them to the manufacturer?" Pearl asked.
"Not actually. We sold them at wholesale price to Nuts and Bolts. It's a lounge on East Fifty-second. A pickup place but respectable. Lots of single professional women hang out there, the sort with jobs where they have to travel. The boss knows the lounge's owner, so that's where the cell phone vibrators went."
"How many?"
"Oh, two cases and a partial, about fifty of them. I bought one myself before we let them go. I think they're such a super idea. And they really do look like cell phones."
Just in case, Pearl showed the clerk photos of the first two victims, then the gruesome morgue shot of Ida Ingrahm, and asked if she recognized any of the women.
"I don't think so," the clerk said, swallowing. "But the first two look vaguely familiar. This last one, is she...?"
"Dead," Pearl confirmed. "They all are."
The clerk's puffy features registered dismay. Was she about to cry? "God! That's horrible!"
"They're all victims of the same killer."
"That's why the first two look familiar. I must have seen them in the paper or on television news."
"Are you sure they never came in here? Maybe bought mock cell phones."
"Oh, I'm positive. I'm here during all our open hours, so I sold all the phones."
Pearl slid the photos back in her blazer pocket and thanked the woman for her time.
"May I interest you in anything else?" The clerk was suddenly very professional, a reaction to distance herself from the Ida Ingrahm photo by grounding herself in the normal world. "We have all sorts of products that aid in relationships with men."
"Thanks anyway," Pearl said. "I already carry a gun."
But as she left the shop, she glanced again at the display-window mannequin in the transparent nightgown and thong underwear.
She thought she could bring it off. Probably.
Nuts and Bolts was on the ground floor of a gray stone office building, flanked by an office supply store and a maritime insurance agency. It was closed, but it served food as well as booze, and Pearl could see through the tinted glass door that several people were bustling around inside in the dimness, preparing for the lunch crowd.
She rapped on the glass with the cubic zirconium ring on her right hand, making a lot of noise. The last guy she'd dated had given her the ring, telling her it was diamond. It turned out to be as genuine as he was.
A chubby, bald kid peered curiously through the glass at her. He made exaggerated shrugging motions while he shook his head back and forth violently to signal that the restaurant-lounge was closed. He held up all his stubby fingers, then two, indicating that she should return at noon.
As he turned away, she rapped on the glass again and pressed her shield to it.
He turned back, stared at the NYPD detective's badge, then faded away in the dimness.
A few seconds later, the door was opened by a potbellied man in a white T-shirt, wearing a stained white apron over jeans. He was about forty, balding, jowly, and with a double chin. Pearl guessed he was gaining middle-age weight steadily and it would eventually catch up with his beer belly. He looked somewhat like the kid who'd answered Pearl's knock, and she wondered if they were father and son. His tired blue eyes moved up and down, taking in all five-foot-one of Pearl and registering nothing.
Thanks a lot.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
"You tell me." Pearl smiled when she said it, trying to steer the guy from neutral to friendly. Why make things difficult?
He did smile back, making him look younger and less fleshy, a glance at an earlier version that wasn't the kid who'd first come to the door.
"I don't think we've broken any laws," he said, wiping his hands on the apron and stepping back so she had room to enter.
"Maybe the soup yesterday," the kid said. He was leaning on a broom about ten feet away, grinning. He was wearing a black Mets sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, baggy stained chinos, and looked as if he had an erection. Pearl felt alternately amused and flattered.
"Get back to work, Ernie," the potbellied guy said wearily.
Ernie kept his dreamy smile trained on Pearl for a full five seconds, then turned away and began sweeping. Pearl decided she kind of liked him.
"Is the owner around?" Pearl asked.
"I'm him," potbelly said. "Lou Sinclair."
"Good. I want to talk to you about vibrators that look like cell phones."
Ernie continued to sweep, but was moving toward them now so he could hear better.
"I bought those phones from somebody I know," Sinclair said. "Somebody honest. If they're stolen, neither one of us knows about it."
"Me, either," Pearl said.
"We get lots of traveling businesswomen in here. I let Victoria, my female night bartender, tell the ladies about the phones. If they're interested, she shows them one and maybe makes a sale."
"You sell a lot of them?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna try and get some more. Damned things really look like phones. You wouldn't believe it, but we had a woman here thought she could make a call and--"
"I believe it," Pearl said.
"Get busy, Ernie," Sinclair said. Ernie began sweeping harder, moving away from them this time.
"Victoria your only night bartender?"
"Her and me," Sinclair said. "She comes in at eight, and I'm here from nine to closing."
"How can I get in touch with her?"
"Easy. She's in the kitchen."
"She works days, too?"
"As well as nights? No, only the owner works those kinda hours. She came in to get her paycheck."
"Ah, my lucky day."
"Is it hers?"
"Far as I know. She's not in any kinda trouble. I just want to show both of you some photographs, see if you recognize any of the women in them, then talk to her about the phones. Maybe Ernie, too."
"Ernie goes home after we close for lunch and he's done busing tables. He's my brother's boy. A teen klutz. Knows from nothing."
"He's gotta grow up sometime," Pearl said.
Sinclair gave her a curious look, then said, "Wait here and I'll go get Victoria."
Pearl sat at the end of one of the booths, looking around. The floor was carpeted except where Ernie was diligently sweeping. There were round tables with white cloths, crystal chandeliers, a long bar inlaid with polished brass, fancy stools with high, curved backs. It wouldn't be a bad-looking place if they turned up the lights. Probably they didn't want passersby glancing in and seeing them cleaning up. Pearl couldn't read the lunch menu behind the bar, but it didn't look like much.
Sinclair returned within a few minutes with a tall, dark-haired woman in a tight tan pantsuit. Or maybe she wasn't so tall. She looked as if she'd just had her hair done, or overdone. It was piled improbably high and made her look as if she were about to play a country-western singer in a bad movie. When she was closer, she gazed with charcoal dark eyes from beneath dense bangs at Pearl.
Pearl introduced herself, then removed the photographs from her blazer pocket. "Ernie," she said, "put down your broom for a minute and come over here."
"Yes, ma'am." Still with the spacey smile. Did the kid ever stop grinning?
Pearl found the brightest spot on the table and spread out the photos. "Do any of these women look familiar?"
Ernie stopped smiling and pointed. "That's one's dead, ain't she?"
"She's dead, Ernie."
"Cool."
"Those two," Victoria said immediately, and pointed with a long red fingernail. "Janice and Lois. I don't know their last names. They come in here all the time."
"They who I think they are?" Sinclair asked.
"Depends," Pearl said.
"The women the Butcher killed?"
"Huh?" Victoria said.
"That's what people call him," Sinclair said, "the Butcher. Because of the way he car
ves up his victims and puts their parts on display. The meat. Don't you read the papers or watch the news?"
"No, I spend most of my time dealing drinks here. That's the only way I know Janice and Lois. They work in the neighborhood and come in sometimes in the evening."
"Together?"
Victoria wrinkled her nose, thinking. "No, I can't recall ever seeing them together. Or even here at the same time. But I could be wrong."
"I don't think I've ever seen them," Sinclair said.
"Ernie?" Pearl asked.
"I don't know any of 'em," Ernie said. "That dead one's gross."
"Yeah. There oughta be a law." Pearl looked at Victoria. "Ever sell either of them a cell phone?"
Victoria appeared startled behind her bangs. She glanced worriedly at Sinclair.
"It's okay," he said.
"I sold both of them cell phones," Victoria said. "One to Janice about two months ago. Then, maybe six weeks ago, one to Lois."
"Was either woman ever here with a man?"
"Not that I can recall. Not that they weren't flirted with. They're--they were--both real attractive. And for all I know they left with somebody from time to time. That's the kinda place this is at night, a social spot for people to meet one another."
"Do you recall either woman saying anything unusual?"
"We didn't have those kinda conversations. I mean, I only knew them from when they ordered drinks and we exchanged a few words. Then, when we began pitching the cell phones, I talked to them some more, but only about the phones." Victoria looked worried. "I'm not gonna have to go to police headquarters and make a statement or anything, am I?"
"No, we'll send somebody around. Nothing to it."
"It'll be okay, Vicky," Sinclair said, resting a hand gently on her shoulder in a way that made Pearl wonder. It could be a small, intimate world.
Pearl scooped up the photos and returned them to her pocket. "I want to thank both of you. You've been a big help."
She left them the way she left most people she interviewed, looking slightly confused and concerned. Pearl guessed everyone had something to hide.
As she was going out, she heard Ernie say behind her, "Phones? I never knew we sold phones."