by John Lutz
Doubt immediately began to creep in.
Is it only me? All in my mind? Is the guy simply stoned and only thinking about his wife and kids? Do I remind him of his sister?
She loused up the joke about the amorous mouse and the hot dog, but the audience was kind to her. They were still on her side and gave her a big hand, even a halfway standing O, as she left the stage.
She glanced back at Mr. Handsome, and he smiled and raised his empty glass in a silent toast. It was a smile and gesture that suggested they would meet again.
And they would.
46
Quinn was struggling to escape the huge bird that was pecking at his entrails. The gigantic eagle-if that’s what it was-reared back its head and jerked it to the side to glance down at him with one huge and glittering eye, a string of something red oozing from its hooked beak.
As he rose toward full consciousness, Quinn thought he heard a muffled rustling sound, like the powerful beating of vast wings. Still and afraid, he lay in his dark and stifling bedroom while his mind fought to comprehend what was nightmare and what was real.
The illuminated red numerals on the clock near his bed read 1:27 A.M. Time was a measure of reality that helped to tilt his brain toward the familiar, where things were tangible, quantified, and understood.
Some things, anyway.
The sheets beneath him were soaked. The T-shirt and Jockey shorts he slept in were just as wet. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and was amazed by how heavily he was perspiring. The window air conditioner clicked from its low hum to a deeper tone, signaling that the compressor was now engaged and reassuring him that cold air and sanity were on the way.
He felt a wash of cool air across his bare legs. Wonderful. He was still breathing hard after his dream. What had brought on the nightmare? The gutting knife used on the Slicer victims? The gigantic bird’s beak was that of a predator, strong and hooked so that it could easily tear flesh, not so unlike the knife the ME had described and then shown the detectives in a hunting supply catalog.
Too restless now even to close his eyes, he sat up in bed, reached into the darkness, and switched on the lamp, half expecting to see the terrible bird perched in a corner, its beak dripping with…
Beak…
Beeker. Quinn’s conversation with Zoe about Alfred Beeker might have been part of why he’d had his nightmare. Dr. Alfred Beeker was another sort of predator, and a real one.
Quinn stood up from the damp bed and padded barefoot down the hall to the kitchen, which was noticeably warmer than the bedroom but smelled better. He got a carton of milk from the refrigerator, checked the date, then poured some in a glass. Wasn’t drinking milk supposed to relax you and help you sleep?
Immediately after downing the milk, he wished he’d drunk scotch. That worked better, at least in the short run.
The hell with it. If he had to be awake, he might as well be awake all the way.
But what to do with his extra hours?
Do something!
Call Zoe?
He turned toward the phone in the kitchen and remembered the time. There was no point in disturbing Zoe’s sleep just because he, Quinn, had experienced a nightmare. He wondered what Zoe would make of his bad dream. Probably something he wouldn’t like.
Fedderman or Pearl? No, he needed them in top form tomorrow. And Pearl might get so pissed off she’d come over and berate him in person. It didn’t make sense to wake anyone up just because he couldn’t sleep and felt like having some company.
What did make sense was making himself useful, since he was going to be wide awake anyway. He decided to get dressed and go to the Seventy-ninth Street office, reread some murder files, maybe make use of his desk computer.
Do something!
He splashed cold water on his face and raked back his hair with his fingers. Then he put on a pair of pants, the shirt he’d worn today and dropped into the hamper, and moccasins without socks.
As he was leaving the apartment he paused, ducked back in, and got a cigar. A prop to remind him that reality was so much better than his dream.
Quinn opened the office door and knew immediately that something was wrong. An old cop got to know about dark rooms, to be able to sense whether the air was moving or still, to distinguish the slightest sounds that weren’t normal, maybe even detect body temperature.
Quinn knew he wasn’t alone.
His hand darted toward the light switch, but didn’t make it.
Something, probably a shoulder, slammed into his midsection, and the air rushed from him as he bounced off the door and wall.
The door had slammed shut from the impact, and Quinn, fighting to breathe, saw the shadowed bulk of a man trying to open it. Quinn tried to get up, tried to stop the dark figure, but the spastic action of his lungs sucking in nothing kept his body curled in on itself; he was helpless.
Not quite.
He wasn’t sure how he did it, but he was aware of his arm extending, his fingers closing on a handful of material. A cuff, the man’s pants leg. He squeezed the wadded material harder, harder…
The leg jerked a few times in an effort to break free, and then the shadowed figure twisted and bent over Quinn.
There was a loud grunt, and something hard smashed into the side of Quinn’s head. He felt his grasp on the pants cuff lose its strength. Then his hold on consciousness started to fade. Lost him… He could breathe a little now, but he knew he was going to pass out.
He’d been intent on preventing the intruder from escaping, but now there was another possibility.
Is whoever attacked me still here? Ready to strike again?
Fear arrived, something real and palpable that began crushing down on him like a weight. He began to crawl, not even sure of his direction. His left shoulder brushed something hard. One of the desks?
He tried to stand up, but that only made him dizzy and wobbly. And closer to unconsciousness. It was like the condition brought on by that stuff they gave you intravenously in hospitals to calm you before the big hit of anesthetic in the OR. He became too woozy even to be afraid.
He sought the strength and will to stay conscious, but realized it was a losing battle. It had been from the beginning.
Slipping into darkness, the last thing he thought was that he didn’t want to dream again about the gigantic bird.
Mitzi Lewis knew she was dying.
Perspiration ran down her face and stung the corners of her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t rub them.
“He was so stupid,” she said, “that he thought the B on elevator buttons meant Backward. ”
The audience’s reaction was at best muted. A couple of smiles here and there, but Mitzi knew they were due more to embarrassment than amusement. Embarrassment for her. She hated that strained and polite expression on people’s faces. Right now she hated people in general, her profession, the human race, herself.
“You guys have been great!” she yelled through a frozen smile, her eyes glittering from sweat that might be taken for tears. She could feel waves of pity rolling up from the audience. She loathed pity. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She blew everyone a big kiss and did her trademark prance off the stage.
Thank God that’s over!
“Don’t take it so hard,” Jackie Jameson told her as she finally made it offstage. It was obvious that the game little girl from Brooklyn was upset. “It wasn’t you.”
“It sure felt like me out there,” Mitzi said, her shoulders slumping.
“It was the crowd. They’ll laugh at those same jokes tomorrow night.”
“You got a lot of laughs during your set,” she said, wiping at her eyes. Real tears now, dammit!
“I pay them a lot of money,” Jackie said, straight-faced.
Mitzi almost, but not quite, smiled at that. One corner of her mouth twitched upward. Jackie pointed at it and grinned.
“Bastard!” Mitizi said. “You won’t even let me feel bad.”
“Against the rules, Mitz.”
/>
She pushed past him and hurried into Say What?’s communal dressing room, where she rinsed off her face and put on some fresh makeup. She yanked up her white blond hair into longer and more defined spikes, then reassessed herself in the mirror.
Okay, she thought. You’d never know I was run over by a train.
She left the dressing room and went down the short corridor to the exit. Once she got through that door, she’d have to work her way-unnoticed, she hoped tonight-through the back of the crowd, around the bar, toward the club’s street door.
She wished she were invisible. All she wanted right now was for tonight to be over.
Some loudmouth at the bar was holding court with a drunken story, creating something of a diversion, as she made herself small and edged toward the glowing red EXIT sign.
When she was almost at the door, a voice said, “ I thought you were funny.”
She turned and found herself looking into the dark, dark eyes of Mr. Handsome from last night. He had even more of an effect on her close up. Her throat tightened so she couldn’t speak.
Not like me, to be at a loss for words.
“You must have been the only one who thought so,” she finally said in a choked voice.
“The others were too busy thinking you were beautiful.”
“That’s…uh, very nice of you.”
“Seriously, you were great. It was just a tough crowd.”
“Like when I played Arlington,” she said.
He looked blank for a moment. Blank, but still handsome. Then he smiled. “Oh, the cemetery. Sorry, you’re a bit quicker than I am.”
“I kind of doubt that.” She was finding herself now. The guy was easy to talk to, and smooth enough that she knew she should be careful.
“Since you’re convinced you died up there,” he said, motioning with his head toward the stage, “why don’t we go someplace else where we can have a drink and hold a proper requiem?”
She pretended to think about it, all the time knowing she was going to leave with him.
Gotta put up a front, signal that you ’re resisting. Every mother’s advice, as if we were all born through immaculate conception.
He moved closer to her, as if she had emitted some kind of magnetic field.
Had she?
“I think you’ll find” he said in a gentle voice, “that you didn’t really die onstage. It was only a near-death experience.”
She smiled at him and took the arm he offered. “That was pretty good,” she said.
“Use it in your routine.”
“I would if it was funny enough,” she said honestly. “I have no scruples.”
“Ah, we’re a perfect match.”
He pushed open the street door, and the damp heat of the night dared them to leave.
Mitzi thought she heard someone call her name, but she didn’t look back.
47
The morning sunlight’s warmth on his bare right arm woke Quinn. Something about the way it angled through the window made the flesh it contacted feel as if it might burst into flame. It was almost enough to take his mind off his terrific headache.
He didn’t open his eyes, but right away he knew where he was, on the floor of the Seventy-ninth Street office. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten there.
He lay motionless, curled on the hard, cool linoleum, or sheet goods, or whatever it was being called these days. Recollection came slowly, and then in a rush. He remembered unlocking and opening the office door late last night-early morning, actually, but a long way from daybreak. As soon as he’d stepped inside, even before he’d had a chance to flip the wall switch, something, some one, had slammed into him. There’d been a brief, confused struggle; he’d managed to crawl away from it, and then…
His headache flared as if to remind him that he’d been struck just above his left temple.
Beeker. He realized he’d been thinking about Dr. Alfred Beeker as he’d lost consciousness, and something about a giant bird.
The stuff dreams are made of.
Quinn gradually opened his eyes to the bright morning light. Ouch! His eyelids seemed to be dragging themselves across sandpaper. And the light was blinding.
Almost blinding.
Through the brilliance and swirling dust motes he could make out the form of a woman standing in the office’s half bath with the door open. Washing her hands? No, not that. She was standing at the washbasin though, leaning forward so she could stare at herself in the mirror. In the blinding light and through his aching eyes she might have been an apparition. Like the bird. Was he still unconscious? Still dreaming? Had the blow to his head damaged his brain?
As he watched, the woman raised her hand to her right ear. She jerked her head quickly to the left, almost like a bird when something’s caught its attention, and began toying with the ear, straining as if to examine it or look behind it.
Pearl!
“Pearl?” he said in a hoarse voice.
He heard her sharp inhalation as she jumped and backed away from the mirror. She stepped out of the half-bath and looked around. “Who’s here?”
“Me. Quinn.”
She looked all around her, then down at Quinn lying on the floor near one of the desks.
“You scared the holy hell out of me,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She squinted at him, then came toward him with a kind of broken gait, as if restrained by caution and curiosity. “You okay? What’re you doing on the floor? How come you’re here so early? How’d you get here?”
He found himself grinning. “Lots of questions, Pearl?”
“But you are all right?”
“Seem all right. Hell of a headache, though.” He moved to sit up. “And my ribs are a bit sore,” he added.
“Don’t try to get up. I’ll get some help.” She moved toward the nearest desk and a phone.
“No, no.” He raised a hand, stopping her.
Her hand came away from the phone, but she was staring oddly at him.
“I’ll be fine, Pearl. Really. I just need a minute.”
“Don’t try to get up yet.” She rolled a desk chair over to him and sat down in it, leaning forward and fixing him with an assessing stare. “Looks like you hit your head. What happened? You fall?”
“No. Somebody hit me in the head. Rammed his own head or his shoulder into my ribs first.”
“Somebody attacked you in here? That’s some nerve. This is a police facility.”
“There’s no sign on the door.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“I didn’t even get a chance to turn on the light,” Quinn said. “We need to look things over, see if anything’s missing.”
Pearl glanced around. “Computers are still here. So’s the coffee brewer. I was just about to make some.” She paused. “Some of the desk drawers aren’t shut all the way. And one of the bottom file cabinet drawers is hanging open.”
Quinn gripped the desk corner and hauled himself to his feet. He was dizzy for a moment, and the headache was stronger.
Pearl stood up and held his arm. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah.” He guessed he was. He looked around and saw what Pearl had seen. “I disturbed him. He was looking for something, on a fact-finding mission.”
“Who we talking about?” Pearl asked. But they both knew.
“Tigers do that,” Quinn said.
“Leave drawers open?”
“No. They double back on whoever’s stalking them; then they lie in wait and become their most dangerous.”
“I didn’t know you hunted tigers.”
“I watch the nature channel.”
“Do we really think the intruder was the killer, trying to learn what we know so he can stay ahead of us?”
“It’s a possibility. Let’s look around and see if he was successful.”
Pearl moved closer and put both arms around Quinn, steadying him. Of course that was when Fedderman arrived.
He stood inside the
door with a surprised look on his face that needed to be wiped off with a napkin. “I’m interrupting…”
“Don’t be an asshole,” Pearl said. “We were practicing judo.”
Quinn moved away from Pearl and explained to Fedderman what had happened. Then the three of them, still silently absorbing the break-in and assault, examined drawer and file cabinet contents and decided nothing was missing.
“He might not have wanted to steal anything,” Fedderman said, “just read things. Just learn.”
“And we can’t know how much he did learn,” Quinn said.
Pearl went over and perched with her haunches on the edge of her desk. “Damn near everything’s in the papers or TV news anyway.”
“And now he knows that,” Fedderman said.
“If he had time to examine everything.”
Pearl pushed herself away from her desk and went around to her computer. She booted up hers, then the other two computers, and clicked on their histories. None of them showed any activity after yesterday afternoon.
“I don’t think he learned much, if anything,” she said. She sat back again on the edge of her desk and crossed her arms. “Maybe we’re making this too complicated, Quinn. Maybe he just wanted to bash you in the head.”
“And knew I’d be coming in at two in the morning?”
“So you interrupted a burglar, and he bashed you in the head,” Fedderman said.
“Possibly. But he did a lot of snooping around and apparently didn’t steal anything.”
“Could he have gotten away after initially knocking you down?” Pearl asked. “I mean, did he have to also hit you in the head?”
“I’m not sure. It’s still hazy.”
“So maybe he was snooping, like we figure. A tiger.”
“Huh?” Fedderman said.
Pearl gave him a dismissive wave of her hand to shut him up. To Quinn, she said: “And he was glad for the opportunity to bash you in the head.”
“Can you think of anyone who’d wanna do that?” Fedderman asked. “Other than me and Pearl.”
“And the killer,” Pearl added.
“One person,” Quinn said, “and I know where to find him.”