“Or to a hotel.” He rotated slightly on his stool so he was facing her. “Listen, Hettie, half the men in here—no, more than half—would gladly cut off any appendage but one if they could leave here with you.”
“I’m not crazy about hotels,” she said.
“Neither am I.”
She was liking this guy more and more. And the way he could look deep into you…
She had to think about this, but she was already 90 percent sure of her conclusion.
He must not have liked the way the conversation was flagging.
“Maybe I’ve seen you on TV or somewhere,” he said. “What have you been in?”
She placed both elbows on the bar and leaned toward him and to the side, so their heads were almost touching and she could speak softly and directly.
“Ever heard of Dubba the Mermaid?”
“I might have,” he said. “Refresh my memory.”
Hettie smiled at him.
Maybe tomorrow when we wake up.
16
“Good thing the car’s black,” Fedderman said.
The weeks-long assault of hot weather was having its effect on the pavement. Fresh blacktop from where an early morning street crew had just patched a pothole spotted the windshield when it was thrown up from the tires of the truck ahead of Quinn’s Lincoln. Quinn used the windshield squirts and wipers and got most of it off without leaving too much of a mess on the glass.
“They’ve got chemicals that’ll take tar off,” Quinn said. He wasn’t worried about the car right now.
They were driving to a diner on First Avenue to talk to Vance Holstetter, a homicide detective who’d been Joe Galin’s partner until shortly before Galin retired. Pearl wasn’t in the car. She had listened to Quinn’s account of his conversations at Pizza Rio and asked if she could go take a run at the two delivery riders, especially Jorge, the one Quinn thought might know something.
Quinn had figured there was nothing to lose, so he’d told her to take the unmarked and go. Pearl had a way with young guys sometimes, knew how they thought and how to manipulate them. He wondered if she’d grown up with brothers. He really didn’t know much about her early life. Maybe he could ask her mother.
His cell phone chirped, and he drew it from his pocket and squinted at it cradled in his palm.
Renz calling.
He raised the phone to his ear. “Hello, Harley.”
“Quinn, where are you?”
“Driving to meet Galin’s old partner, Vance Holstetter.”
“Something you should know: The lab’s blood pattern guys got together with the medical examiner, and they all agree about Galin.”
“That he’s dead?”
“Quit trying to be funny. There’s a complication. Galin wasn’t shot where the car was parked. The bullet didn’t kill him right away. He apparently drove to the alley by the pizza place after he took the slug.”
Quinn said nothing, trying to digest this. It was a complication, all right. No wonder nobody inside or in the vicinity of Pizza Rio saw or heard anything around the time of the shooting. Galin had been murdered someplace else.
“He couldn’t have driven far,” Renz said. “Nift says the gunshot wound was probably inflicted somewhere in Manhattan, on the East Side, judging from where the body was discovered. Galin couldn’t have lived very long after getting shot. It’s likely he took the tunnel or drove over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Queens before he got too weak to get any farther.”
“Headed for home, maybe,” Quinn said. “Running on instinct while his life bled out.”
“Could be,” Renz said. “Or maybe he had a strong yen for pizza.”
The car bounced over a pothole the patching crew had missed, causing Quinn to juggle the phone and grip it tighter.
Renz must have interpreted the silence as disapproval of his joking about a dead cop and made a stab at recovering his solemnity. “It’s true you’d want to get someplace familiar if you knew you were dying,” he said in a somber tone. “Way the human mind works. Even animal minds.”
“That so?”
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s something for you to find out. You’re the detective.”
“What are you, Harley?”
“I’m a politician now,” Renz said. “Best you keep that in mind.”
He broke the connection.
Fedderman looked over from the passenger seat. “What?”
Quinn told him.
Neither man said anything for a while. Quinn realized he was driving one-handed and snapped the phone shut and slipped it back in his pocket.
“Complicates things,” Fedderman said.
“Complications are pretty much our job,” Quinn said.
He thought about calling Pearl and telling her never mind about talking to anyone at Pizza Rio. Then he remembered the guilty, knowing look in Jorge Valento’s eyes and decided not to call.
The diner on First was on a corner across from a D’Agostino market. Quinn saw a parking space almost in front of it, cut across uptown traffic, and pulled to the curb, causing a delivery van driver who’d been about to park there to give him the finger. Quinn ignored the gesture. The man blew him a kiss. Still Quinn didn’t react. The guy in the van drove farther down the street in search of parking. Fedderman thought the guy didn’t know how lucky he was.
Inside, the diner was surprisingly spacious. Lots of maroon vinyl booths and maroon vinyl padded chairs. A counter and cash register were on the immediate right, tables and booths to the left. Toward the back there was a step up and even more maroon. The breakfast crowd was gone, and among the dozen or so customers, the guy at a back booth by a window was the only one who looked like a cop, even though he was in plain clothes.
Quinn and Fedderman walked back there. Quinn noticed that though the restaurant was cool enough, it was slightly warmer in back.
The man who was surely Holstetter stood up. He was wearing a gray suit with the coat unbuttoned and was tall and skinny, with pointed features and oversized pointy ears that stuck way out like open doors. All in all, he looked like an overgrown leprechaun.
When he grinned amiably with little sharp teeth he looked even more like a leprechaun, but a sad and resigned one who hadn’t been let in on the secret of where the pot of gold was.
“Holstetter,” he said, like an admission of guilt.
Quinn nodded and shook hands. “I’m Quinn. This is Larry Fedderman.”
Fedderman and Holstetter shook hands, then everybody sat down. A waiter in white was there from out of nowhere, and Quinn and Fedderman ordered coffee. That was all Holstetter had in front of him on the table. Cops drinking coffee at 11 A.M. It was probably happening all over the world.
“You guys wanna order some doughnuts?” Holstetter asked. “They’re good here.”
“No, thanks,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to be a stereotype.”
Holstetter flashed an oversized tired-pixie smile. “I thought since we got the coffee, we might as well go all the way.”
Quinn figured Holstetter was treading water, stalling before getting to the Q-and-A part of the conversation. Quinn thought they were wasting time.
“Tell