“Your gut tell you to take the job?”
“Tells me not to touch it.”
“How about your head?”
“My head says run from it fast as I can.”
“But you’re going to call Pearl and Fedderman? Be ready to go after this sicko?”
“Yes,” Quinn said.
Renz stared at him for a while, studying him.
“Your heart must be telling you what to do,” he said. He grinned hugely, all incisors and canine teeth gleaming in the night’s reflected light. “How sweet.”
“Get out of the car.”
“Can’t,” Renz said. “You mighta noticed the radio car I was riding in has driven away, and now it’s raining. I need a lift home.”
“You shoulda thought ahead.”
“If I hadn’t been thinking ahead, Quinn, I wouldn’t be here talking with you. I want us to be ready for the media shit storm.”
“You still live over on East Fifty-first?”
“Same place,” Renz said. “Newly decorated, though.”
“It’s kinda far from here,” Quinn said.
“That’s why I asked a friend.”
Quinn started the car’s big engine. Before pulling away from the curb, he drew a cigar from an inside pocket and fired it up with the Lincoln’s lighter. If Renz was riding with him, he was going to suffer. If the smoke didn’t get to Renz, it would only be because he was a cigar smoker himself and knew good tobacco when he smelled it.
“I thought you said you were smoking your last one,” Renz said.
“This is the last one,” Quinn said.
Renz stared ahead quietly, obviously pissed off. Made Quinn smile.
He would have offered Renz a cigar if they weren’t Cuban.
6
Quinn figured it wasn’t midnight yet, so Pearl might still be awake.
She wasn’t a night owl in the sense that she liked to roam around the city after dark. It was simply that Pearl couldn’t sleep. She was probably pacing the stifling confines of her apartment, counting the steps. Or maybe bouncing off the walls. She’d always been like that, even when living with Quinn. He’d wake up at 3:00 A.M. and find her in the living room, eating potato chips and watching television news or an old movie. She was partial to the old Busby Berkeley musicals, where every time a dancer takes an initial step a thousand other dancers appear.
He was right about her being awake. She picked up halfway through the second ring.
“Watching an old movie?” Quinn asked.
“Quinn. What are you doing, spying on me with a telescope?”
“I would if I could see you from here.”
“Babes on Broadway,” she said.
“I’d spy on them, too.”
“That’s the movie I’m watching, Babes on Broadway.”
“Mickey Rooney?”
“Not here.”
“Don’t wanna talk to him anyway,” Quinn said. “Wanna talk to you.”
“Talk.”
“You should be in bed sleeping.”
“Like you should. You didn’t call me about sleeping.”
“Being in bed, though…”
“Have a good reason for being on the line, Quinn, or I’m hanging up so I can watch the dancing.”
He told her about Renz’s visit and job offer.
“I’m still working at Sixth National,” she said when he was finished. “They need me.”
“Pearl, Sixth National Bank hasn’t been held up since nineteen twenty-seven.”
“Overdue.”
“You can get a leave of absence.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s our arrangement. It’s just…”
“What?”
“You start these things, these murder cases, and they take over your life. You understand. I know you do. It’s a strain on mind and body, Quinn. It becomes a goddamned obsession.”
“There are good obsessions, Pearl.”
“Are there? I can’t think of any.”
“All right,” Quinn said, tired of arguing with her. “We’re slaves to ourselves all the way to the grave.”
“Slaves to something,” Pearl said.
“You in?” Quinn asked.
She didn’t answer right away. He could hear lively dance music in the background.
“Pearl?”
“I’m in,” she said.
Slaves to something.
After the conversation with Pearl, Quinn decided not to call Fedderman until morning. Retirees went to bed early, didn’t they?
Quinn decided they did and went to bed himself.
He had trouble falling asleep. Maybe Pearl was right about obsessions. The hunt wasn’t only in his mind, though. It was in every cell of his being. It seemed a kind of destiny that he and whoever was on a killing spree should share a common struggle.
There was little doubt in Quinn’s mind that there was a serial killer out there in the city, playing out the drama he’d chosen for himself, making Quinn a part of it. Quinn would be the part the killer would regret. Old juices were starting to flow again. The hunt was in body and blood.
“Locked in,” Quinn actually muttered, and finally fell asleep.
7
In the morning, Quinn put Mr. Coffee to work so he could have his caffeine fix before walking over to the Lotus Diner for breakfast. He showered and shaved, then dressed and combed his hair. He noticed he needed a haircut but figured it could wait.
Feeling much more awake after a restless night, he carried the wireless phone into the kitchen and sat at the table with his coffee off to the side within easy reach. Nine thirty. Fedderman should be awake by now. Maybe he was even on the links, or out on the wide ocean casting for marlin. Or he might be sitting in some diner swapping lies with other retired cops. Stories that sounded like lies to anyone listening, anyway.
Fedderman answered his phone on the second ring and was no problem. No Pearl-like discourses out of Feds, the voice of pure practicality.
“So we got a new hobby,” Fedderman said over the phone, when Quinn was done relating what Renz had said. That was one way police described a long-lasting serial killer investigation. “One that should keep us busy for a while. It gives me a reason for living so I don’t ride a bullet outta here.”
Quinn sampled his coffee. Yeow! Still too hot to drink. “Things that bad, Feds?”
“Naw, things are just things. Living alone at my age, not gainfully employed, stretching my pension money with coupons and early-bird specials. It’s okay for some people, but not for me.”
“There are plenty of people who lead active lives after retirement,” Quinn said, but he knew exactly what Fedderman meant, how he felt. Quinn had the same feeling sometimes, woke up with it lying heavily enough on his body that it felt