John Lutz - Pulse

Renz knew she was simply doing her job, keeping the police commissioner-a very important client indeed-off her employer’s back.

She and Renz had become something like friends one night, not while they were screwing, but while they lay in bed together afterward, talking.

Renz knew it was all bullshit, pumping him for information. This woman was smart and knew information was power and protection, so she wanted some about him. He didn’t care. He knew what not to tell her while telling her plenty. He realized he would never really possess a woman like Olivia. Not all of her, anyway. No one could.

They talked more and more often, sharing each other’s secrets. Or so it seemed. Most of what Renz told her were lies, and he wondered if she ever checked to see if any of it was true. She seemed so trusting, but he knew she wasn’t.

She emerged from the bathroom nude, still rubbing her short blond hair dry with one of the hotel’s huge white towels. The brisk action with the towel made her breasts jiggle.

“Wanna come back to bed?” Renz asked, wondering if he’d be able to get it up again so soon after the last time.

“You’re insatiable.”

“For that I need inspiration,” Renz said, “and that would be you.”

Olivia smiled.

Still holding the towel, she walked over to the bed and kissed his forehead. He felt her bare nipple brush his arm.

“Really,” he said, “why don’t you hang around for a while? We can talk.”

“I would if I could, baby, but I promised a girlfriend I’d babysit her two kids for her.” She glanced over at the clock on the dresser. “And I’m running late already.”

Renz nodded and smiled. Oh, you beautiful liar.

He watched her finish getting dressed, and they kissed good-bye before she left.

Renz had over an hour before checkout time, so he lay back on the linens that still smelled of sex and rested peacefully, forgetting about the pressure on him from the pols and higher-ups, the sicko Daniel Danielle (Quinn’s problem), the blizzard of paperwork that was his constant annoyance, his plush but lonely penthouse apartment in the Financial District.

He thought only about Olivia and their relationship. About how they gave each other exactly what they both needed and didn’t ask too many questions, knowing the answers would be lies anyway.

What could be better than that?

Renz’s cell phone played a trumpet cavalry charge in his pants pocket. The trouble was, his pants were folded over the back of a chair across the room. He hesitated, then decided the call might be important and reached the phone in three large steps away from the bed, reaching it just before the charge was over. His pants dropped to the floor as he dragged the phone from their left-side pocket. They’d be wrinkled now, which irritated Renz.

He glanced down and saw that the call was from Q amp;A. Quinn.

When the connection was made, Renz said, “We need to make this fast, Quinn. I’m at a meeting.”

“Sure. Sal and Harold widened their canvass in Vess’s neighborhood and came up with a witness that saw a woman who came around the victim’s apartment.”

“You mean when the victim wasn’t home?”

“Could be,” Quinn said. “And her actions were furtive. What I want from you are some uniforms to really cover that neighborhood and see if anyone else has something to add. I’d like to put this woman with Vess, and maybe get a better description.”

“Whaddya need, six officers?”

“That would do it,” Quinn said, surprised by Renz’s generosity.

“Anything else?”

“No, I’ll let you get back to your meeting.”

“It’s over now,” Renz said, glancing down at his flaccid self. “But there’ll be another one pretty soon.”

Hanging up the phone, Quinn thought that was an odd thing for Renz to say. He supposed that as police commissioner, Renz’s life had become one meeting after another.

Renz had stepped out of the shower and was toweling himself dry when he heard his cell phone again. He’d brought the phone into the bathroom with him and rested it on the edge of the washbasin. The trumpet charge was deafening bouncing off all that tile.

He reached the phone with a wet hand and squinted at it to see who was calling. Quinn, maybe. Wanting something more.

But he saw that the caller wasn’t Quinn. It was an aide to the mayor, no doubt calling for a progress report on the Daniel Danielle investigation. Pressure, pressure.

Renz’s puffy cheeks rounded with his slight smile. He knew how to deflect pressure. And where to deflect it.

And who would feel it next.

The knocking on Neeve’s apartment door turned out to be a middle-aged man with the looks and bearing of someone thoroughly beaten down by life. He asked for Herb Moranis.

Neeve informed him that Moranis had lived on the first floor but moved away last month. He looked crestfallen, thanked her for the information, and walked meekly toward the stairs.

Neeve stood with her hand still on the knob of the closed door. See, what you were so afraid of? Nervous Neeve.

Someone had chided her with that long ago in her childhood. She couldn’t remember who.

Nervous Neeve.

“I’ve read about your organization in the papers,” Penny said.

Genna Sinclair, a stern-looking woman of forty-five who looked as if she should be carrying a yardstick and terrorizing students, smiled in a way that caused her chin to jut out and convey a definite menace. “Shadow Guardians is having an effect,” she said. “We make it safer for the individual police officer by phoning in crime as we see it develop. Our central office has direct lines to every precinct house in the city.”

Keeping her voice low, since they were in the library, Penny said, “But I don’t know exactly what you mean by crime developing.”

“Say someone is getting bullied on the subway and it looks as if it’s going to develop into a fight or beating. Or a car alarm goes off and you see someone walking away, and the owner of the car hurrying to catch up. Or someone has shoplifted something in a jewelry store and you know the store’s security is going to confront him on the sidewalk, and the security is an old man unarmed. Those kinds of things. You realize they happen more often than you think, once you learn to look for them. And if the police know soon enough about crimes developing-or just committed-they’ll be able to close on the spot sooner and in greater numbers, and be safer.” Genna tapped a button on the dark lapel of her business suit,

lettered SOONER IS S AFER.

“It makes sense,” Penny said.

“Too many cops get hurt or killed because they arrive on the scene without proper backup following in time. And when they get there one at a time, it emboldens the bad guys. A cop might be the only one who knows what’s going down, find himself alone and outnumbered, and bang.”

“That’s my recurring nightmare,” Penny said.

“You contacted us, so you must think our kind of organization is needed.”

“I saw you interviewed on TV and decided to look at your website.”

“And?”

“It seems to make sense.”

Genna flashed her indomitable chin-out smile. “You should come to one of our meetings, then make up your mind. If you think our police should be safer-”

“I do,” Penny interrupted. “My husband is a sort of cop.”

“Sort of?”

“He’s an ex-homicide detective. Now he’s private, with Quinn and Associates Investigations.”

Genna nodded. “Q and A.” She seeming impressed.

“In a way,” Penny said, “it’s more dangerous than regular police work.”

“Then you should definitely attend one of our meetings. We tend to snuff out violence before it has a chance to begin. Preventing violence is the key.”