John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“You two,” said the silhouette to Vitali and Mishkin, “keep hard at the Slicer killings and report anything pertinent to Quinn. Have you got anything on the Vera Doaks murder?”

“She’s still dead,” Vitali said.

Here was a man, Quinn thought, without much of a future in the NYPD. But he was feeling a growing fondness for Vitali.

“If you’re contacted by any of the media,” said the silhouette, unfazed by sarcasm, “don’t talk to them. I mean that. Tell them zilch.”

“Even Cindy Sellers?” Fedderman asked.

The silhouette stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if this was more sarcasm. “Especially Sellers. I’ll be the one to decide what she does or doesn’t know, and when she knows it.”

“Or doesn’t,” Quinn heard Pearl say beneath her breath. He hoped this meeting would end before she decided to jump in with Vitali and Fedderman and gang up on Renz. She could be captive to pack mentality.

The silhouette stood up and walked out from behind the desk, passing into the light and becoming Renz. “That’s it for now,” he said. “I’ve gotta meet soon with one of the mayor’s aides. Keep the information flowing to me and to each other.”

The five detectives assured Renz that they would and he politely, but hurriedly, ushered them from his office.

Outside the building, in the glare of the already hot morning, Vitali put on a pair of fashionably tiny sunglasses and said, “Have you ever heard such bullshit?”

“Oh, sure,” Quinn said. “But call me if you do have something on our murderous multitasker.”

“I’ll let you know if we apprehend either of his personalities,” Vitali said.

He and Mishkin got into their unmarked, which was a later model than Quinn and his team had arrived in, and drove away. Mishkin smiled and gave them a slight wave through the passenger-side window.

“Vitali is obviously the wiseass of the two,” Pearl said.

“I know Mishkin,” Fedderman said. “He’s almost mute and might faint at the sight of blood, but don’t sell him short, even in a down market.”

Pearl said, “Is the trail leading us to Wall Street?”

“Drive me back to the office and my car,” Quinn said, “then Feds can take the unmarked and interview the hotel employees again. You and I, Pearl, will talk to Becker’s widow.”

Nerves were frayed, after the meeting with Renz. It was best to split these two up.

Quinn and Pearl’s conversation with Floyd Becker’s widow, a hefty, brunette with a bright pink face, yielded little of value other than to confirm that Becker was, like earlier. 25-Caliber Killer victims, an avid hunter.

“He even has a lion,” the widow had said. “Or what’s left of one. It’s down in basement storage someplace. For years we used it as a rug, complete with the head.”

Pearl thought about that as she and Quinn drove through noontime Manhattan traffic toward the Antonian Hotel to join forces with Fedderman. She didn’t know people still used animal skins for rugs. Wouldn’t that prompt some kind of social outrage? It should, Pearl thought. In fact she felt quite vehement about it. She glanced down at her leather shoes, felt slightly foolish, then promptly righted herself and maintained her indignation. People needed shoes, damn it! They didn’t need rugs. Especially rugs with heads on them.

“Wanna stop for some lunch?” Quinn asked.

“No. Not hungry.”

Quinn glanced over at her as he drove. “You okay, Pearl?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she snapped.

“I dunno. You look…angry.”

“What I’d like to do,” she said “is catch this asshole we’re after and have him made into a rug, head and all.”

“We’re pretty much of the same mind on that,” Quinn told her.

“What’s a lion but a big cat?”

“It’s a big cat,” Quinn said, making a right on Broadway.

He drove silently for a while, thinking, with Pearl fuming beside him.

She was a puzzle he’d never solve. Was that why he couldn’t shake her from his dreams?

Later that day, Terri and Richard were eating lunch at Kazinski’s on the Upper West Side. Terri was picking daintily at a romaine and walnut salad while Richard wolfed down his goulash.

She hadn’t mentioned the hook in the bathroom ceiling. Hadn’t thought it worth mentioning. When she saw the super she’d ask what it was for. Maybe to hang a bicycle by one of its wheels, get it out of the way for when guests came over. Not a bad idea for a tiny Manhattan apartment. Close the shower curtain and no one would ever guess they were sharing a bathroom with a Schwinn.

“I love to order goulash,” Richard Crane said. “You never know what you’re going to get.”

Terri grinned and took a sip of her Chianti. “You obviously approve of that version.”

“Yes. It’s delicious. But maybe that’s because I’m with you.”

How can he always know exactly the right thing to say?

Terri had called Office Tech that morning and told them she wasn’t feeling well. She was out of sick days, so the store manager allowed her to use one of her vacation days and said he hoped she’d feel better.

She’d felt like telling him she’d never felt better in her life, but instead politely closed the lid of her cell phone and continued her walk through the park with Richard Crane.

They’d played all morning, enjoying each other like lovers who’d been separated by life and somehow found each other. Maybe that’s what they were, Terri thought. Maybe Richard was right in saying some things were predestined. Wasn’t the study of genetics making that more and more obvious?

Human beings were so mysterious, Terri thought. So unpredictable. Didn’t that make life wonderful?

Lavern winced as her friend Bess touched a damp washrag to the cut near her left eye. Bess held the washrag out and glanced at the blood, shook her head.

“This is happening more often,” she said. There was anger in her voice.

Lavern could only nod. One of Hobbs’s glancing blows had caught her in her throat, and it was still sore.

“You gotta do something,” Bess said. “Make some kinda move.”

Lavern began to cry. Bess touched the cool washrag to her injured eye again, and both women sat motionless for a while.

“Men,” Bess said, finally. “They’re never what we expect.”

“Neither are we what they expect,” Lavern said hoarsely.

“So everything’s our fault?”

“Only most of the time,” Lavern said.

Bess looked at her. “So you’re goin’ back to that piece of shit again?”

“Yeah. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call him that.”

“Ah, Lavern…”

“Really,” Lavern said, and coughed, choking.

Now Bess began to cry.

Richard forked in some more goulash. “Would you like more bread?” he asked, while pouring her more wine.

She looked up from the topped-off wineglass and smiled. “Are you trying to get me drunk so you can take me home and have wild sex with me?”

“More like relaxed sex.”

“No,” she said.

He frowned.

“On the bread, I mean.”

He grinned and somehow managed to add even more wine to her glass.

After lunch Terri went to the ladies’ room and was surprised when she returned to find Richard holding a brown paper sack. He’d gone to the bar section of Kazinski’s and bought a bottle of wine.

“Chardonnay this time,” he said. “A particularly good vintage.”

“Are you a wine expert?” Terri asked, as they left the restaurant and began walking through the warm afternoon toward a subway stop where a train would carry them south.

“Like everybody else,” Richard said. He was joking, but Terri got the idea that he did know about wine. She suspected that Richard knew quite a lot about a number of things but was too polite to parade his knowledge.