John Lutz - Urge to Kill

Thinking Berty might still be having trouble hearing him, the man raised his hand and made a shooting gesture with thumb and forefinger.

Berty nodded and grinned.

A duel. Wouldn’t that be something?

Pearl felt better, almost exhilarated. Finally she’d taken some action and stopped being a verbal punching bag for her mother, not to mention the target of harassment by Mrs. Kahn and her damned nephew Milton.

Unable to get a morning appointment with a new dermatologist, recommended by the phone book, Pearl had been pleasantly surprised when a Dr. Eichmann’s assistant told her there’d been a cancellation and the doctor could see her late this afternoon if possible about the growth behind her ear.

Quinn, working hard at his desk, had been sympathetic (“Go. Then maybe you’ll shut up about the damned thing.”), and she’d left the West Seventy-ninth Street office early.

Dr. Eichmann, an affable older man with tousled gray hair, examined the subject of concern with thoroughness and care. He poked and probed and observed and told Pearl that what she was so worried about appeared to be a simple nevus, or mole.

“Has it changed shape or color recently,” he asked. “Or grown larger?”

“I don’t know for sure. I look at it in the mirror sometimes and think it has.”

“Where it is, I’m surprised you can see it in the mirror.”

“It isn’t easy.”

“Uh-huh.” He gave her a nice bedside-manner smile. “Melanocytes sometimes cluster and create moles,” he explained, while Pearl stared at him blankly. “Some appear dysplastic and potentially dangerous.” He patted her arm. “But this one is probably benign.”

Probably? “So it’s nothing to lose sleep over?” Pearl asked.

“Not unless you choose to. It shouldn’t be a cause for concern. But since it obviously has been, I’ll remove it and send it away for biopsy and you can know for sure and put any fears you might have to rest.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m a hypochondriac.”

“You’re a woman with a mole,” he said.

He advised her that what he was going to do would hurt a little, and it did.

“Soon as the results of the biopsy are in, I’ll contact you,” he assured her. “Meanwhile, not to worry.”

She thanked the doctor and paid at the front desk on her way out.

How simple it had all been. Now she had a square, flesh-colored bandage where the mole used to be, and she felt good about it. Felt good about herself. It was almost as if, somehow, she’d had Dr. Milton Kahn surgically removed from her life.

But on the sweltering subway ride to the stop near her apartment, squeezed into a seat next to a man who smelled as if he’d vomited on himself, Pearl began to worry.

Dr. Eichmann had said probably. No way was that the same as definitely.

And if the mole was so obviously harmless, why had he removed it and sent it away for a biopsy? Why had she chosen from the dozens of dermatologists in the phone directory one named Eichmann, the same name as that of the infamous Nazi who’d been executed for World War II concentration camp horrors? What might her mother think about that? What might Quinn’s shrink friend, Dr. Zoe Manders, think about it? Why should Pearl care?

What she should do, she told herself, as the smelly man next to her deliberately shifted his weight so his arm rested against her breast, what she should do is take Dr. Eichmann’s advice and not worry about the results of the biopsy.

As the subway train growled and squealed to a halt at her stop, she freed herself from entanglement with the vomity-smelling man and elbowed her way off the train and onto the crowded platform. She joined the other sheep, herded by painted yellow arrows and habit, in their trudge toward the exit stairs ascending to dying sunlight and lengthening shadows.

It was amazing, she thought, how positive she’d felt when she’d left Dr. Eichmann’s office and how depressed she felt now. What had caused such deterioration in her feeling of well being?

But she knew the cause. It wasn’t the sweltering subway ride or the man who smelled of vomit, though surely he’d played a small role.

Though she might blame other people, the real cause of her depression of the last several weeks had been herself. Her re actions to their actions.

I did it to myself.

It wasn’t them; it was me. I did it to myself.

They made me do it to myself.

Quinn and his detectives reinterviewed everyone connected to the Becker and Rhodes murders. They could find no connections between the two men, no connection between any two people who knew both men. Had the Becker and Rhodes murders both been hunts? Duels?

“Now we’ve got something,” Fedderman finally said at the end of a dreary, unproductive day.

“What would that be?” Quinn asked.

“Whole bunch of questions,” Fedderman said.

“Ballistics wasn’t certain,” Pearl said. “Maybe the gun found on Rhodes didn’t kill Becker.”

“The maid at the Antonian Hotel,” Fedderman said. “Rosa Pajaro. She might know more than she’s telling. She’s scared. Maybe of something worse than losing her job or being deported.”

“Think she’s still working there?” Pearl asked.

“It’s questionable,” Fedderman said.

A phone call answered the question. Rosa Pajaro had collected her paycheck and disappeared from the Antonian without giving notice two days ago. A follow-up phone call revealed that she’d also left her basement apartment without bothering to notify the landlord.

“Scared, all right,” Pearl said. “Probably all the way back to Puerto Rico.”

“Mexico,” Fedderman said.

“Probably happened when she saw Thomas Rhodes’s photo on TV news or in the paper,” Quinn said, “and she realized she was a key witness in a murder case.”

“Can’t blame her,” Fedderman said.

“We don’t know enough to blame anyone for anything,” Pearl said.

Chain lightning danced in the darkening sky.

Lavern stood in the heat outside the Broken Wing Women’s Shelter and felt a few droplets of moisture on her face, one on her eyelash, another on the bridge of her nose. Maybe it was going to rain and bring relief from the heat. Maybe not. The city might be once again toying with its people. The way Hobbs sometimes toyed with her.

She unconsciously raised a hand and felt the new bruises on her left cheekbone, another farther down on the side of her jaw. Hobbs hadn’t broken her skin. He was good at what he did and didn’t want to draw suspicion. Her makeup did a fair enough job of covering these latest of Lavern’s facial bruises, from a distance.

Her left side hurt badly enough that she favored it and walked with a slight limp. When she’d left the apartment, she hadn’t known where that limp would take her. Now, standing and staring at the shelter, she realized Broken Wing had been her destination from the beginning.

The sturdy brick building with its line of dormers seemed to call to her more strongly every time she passed it. It was like a fortress with a pale concrete stoop and solid wood double doors. Each door had a large brass knocker beneath a small leaded glass window. There was black iron grillwork over the ground-floor windows. The building didn’t look as if it could be easily broken into. A person might feel safe there.

Lavern leaned against a NO PARKING sign and sighed. She knew that a person couldn’t stay inside Broken Wing forever. That was the problem. She’d heard about women who’d found refuge there and stayed for months, and then left only to be reclaimed by their patiently waiting abusers.

Lavern knew Hobbs was patient.

He would wait.

She took a final glance at the thick wooden doors that would provide protection for only so long; then she limped away along the sidewalk. Lightning still flickered and charged patches of purple sky between the tall buildings, but whatever breath of air there’d been had now ceased. No more tentative raindrops found their way to earth. It wasn’t going to rain this evening. It had been a trick. Life was a damned trick, a painful practical joke.