John Lutz - Urge to Kill

She withdrew the single white sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it. Held it in a trembling hand and read…

She couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes skipped from line to line, from checked box to checked box, always focusing on the word benign.

Breathing more easily than she had for weeks, she leaned back in the sofa cushions and looked at the ceiling, saying the word aloud: “Benign.”

She read the pathology report again. And again. Each time liberated her anew. It was actually true that the mole had been benign, had been…a beauty mark.

Yes, a beauty mark!

But something was impinging on her binge of relief, on her new freedom from impending fatal illness, and it didn’t take Pearl long to figure out what it was.

She felt herself getting angry. Those, those, those…she would never be able to forgive her mother, Mrs. Kahn, and most of all that bastard Milton Kahn, for deliberately frightening her about the mole.

About death.

She knew exactly what she would do. She’d make copies of this pathology report, with the word benign underlined wherever it appeared. She would mail copies to her mother, to Mrs. Kahn, and to Milton Kahn.

She would do it immediately.

Then, maybe, she’d feel better.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and made her jump. She pulled it out, flipped it open, and saw that Quinn was calling her.

“Pearl,” he said, when she’d made the connection and said hello, “Feds isn’t coming by for you this morning. He’s going to meet with Vitali and Mishkin alone. I’m on the way to pick you up. Should be there in about five minutes.”

“This a date?” she asked. Why am I always such a wise ass?

“Yeah. We’re gonna double with Renz and Helen the profiler.”

“I’m trying to imagine them as a romantic couple,” Pearl said.

“Don’t. Please. Just be ready.”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting out front.”

“You read the Times this morning?”

“No. I usually get one out of a machine.”

“Well, you can read mine on the way to see Renz.”

Pearl felt her pulse pick up. Her anger, the pathology report, were forgotten. “Something moving?”

“Something’s moving,” Quinn said, and ended the conversation.

Renz, in his overheated, tobacco-scented office, had today’s Times lying on his desk, flipped to the open letter from the. 25-Caliber Killer to Quinn.

The reply to Quinn’s letter was short and to the point:

Captain Quinn:

What is happening now in this city isn’t hunting, isn’t dueling, isn’t sport. It is murder. We are both civilized men. We are both, in our own ways, hunters. As it was probably destined to do since the beginning, our contest has developed into a mutual hunt. In the stalking of truly dangerous game, hunter and prey become indistinguishable. You will soon receive a package from me. It contains a. 25-caliber Springbok revolver. We both know what it means.

I wish you luck.

The. 25-Caliber Killer

Renz passed copies of the page around so that everyone else in the office-Quinn, Pearl, Vitali, Mishkin, and Helen the profiler-could read it, whether for the first time or again.

Helen smiled and said, “It worked.”

Renz looked at Quinn from behind his desk. “Are you ready for this?”

“Of course I am.”

“You shouldn’t do this, Quinn,” Pearl said, ignoring the astounded look Renz gave her.

“We didn’t set this up to waste time,” Renz said. “He has to do it, for his own reasons.”

“He’s right,” Quinn said. “And I have to do it without NYPD protection the killer might spot. This is an opportunity we can’t risk screwing up.”

“You’re playing a game with your life, Quinn!”

“It’s a game I’m forced to play.”

Pearl gave him a dark, probing stare. “This is some kind of honor thing with you, right?”

“Not entirely.”

“Don’t take the honor part of it lightly,” Helen told Pearl.

Pearl ignored her. “Your job is to catch a killer, Quinn, not risk your life in some archaic macho game that you have to play by the rules.”

“It amounts to the same thing, Pearl. If the killer realizes I’m not playing the game honestly, he’ll simply back off and continue what he’s been doing. I have to do this on the up and up with him, and alone.”

“That’s how it is, Pearl,” Renz said.

Pearl looked at Sal Vitali, who shrugged. His partner Mishkin did the same.

“Bullshit! Mano-a-mano bullshit!” Pearl said. She looked at Renz appealingly. “At least give him some protection.”

“I can’t do that,” Renz said. “If protection was spotted this would all be for nothing.”

“He really can’t,” Helen added, defending Renz.

“Listen-”

Quinn rested a big hand on Pearl’s shoulder and gave her a warning look. She was losing this argument and knew it, and fell silent.

“I’ll issue the order,” Renz said. “No one is to talk to the media, or to interfere in the hunt. I mean no one.”

“Male-pattern madness!” Pearl said under her breath.

“Something more than that,” Quinn told her.

After leaving Renz’s office, on the walk back to where the Lincoln was parked in the sun, Quinn said, “Whatever happened with that mole of yours, Pearl?”

“Mole? It turned out to be nothing. No big deal.”

“Good. I figured that’s how it’d go.” Not even breaking stride. Making business-as-usual small talk.

Pearl stepped out and moved around to block Quinn’s path.

She looked him in the eye the way she sometimes regarded suspects.

“You can’t actually do this thing with the killer,” she said.

“I agreed to it.”

“Oh, so what? At least take an extra weapon. Something more than that ancient South African peashooter.”

“Time to drop the subject, Pearl. I mean it.”

She stalked off, bouncing in a way that attracted a lot of male attention.

“Pearl! Get in the goddamned car.”

She stopped and turned. There was a stiffness to her features caused by more than anger. She was almost, but not quite, crying. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Where you going, Pearl?” Quinn’s tone was softer now.

“To copy and mail something. I feel I have to do it. No choice. It involves life instead of death.”

Quinn watched her walk away, wondering what she’d meant. Then he opened the Lincoln’s door and felt heat roll out. He got in and sat with the engine running and the air conditioner blasting, watching Pearl through the windshield until she disappeared among a throng of people who’d just crossed with the traffic light.

Pearl talk, he figured, and fastened his safety belt.

Quinn sat with Zoe at a corner table in Hammacher’s, a German restaurant on the East Side. It was a place that afforded privacy, with high-backed wooden booths and lots of cloth and green carpeting to mute sound so voices wouldn’t carry. Deals legal and illegal were made here.

Quinn had courted some of his upper-echelon snitches in Hammacher’s, but hadn’t visited the restaurant in over a year. Nothing had changed. Still the hushed ambience, still the elderly waiters who kept their distance unless summoned, and still the indefinable mingled scents of spices, boiled sauerkraut, and something else that almost made the eyes water.

They’d both ordered German draft beers with unpronounceable names and the sauerbraten special and were waiting for their food to arrive, their gigantic frosted mugs of beer in front of them. No one was seated within twenty feet of their booth.

Zoe had on one of her psychoanalyst outfits. A light gray blazer over a white blouse, a blue skirt of modest length. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, which only tended to make her look younger. There was a frankness and receptiveness about her features. Patients might tell her everything.