John Lutz - Darker Than Night

“And I’ve heard about you, Lieutenant.”

“Just Quinn will do. Officially, I’m only doing work-for-hire for the NYPD.” Quinn buttoned his sport coat to hide ketchup he’d already dribbled on his new tie. “So, everybody’s heard about everybody else, except maybe for some things I might tell you about Fedderman. And we all know why we’re meeting here.”

“Because your apartment’s a shit hole,” Pearl said.

Fedderman shook his head. “Pearl, dammit!”

“Mine’s a shit hole, too,” Pearl said. “Tiny, hot as hell, and thirsty for paint.”

“Roaches?”

“They won’t tolerate the place.”

Quinn grinned at her. She was still smiling, a dare in eyes black enough to have gotten her burned as a witch four hundred years ago. Probably, Egan would like to burn her now. There was something in her favor. What kind of pain is driving you?

“Am I the boss?” he asked her. “Or are we gonna have a contest?”

“It’d only be a waste of time,” Pearl said.

Quinn decided not to ask her what she meant. “You two go ahead and sit down,” he said. “I’ve been sitting awhile.”

When they were on the bench, Fedderman slouched with his legs apart. Pearl sat stiffly, with her notepad in her lap, looking as if she were about to take dictation.

Quinn told them what he’d learned from the Elzner murder file, and what he speculated.

Pearl made a few notes and listened intently. He got the impression her eyes might leave scars on him.

“The jam bothered me, too,” she said when he was finished. “An almost full jar in the refrigerator, and they bought two more identical jars when they went grocery shopping.”

“Which means they didn’t know how much jam they had,” Fedderman said, “or they were gonna hole up in their apartment for a few weeks and live on strawberry jam, or someone else did the shopping for them. Someone who didn’t know what kinds of foods they were out of.”

“Or someone who thought they just couldn’t have enough gourmet jam,” Pearl said. “I lean toward your possibility number three, that somebody else bought the groceries.”

Fedderman leaned forward and scratched his left ankle beneath his sock. Quinn wondered if he still wore a small-caliber revolver holstered to his other ankle. He looked up at Quinn, still scratching. “So, we working on the assumption somebody killed both Elzners?”

“It’s the only assumption we’ve got, “Pearl said, “if you don’t want to finish your career doing crap assignments, I don’t want to be out of work, and Quinn doesn’t want to go back to being a-”

“Pariah,” Quinn finished for her.

She nodded. “Okay, pariah. I like that. It’s so Christian.”

“It isn’t biblical,” Fedderman said, “it’s ancient Greek.”

She stared at him. “That true?”

“I have no idea. You’re so naive, Pearl.”

“That I doubt,” Quinn said. He made a show of glancing at his watch. “So as of now, we’re on the job.”

“We don’t have anything new to work with,” Fedderman pointed out.

“Then we’ll work with what we have. Again. You two go back over the evidence and see if there’s anything I missed. Then we’ll talk to the Elzners’ neighbors again. Anyone in the adjoining buildings who might have seen anything. See if there wasn’t a dog that didn’t bark in the night, that kinda thing. You do the murder file again, Pearl. Fedderman and I will work on the witnesses.”

Pearl looked as if she might say something about being assigned to paperwork, but she held inside whatever words she wanted to speak. She knew Quinn was assessing her, testing her. Something told her it was one of the most important tests she’d ever have to pass.

“We’ll meet back here at six this evening. If it’s raining, the meet’ll be at the Lotus Diner on Amsterdam.”

“That place is a ptomaine palace,” Pearl said.

“I know,” Quinn said. “I chose it because I don’t think it’s gonna rain. Where’s your unmarked?”

“Parked over on Central Park West,” Fedderman said.

“Let’s go, then. Pearl can drop us off at the Elzners’ building, then take the car on to the precinct house and get busy with the murder file.”

Pearl and Fedderman stood up. Fedderman stretched, extending his back and flailing his arms, which still looked abnormally long even though he’d put on weight. Then he and Pearl walked in the warming sun toward Quinn. They all knew they were probably wasting their time, but nobody objected.

Quinn was pleased with the way their first meeting had gone. Beneath the bullshit and hopeless humor was the beginning of mutual understanding, maybe even respect.

Maybe the beginning of a team.

He lay curled in a corner, a folded white cloth clutched in his left hand. He was smiling.

Slowly he raised the saturated cloth to his nose and inhaled deeply of the benzene fumes. Benzene was a solvent not often used these days, but he’d become accustomed to it a long time ago, adapted to it. His drug of choice for the visions and memories long and short.

He inhaled again, his eyelids fluttering. He was back in the Elzners’ kitchen, carefully, silently, removing groceries from plastic bags and placing them on the table before putting them away. As usual, he was wearing flesh-colored latex gloves. He giggled, looking down at them in his dream; they were like real fingers, only without fingernails. He reached for the tuna can.

And there was Martin Elzner, the husband. This time he’d been willed there, but he appeared as he had that night-that early morning. Elzner was stunned, his mouth hanging open, surprise, anger, fear…all flashing like signs in his eyes. His sandy hair was mussed from turning in his sleep. Had it actually stood up in points like that? It made him look even more astounded to find this stranger in his kitchen, busy at a domestic task.

The stranger-who wasn’t a stranger-set the tuna can on the table. The husband’s sudden presence in the dim kitchen was a surprise to him, too. Yet not exactly a surprise. He was doomed to disappointment and betrayal and knew this could happen, would happen, and he was prepared for it. Wanting it?

He smiled.

He inhaled.

Back to Elzner, too astounded even to speak. More fear in his eyes as he saw the gun with its bulky silencer. A terrible understanding. He grimaced and turned sideways, raising a hand as if to wave some irritating insect away if it buzzed near again. Death could be such a pest.

Step close… Don’t shoot the hand… They must think he died last…a suicide, poor deranged creature.

The betrayer would die second.

Close enough. Up came the gun, steady in seconds, inches from his head. The satisfying putt! of the silenced gun, like a tiny engine trying once to turn over. Martin Elzner, down with a loud double thumping sound on the kitchen floor.

Backward, step backward, as it actually occurred. The choreography of dreams.

A sudden clattering. His free hand had brushed the tuna can near the edge of the table. As it actually occurred. If the sound of Elzner hitting the floor hadn’t awakened his wife, the can striking and rolling across the tiles would.

He inhaled. He wondered if the tiles had been damaged. The floor was actually quite attractive. An unusual beige with flecks of-

Enough. There she was as she’d been, standing in the doorway with the sudden alteration of her life, the cancellation of her past and future, all on her face. They knew. They always knew.

His hand not clutching the cloth moved down to his crotch as she instinctively lurched toward her fallen husband, her true love, her only, her lifemate, her deathmate, drawing her, drawing her, gravitation, the inevitable physics of love, the end of love…