John Lutz - Serial

He watched Pearl work for a few seconds before he walked away, thinking she was probably an inch away from climbing all over him for getting Lido drunk again. Thinking how much he loved her and wondering why.

Wondering if there was a cure.

Here they were, meeting again. This time for breakfast.

Fedderman sat across from Penny Noon in the Silver Star Diner on Columbus near West Seventy-eighth Street. They were in a window booth with a clear view of the busy sidewalk on the other side of the sun-heated glass. Fedderman had breakfast there often and knew the food was good, just in case Penny’s request for hot tea or coffee led to a dinner…

A dinner what? A date? That might not be considered ethical.

Well, so what? She just came in to the city to ID a body. She isn’t a suspect. Like when Pearl-

“I think I’ll go with tea,” Penny said, interrupting Fedderman’s misgivings. Well, almost misgivings.

The waiter, a skinny little guy with an impressive black mustache, walked over to their booth and they ordered pancakes and tea for Penny, and scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee for Fedderman.

When the waiter had gone, leaving them alone, Fedderman, not knowing what else to say, nodded toward his coffee cup and said, “I drink too much of the stuff.”

“So why don’t you cut back?”

“We call it cop pop,” Fedderman said. “I’m afraid I’m addicted.”

Why am I boring this woman with this banal crap? What must she think of me?

“Are you a fashion designer, too?” Fedderman the sparkling conversationalist asked, no doubt reminding her of her sister, whom they’d recently seen dead at the morgue. Not to mention that Penny was dressed today in faded jeans and a clean-looking but slightly threadbare sleeveless blouse.

He sighed hopelessly and grinned. Honesty was the best policy. He knew that. He was a cop. “You’ve gotta excuse me for making an ass of myself. I’m not used to talking to attractive women under these circumstances unless it might lead to me putting the cuffs on them.”

No! I didn’t mean it that way.

“Well, there’s a novel approach,” she said.

She stared at him seriously, smiled, and then laughed an abandoned, throaty laugh that he liked a lot.

Their conversation yesterday in a Starbucks a few blocks from the morgue had been strained and not without Penny’s tears. She’d told Fedderman she was surprised by how deeply depressed she felt, since she and the victim hadn’t been all that close.

That was something Fedderman decided to explore, now that Penny was less depressed. And it pertained to the case, lending to his comforting delusion that he was working here.

“You mentioned yesterday that you and Nora weren’t all that close.”

“This gonna be Q and A?” Penny asked.

Fedderman was surprised. Then he said, “That’s what we call our business sometimes, for Quinn and Associates Investigations.” He smiled. “We do Q and A, Penny, but that’s not what I’m doing this morning.”

“You’re taking a break from the case?”

“A short one. With you.”

“Your boss Quinn is an impressive man, but he’s also frightening.”

“He’s on the hunt,” Fedderman said. The last thing he wanted was to talk about Quinn.

The waiter came and Penny added cream to her tea and then stirred in the contents of a pink packet of sweetener.

“I suppose Nora and I weren’t close because we were ten years apart,” she said. “Our father left us a few days after Nora was born. He was an NYU professor who ran off to Mexico with one of his students. A month later they were both killed when a bus they were in ran through a barrier and rolled down a mountainside.”

“Still,” Fedderman said, “Nora was your blood relation. That means something.”

“Apparently it does,” she said. He thought she was near tears again, but this morning she disdained them. “We only saw each other on holidays or other family get-togethers. About five years ago, my mother died of pneumonia, and I doubt if Nora and I saw each other half a dozen times after the funeral.”

He sipped his coffee and watched her over the arc of the cup rim.

She managed a smile and sniffled. “But what you say is true-blood relationships mean something. Yesterday was harder than I anticipated.”

“Identifications of homicide victims are never easy,” he said.

She nodded. “But it’s over.” She drew a deep breath and smiled with a brightness that startled him.

They talked for several hours after that, about everything but Nora Noon and what had happened to her. They talked about each other. Fedderman learned that Penny had backpacked through Europe after college and wanted to return someday to Paris. Penny learned that Fedderman had been a widower for years but still awoke some mornings reaching across the bed for his wife.

Fedderman was still halfway convinced he was working. You never knew, he told himself, when something seemingly unrelated would strike a chord and prove useful.

“Why did you leave Florida?” she asked.

“It was paradise at first, but I got tired of it. So I came back here to do what I’ve done all my life.”

“Try to find the bad guys?”

“Find them and take them down,” Fedderman said. A little romance and excitement wouldn’t hurt here. He was getting his footing.

The waiter came over and refreshed their drinks. Penny dropped her soggy tea bag back in her cup and played with the tag and string, as if she were carefully maneuvering a tiny fish she’d just hooked.

“You never did answer me when I asked about what you did,” Fedderman said. “I’ll bet it’s something interesting. Maybe even dangerous.” He didn’t want her to think he was bragging too much, what with his taking down the bad guys remark.

“I’m a librarian.”

“Seriously?” He sat back and stared at her, immensely pleased, as if he’d never before laid eyes on a real librarian.

“I’m seriously a librarian. At the Albert A. Aal Memorial Library on East Fifty-third Street.”

“Right here in New York?”

“Uh-huh. I carpool in from New Jersey.”

“That explains it. You’re obviously smart.”

“Because I carpool?”

“No, no, the librarian part.”

“Ah,” she said, and sipped her tea. “I’m impressed that you’re impressed.”

“What exactly does a librarian do these days?” Fedderman asked. “I mean, what with all the electronic readers and such?”

“Sometimes I think we mostly sit around and wait to become obsolete,” she said. “People still do read paper and print books, and a lot of them. But once we computerized our system, librarians started becoming less necessary.”

“Damned computers,” he said.

“They must make your job easier.”

“Like they make yours easier.”

“I bet all those rich widows in Florida were always after you,” Penny said.

Fedderman fought hard not to blush. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

She fiddled around with her tea bag some more.

“I believe that if I were a rich widow, I’d notice you,” she said.

He smiled. “I’d be honored to be noticed.”

They sat silently for a while, Fedderman looking at Penny, and her staring in the direction of the window but obviously looking inward. The sun coming through the glass laced her streaked blond hair with highlights and lit up her eyes. Pensive eyes. So calm and considering.

Fedderman realized it didn’t really matter what they talked about. They were for some reason comfortable in each other’s presence. Dinner wouldn’t be a bad idea, he decided. A date.

“What are you thinking about?” Fedderman asked.

“The Dewey decimal system.”