John Lutz: Serial

The brownstone had been built in 1885, and it showed its age. Quinn had bought it with some of his settlement from the city. He’d seen it as an investment, and was rehabbing the upstairs, converting it to two spacious apartments that could be rented out to make the mortgage payments. However, if Pearl eventually moved in with him, only the top floor would be rented. The second floor, with its turned oak woodwork and beautiful original crystal chandelier, would be theirs on a daily basis.

Quinn had even from time to time considered offering one of the apartments to Pearl to rent. It would bring her physically closer. Another step toward them moving in together.

Sometimes even Quinn wondered if that eventuality was possible. He didn’t underestimate the obstacles.

He and Pearl were both difficult to live with, because neither could completely overlook the other’s faults.

Or maybe they were characteristics. Even virtues. Quinn was obsessive in his work, a solver of the human puzzle and a dedicated, even merciless hunter. He might have stepped from the pages of the Old Testament, only his religion was Justice. He was controlled and patient and relentless.

Pearl was equally obsessive about her work, but not as controlled, and certainly not as patient.

Quinn might be mistaken for a plodder, until you realized that not one step was wasted or taken in a wrong direction. Then you knew you were watching a deliberate, heat-seeking missile, and God help his target. When whoever he was hunting moved this way or that, Quinn could be fooled only for a short while. He was tireless, he was inexorable, and, ultimately, he could be deadly.

Pearl, on the other hand, seemed to have been born with a burr up every orifice. She was direct and tough, and her moods ranged all the way from irritated to enraged. While Quinn was slathering his phony Irish charm on a suspect, Pearl would be waiting to kick the suspect where it hurt the most. Suspects seemed to sense that.

Quinn went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and removed his boxy, size-twelve black shoes. Sometimes, in the faint glow of the nightlight, he would imagine that Pearl was there asleep. Though in her early forties, she looked almost like a child. Her raven black hair spread like a shadow on her pillow. Even in repose her strong features and dark eyebrows, her fleshy red lips, were vivid and gave Quinn moments of breathlessness. She was a small woman, slightly over five feet tall, but beneath the thin white sheet that covered her, the curves of her compact, buxom form were the timeless landscape of love. She was Quinn’s everywoman, yet he knew that in all the world there was no one else like her. She helped him to understand the contradictions and power that women held, though she might not completely understand them herself.

Their relationship, their love, was worth recovering. And once recovered, worth nurturing.

Quinn quietly stripped to his Jockey shorts, and slowly, so as not to wake the imaginary Pearl, moved to the other side of the bed and slipped beneath the sheet.

Am I going crazy? Do I love her this much? To construct her in my imagination when the logical me knows she isn’t here?

The bedroom was hushed but for the constant muted sounds of the city. The distant rush of traffic, punctuated by sirens and sometimes faraway human voices, filtered in from the world on the other side of the window.

There was a click, then a hum that built in volume and command. The window-unit air conditioner cycling on. Quinn felt cool air caress his leg beneath the sheet. He moved a bare foot outside the sheet, taking advantage of the breeze. He didn’t think the hum or sudden circulation of air would awaken Pearl. He remembered that usually she was a deep sleeper.

Pearl, who wasn’t there.

The phone rang at 2 A. M. Quinn fought his way awake and pressed the receiver to his ear. He hadn’t checked to see who was calling and was almost surprised to hear the real Pearl. But she was in the habit of sometimes calling him at odd hours.

Does she lie in bed and think about me? Does she construct an imaginary Quinn?

But that would mean-

“What’d Renz want?” she asked.

He swallowed the bitter taste along the edges of his tongue. “It’s past two o’clock, Pearl. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“I’m awake ’n so are you,” she said. “I don’t like it when I ask a question and the answer’s hours away.”

Quinn yawned, almost displacing his jaw. “Since we’re both awake, you wanna meet someplace for coffee, maybe go dancing?”

“Now you’re being a smart-ass.”

“Yes, I am. I guess it’s just in me.”

“Talk, Quinn.”

He talked. Knowing he’d never have a more attentive listener. When he was finished, Pearl said, “I don’t like anything about it except for the money.”

Quinn said, “I’m not thinking about the money.”

“Yeah. Renz needs it, and you have a mission, so we’re stuck with it.”

“We are. But it’s not such a bad thing, Pearl. Q and A doesn’t have anything else going at the moment. Because of the economy, maybe.”

“We’re supposed to be a recession-proof business.”

“Well, maybe we are. Maybe that’s why we’ve got poor Millie Graff.”

“Then it is, Quinn.”

“Is what?”

“Such a bad thing.”

“You’re exasperating, Pearl.”

“I guess it’s just in me.”

Quinn wondered if they would ever get to the point where their conversations didn’t turn into competitions.

“We’re gonna need sleep, Pearl. Breakfast at the diner?”

“Eight o’clock,” she said, and hung up.

Quinn squinted at the clock by the bed. He was wide awake now. Eight o’clock seemed an eternity away.

Over breakfast at the Lotus Diner-veggie omelet for Pearl, scrambled eggs and sausages for Quinn-Pearl said, “How are we going to play it today?”

“I’ll send Sal and Harold to meet with the liaison cop Renz is giving us. They can pick up whatever information the NYPD has. It’s still early for there to be much of that. Millie’s body’s barely cold.”

Pearl took a bite of egg-sheathed broccoli and chewed thoughtfully. She sipped her coffee, also thoughtfully. “Maybe this whole thing will be easier than we think. Could be Millie was having an affair with Philip Wharkin and he turned out to be a nutcase. They had an argument. Then everything went all pear shaped, as the British say. It was a one-off thing.”

Quinn looked at her. “You’ve been to England?”

“Been to the BBC.”

“Would it be that simple on the BBC?”

“Never. The inspector would have nothing to do.”

“There we are,” Quinn said.

“Where?”

“Pear shaped.”

They were finishing their second cups of coffee when Pearl’s cell phone sounded its four opening notes of the old Dragnet theme. She pulled the instrument from her purse and automatically flipped up the lid, completing the connection without thinking to check to see who was calling.

“Pearl? Are you there, dear? It’s important.”

“Hold on a minute,” Pearl said. She moved the phone well away from her, beneath the table. “It’s my mother, out at Golden Sunset,” she said to Quinn. “This is gonna take a while. Why don’t you go ahead without me and I’ll see you at the office.”

Pearl’s mother lived at Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey, only she didn’t quite see it as living.

“Tell her I said hello,” Quinn said, and took a last sip of coffee.

Pearl watched him pay at the cash register and wave at her as he walked from the diner.

“I’m back, Mom,” Pearl said. “Now what’s so important?”

“Did I hear that nice Captain Quinn, dear?”

“You did. He was just leaving. And he’s no longer a captain. What’s so-”