John Lutz - Serial

“Think we got the color right?” Quinn asked.

“I’m sure we did,” Pearl said, though she didn’t give a shit one way or the other. She knew it made Quinn happy when she went domestic on him and displayed interest in colors and furnishings. In truth she could barely remember the carpet color in her old apartment where she’d lived for years. She knew it had some kind of spatter design on it, but she wasn’t positive that wasn’t accidental and hadn’t accumulated over time.

“Then I’m sure,” he said.

“Sounds like closure,” she said.

He looked at her. She shrugged.

“Okay to step on it?” Quinn asked one of the workmen, a guy named Cliff who seemed always surly.

“That’s what it’s made for,” Cliff said, and continued crouched on the floor and banging a padded device with his knee to stretch the carpet.

Quinn wandered over to where the job supervisor, Wallace, was down on his hands and knees working the carpet to fit around the door to the next room.

Wallace glanced up and nodded to Quinn. “It’s going great,” he said, before Quinn could ask. He continued cutting the carpet before working it beneath the recently painted white baseboard.

Quinn felt a sudden chill. “What kind of knife is that you’re using?”

Something in Quinn’s voice made Wallace stop what he was doing and straighten up to a kneeling position. He held up the knife. It had a blunt wooden handle that looked something like the knob of a bedpost, and a sharply curved blade about five inches long.

“This is a carpet-tucking knife,” he said. “Looks somethin’ like a linoleum knife, only it’s not. It’s for fine work around baseboards and thresholds, anyplace that’s tricky and requires a touch.”

Pearl had seen what was going on and came over, her footfalls silent on the new carpet. “That looks sharp,” she said, pointing at the knife.

Wallace grinned. “Gotta be sharp. Carpet, and carpet pad, don’t cut easy, ’specially where you’re doin’ delicate work and can’t get a lotta muscle into it.”

Pearl said, “Jesus, Quinn.”

Wallace stared at her.

“Where would you buy a knife like that?” Quinn asked.

Wallace, still on his knees, shrugged. “Hardware store, I guess. Or commercial tool supplier. I bought this one years ago in New Jersey from some place that was goin’ outta business.”

“What’s a knife like that cost, Wallace?”

Wallace managed another kneeling shrug. “A good one, about fifty, sixty bucks. Thereabout.”

“I’ll give you seventy-five for that one.”

Wallace squinted one eye. What the hell was going on here? What was special about his carpet-tucking knife? “That’s too much, Mr. Quinn.”

Quinn smiled. “Okay. We can make it twenty-five.”

Wallace gave him a sly smile.

“Fifty,” Quinn said.

“I ain’t one to dicker,” Wallace said.

Quinn peeled the bills from his wallet and handed them to Wallace in exchange for the knife. Pearl watched Quinn’s jaw muscles work as he hefted the small but lethal instrument in his huge right hand.

“I can finish the job without it,” Wallace said. “Cliff’s got another one in his tool box.”

“Cheaper’n that one, too,” Cliff said. He kicked again with his knee at his padded carpet stretcher and gave Quinn a conspiratorial wink. “You can buy mine for twenty bucks.”

“Shoulda spoken up sooner,” Quinn said. He nodded to Wallace and moved toward the stairs. Pearl gave Cliff a hard look and followed.

Back in the kitchen, Quinn knocked back what was left of his warm beer and called Sal Vitali on Sal’s cell phone.

“Got a job for you and Harold,” Quinn said, when Sal had answered. “I want you to check on commercial and retail places that handle tools, building supplies.”

“What are we building?” Vitali asked in his gravelly voice.

“A case,” Quinn said. “Airtight.”

On the walk back to the office with Quinn, Pearl’s cell phone emitted its Dragnet theme alert. Still thinking about the carpet-tucking knife, which was wrapped in a paper towel and stuck in one of Quinn’s pockets, she flipped up the phone’s lid and answered without first checking caller ID.

When she saw that the call’s origin was Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey, it was too late. She was connected to her mother.

“Pearl, I was thinking about you, so I thought I should call.”

“I’m kind of busy, Mom. You know, this murderer…”

“Busy, shmizzy, when I heard about an offer that would change your world-and such a dangerous world-I knew it was a mother’s duty to make sure her loving daughter heard about it and might-”

“What sort of offer, Mom?”

“A job, dear.”

“I’ve got a job, Mom. In fact, right now I’m trying to do it.”

Quinn coughed. He would.

“Are you with the mensch Captain Quinn?”

“Matter of fact, yes. But he’s no longer a-”

“Longer shmonger. You could do much worse, Pearl. In fact you have.”

Pearl thought if her mother mentioned Yancy by name she’d hang up on her. Or break the connection. Whatever you did with cell phones.

“But that’s neither here nor anywhere, Pearl. The thing is, this is an interesting and well-paying position you are being offered that allows you to be out and about like you say you like to be as a policewoman.”

“Detective, Mom.”

“Deschmective.”

“Is that your mother?” Quinn asked, glancing over at Pearl.

Pearl nodded.

“Tell her I said hello.”

Hello, schmello, Pearl thought.

“I overheard,” Pearl’s mother’s voice said on the phone. “Tell the big mensch to marry my daughter. Stop this shacking up together that in God’s eyes, and the world’s, will shame you both as long as it continues. What are you two afraid of? Making a commitment to each other like your father and I made and the result-God bless-was you, Pearl?”

Quinn was grinning at Pearl. She wondered how he’d look with the phone in his mouth.

“Women your age, Pearl,” her mother said, “women still bursting with vitality, are not too old to bear children. But there is a natural order of things, Pearl, and shacking up is not an accepted part of it. However, grandchildren are.”

“For God’s sake, Mom! You know I still have my own apartment.”

“Where you are not often, considering how seldom the phone is answered. Maybe, God willing, Captain Quinn will gladly be part of a marriage with two wage earners in two separate jobs, both or neither of which would become nonexistent in a worsening economy. Add to this, of course, a small dependent.”

“I keep telling you, he’s no longer ‘Captain Quinn,’ Mom. You make him sound like a breakfast cereal.”

“He’s not a cereal, dear. He’s a property owner. Which, the moment of marriage to you, you yourself would become. Now this job that might be yours for the asking was told about to me by Mrs. Katzman, here at the nursing home-”

“Assisted living.”

“-but in the strictest confidence. The inside track would be yours because you would be working for Mrs. Katzman’s lovely son Aaron, who is a big producer.”

“Big how? Obese?”

“Pearl!”

“Sorry. What does he produce?”

“Plays, is what.”

“Broadway plays?”

“Close to Broadway. And he is in no way fat, but very trim and manly, except for the ponytail, and close to your age. He said to his mother, Ida Katzman, when I was showing them both your photograph-that one where you’re just climbing out of the swimming pool in a T-shirt and look just like Sophia Loren in-”

“I was eighteen when that was taken, Mom.”

“Nevertheless, what Aaron Katzman said when he saw that photo-and he said it as if he meant it-”