John Lutz - Serial

“Yes. ‘You deserve it.’”

“Anything else?” he asked again. You never knew.

Free smiled. “Wanna share a joint?”

Quinn’s face gave him away. She had him.

“Just kidding,” she said.

“I knew that.”

“Yeah, you did. But I was just thinking how I know a lot about guns, and somebody gets murdered next door with a knife.”

“Funny world,” Quinn said.

“Not so funny.”

“You just offered a cop a joint.”

“Nobody laughed.”

“Peace,” Quinn said.

As Quinn waited for Fedderman to meet him down in the building’s vestibule, he thought that if they needed to talk to Free again, he’d send Pearl.

Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman were in the office later that day when the door opened and an emaciated-looking man in his forties burst in and stood swaying. He was average height and dressed in dirty gray pinstripe suit pants and a jacket that almost matched them. His white shirt was yellowed, his tie loosely knotted and layered with stains. His shoes were scuffed and one of them was untied. He made Fedderman look like a clotheshorse.

The man steadied himself by resting one dirty hand against the wall and said, “Quinn.” His gaze roamed redeyed around the room.

“You’re drunk,” Pearl said. “Get the hell out of here.”

“I’m drunk, asshole, but I’m not going nowhere till I find Quinn.”

“I’m here and I’m found,” Quinn said. He stood up and moved around his desk, peering at the man. From the corner of his eye he saw Fedderman also stand, in case the obviously inebriated visitor started trouble.

“I’ll asshole you,” Pearl said, and came up out of her chair.

Quinn raised a hand and she stopped. Something was going on here beyond a drunk finding his way through an unlocked door.

The man removed his hand from the wall, leaving a dark smudge, and stood almost humbly before Quinn.

“I know you,” Quinn said. “Jerry Lido.” He saw again the young, uniformed cop standing frozen by fear against a brick wall, watching a child burn.

“I didn’t wanna come here at first,” Lido said. “Wasn’t sure what was gonna happen. Were you gonna listen to me or beat the shit outta me?”

“I’ll listen,” Quinn said. He wasn’t sure how to feel about Lido. He abhorred what the man had done-rather not done. On the other hand, how could he not feel sorry for him? Quinn had suffered debilitating guilt because he hadn’t at first seen the infant in the car seat. What had guilt done to Lido?

“I don’t feel like I deserve a chance,” Lido said, “but here I am anyway.”

“Why?”

For a few seconds Lido looked as if he was wondering that, too. “You mighta heard I got interested in computers, got good at using one.”

“I heard you were a genius at using one, sometimes illegally, but you were too smart to get caught.”

Lido chanced a rueful smile. “Too smart to admit it, too.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “So why did you look me up?”

“I saw in the paper what happened to Millie Graff,” Lido said. He writhed slowly as he spoke, as if suffering great internal pain. “Wanted to do something about it, so I read all about the case in the news. Then talked to some guys I know who are still in the NYPD. Then I set to work with my computer. You’re looking at a man who don’t have shit, Quinn-except for my tech equipment. I spent every dime I begged or borrowed on that, and I can work it like I’m conducting an orchestra. You wouldn’t believe-”

“Let’s get to the point, Jerry.”

Lido moved farther into the office and was standing near Pearl’s desk. “I worked the Net, learned something about Philip Wharkin. You gotta-” As he spoke he gesticulated with his left arm and knocked Pearl’s empty coffee mug off her desk. It bounced loudly on the floor but didn’t break.

“Clumsy alky!” Pearl said, her temper flaring. She stood and reached over her desk, shoving Lido backward.

Lido knocked her hand away. “Don’t you ever goddamn touch me, you pussy cop!”

Pearl was around the desk, after Lido. He used his arm to sweep everything from her desktop onto the floor; then he snarled and went at her.

Pearl didn’t back up. Lido swung at her and missed. Pearl started to punch back, but Quinn had both her arms pinned to the side within a few seconds. Fedderman grabbed Lido by his belt and shirt collar and yanked him back so he and Pearl were out of punching range.

“Calm down now, damn it!” Quinn shouted. He spun Pearl to face away from Lido, staying between them. “You calm?” he whispered in her ear.

“Don’t I seem calm?” She was actually vibrating in his grasp.

He walked her over and forcibly sat her back down in her desk chair. Then he looked over and saw Lido curled in the fetal position on the floor.

Fedderman, standing over him, shook his head. “He ran out of gas in a hurry.” He looked over at Pearl. “You okay?”

“She’s got it together now,” Quinn said, hoping saying it would make it true.

“Who’s gonna pick up all that shit he knocked on the floor?” Pearl asked.

“I am,” Fedderman said, and began doing just that.

His actions did more than anything to cool Pearl’s temper. She breathed in and out deeply.

Lido was sitting up now but stayed on the floor, his arms folded across his chest as if he were freezing. “I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.” He crawled over and started helping Fedderman. Found Pearl’s initialed coffee mug and placed it carefully on her desk. “You gotta forgive me!”

“I don’t gotta do shit,” Pearl said.

“Jerry, stand up,” Quinn said, figuring a first-name basis might be a mitigating factor here. He went over and helped Lido to his feet. Lido felt as if he weighed about ninety-eight pounds. Quinn led him over and plopped him down in one of the client chairs.

“What is it you’ve got to say, Jerry?”

“I wanna help you on this case. I’ve gotta do that, for my own self-respect. I need enough of it so I can at least shave once in a while without wanting to cut my throat.” He looked ready to cry, dabbing at his eyes with a dirty knuckle. “I’ll work mostly on my own, but I could at least drop by here now and then and report what I find out. And you can tell me what you need to know and I can find it. I can go places on the Internet you wouldn’t believe. Databases you never heard of ’cause they’re top secret.”

“Illegal places?” Fedderman asked.

“Don’t make me walk some fine goddamn line,” Lido said. “All I wanna do is help. I’ll just drop by here now and then. Report in. What’s it gonna hurt?”

Quinn looked at the mess on the floor that Fedderman was still picking up, the mess on Pearl’s desk, the furious glint in Pearl’s dark eyes, the smudged wall where Lido had leaned.

“Nothing, I guess, Jerry,” he said.

Pearl said, “Jesus!” under her breath.

“What were you about to tell us, Jerry?” Quinn asked.

“This guy whose name was written on the mirror, Philip Wharkin. I fed his name in everywhere I could.”

“The bloody name on the mirror never appeared in the press.”

Lido waved an arm. “I told you, I got connections in the department. Other places.”

“Illegal Internet connections?”

“It don’t matter. Anyway, you know where Wharkin’s name came up? On an exclusive members list for Socrates’s Cavern in the sixties.” Lido raised his voice, as well as the level of the alcohol fumes he exhaled. “You remember what that place was, Quinn. A sort of high-class S and M club where kinky business types went to let their hair and whatever else down. I checked the other Philip Wharkin. It’s not a common name. One’s in his eighties living in Queens. Another one’s a nine-year-old black kid goin’ to school in the Bronx. Then there’s our guy, used to be a Wall Streeter, sold bonds for Brent and Malone-they’re outta business now. Our Wharkin retired in nineteen-eighty, and died of a heart attack in Toms River, New Jersey, in nineteen-eighty-two.”