John Lutz - Night kills

Something was obviously very wrong.

Victor stopped pacing and collapsed on the black leather sofa facing the desk.

Stone hung up the phone and swiveled his chair to look directly at him with an expression of fatherly concern.

"Gloria was struck by a cab yesterday near Columbus Circle," he said. "They tried to get in touch with someone, but couldn't."

"She doesn't have a landline phone," Victor said.

Stone nodded gravely. "The people at the hospital finally figured out how to look in her cell phone log. The last call she'd made was to here."

Victor sat up straight. "Hospital?"

"She's at St. Luke's-Roosevelt, in critical condition. Her skull's been fractured and her hip and left leg are broken."

"Jesus! But at least she's alive."

"The cab hit her when she stepped off the curb. That's what witnesses said. An accident."

"What the hell was she doing-"

"Who knows, Victor? Gloria's her own woman." That's for damned sure. Stone swiveled his chair toward the window again. He tilted back. "You'd better drive over there and see her, Victor. See if she's conscious, talking. Maybe she's under the influence of sedatives. You understand what I mean?"

But when Stone swiveled around for an answer to his question, Victor was gone.

Stone combed through both the Times and the Post, but neither of the papers made mention of Gloria's accident. That didn't surprise Stone, but it relieved him. News was news. Gloria wasn't remotely famous, which meant the media would probably ignore the story tomorrow morning, too. That meant her name wouldn't be in the papers or mentioned on television or radio. Stone much preferred it that way. Less of a threat to the business.

A little after one o'clock, Stone's phone rang as he was rifling through a middle file cabinet drawer. Without standing up, he rolled his chair over to the desk and picked up.

Victor, calling from the hospital.

"She looks terrible, Palmer," Victor said plaintively. "Her head's all bandaged and her face is so swollen you wouldn't know it was her."

"Is she conscious?" Stone asked.

Drugged up? Talking?

"There's no way to be sure if she knows what's going on around her."

"What do you mean, Victor?"

"She's in a coma, Palmer. The doctors say they don't know how long it will last, or even"-Victor's voice broke-"if she'll ever come out of it."

Stone was surprised to find his own throat tightening. The three of them had been together in one scam or another for a lot of years. He did feel for Victor. And for Gloria. Emotions were doing that more and more lately, catching Palmer by surprise.

"Is there anything I can do, Victor?"

"I don't think so, Palmer. I don't think there's anything anyone can do."

"I'm sorry, Victor. I really am."

"I know that, Palmer."

After hanging up the phone, Stone sat back and assessed the situation. Gloria was obviously out of commission. Judging by what Victor had said, she wasn't about to say anything that might attract suspicion as to what she…did for a living. And someone being struck and seriously injured by a vehicle was a common occurrence in New York. There was nothing about Gloria's accident that would attract undue attention.

Stone sighed and smiled.

Any danger to the company had been narrowly averted.

The question now was, how would what happened to Gloria affect Victor? Stone had been suffering doubts about him before Gloria's accident. Gloria had gone a long way toward assuaging those doubts, but not all the way.

Now this.

Palmer wondered, could Victor still do his job?

Jill watched Tony's eyes follow Jewel as she wove her way through a maze of red-clothed tables toward the restroom. He wasn't the only one watching. Half the men in the restaurant at least sneaked a glance at Jewel. She was quite the temptress when she wasn't dressed like a cop.

She wasn't dressed like one now, in her tight black dress with the low neckline, her three-inch heels. Jill knew that Jewel wanted to look like anything but a cop.

They were in Dominick's Italiano, a new gourmet restaurant on the West Side. Tony had raved about the extensive wine list in order to talk Jill into going there with him, and naturally Jewel had invited herself along. Jill, of course, hadn't resisted and had given Tony the evil eye when he had begun to voice his objections.

"Did you ever think," Tony now asked Jill, as he still watched Jewel, "that she's a little too friendly with you?"

Jill saw Jewel veer left and disappear into a hallway, walking none too steadily, as if maybe she'd had too much wine with her dinner. But then, Jewel-or Pearl-was a pretty good actress.

"What do you mean?" Jill asked. "Too friendly?" He was giving her a crooked little smile.

Then she realized what Tony meant. "Jesus, Tony! Jewel and me? Are you kidding?"

The crooked smile turned sad, as if gravity had suddenly claimed it. "Not Jewel and you. Just Jewel. I mean, the way she looks at you sometimes."

"Get off it, Tony. Jewel's no lesbian."

He shrugged.

Jill started to take a sip of her coffee, then changed her mind and sipped from the half-full wineglass the waiter had left. "Tony, neither one of us is in romantic love with the other."

"I'm in love with you."

"You know what I mean. Jewel and me in some kind of sexual relationship. It's absurd."

"Not absurd at all."

"Well, I think so."

"It happens," he said.

"Of course it does. That's the way the world works. I'm not homophobic or passing any kind of moral judgment."

Tony reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "I know you're not, hon. I know you better than that. But do me a favor, will you, and just pay closer attention. I mean, the way she hangs around you all the time doesn't seem to me like the usual platonic relationship."

Jill felt her face flush with embarrassment and anger.

Tony had gone too far. He seemed to know it. He sat back abruptly in his chair, which was on rollers, and the force carried him a few feet from the table. When he tried a smile it didn't quite work. He rolled back to the table. Most of the dishes had been cleared and they were waiting for dessert, some kind of chocolate-iced cream puffs the Post food editor had raved about.

Jewel arrived at the same time as the cream puffs. She looked neater than when she'd left the table. Her hair had been combed and her freshened makeup made her features even more vivid. She sat down with some difficulty in the tight dress and replaced her napkin in her lap. "Some restroom," she said. "You oughta see how clean and modern it is. Everything automatic." She smiled at Jill. "You should've come with me."

Tony and Jill exchanged glances. Jewel gave no indication that she'd noticed. She smiled at the waiter and asked for two of the miniature cream puffs from the pyramidal display on a tray.

No one spoke until the waiter was finished serving dessert and had poured the coffee and departed.

"You okay, Tony?" Jewel asked. "You seem kind of…I don't know, out of sorts."

He frowned. "'Out of sorts.' What's that mean?"

"On the edge of being grouchy," Jill cut in, tempering her words with a smile.

Tony sighed. "I guess I am on edge. I'm sorry. Somebody at work I like a lot had an accident and he's badly injured."

"That's too bad," Jill said, wondering why Tony hadn't mentioned this to her earlier.

"Hospitalized?" Jewel asked.

"Yeah. Poor guy was hit by a car."

"Damned shame," Jewel said.

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" Jill asked.

"I sure hope so. He's one of those guys everybody likes."

"Things like that always happen to the wrong people," Jewel said.

Tony might not have heard her. He was twisting his red cloth napkin, staring hard at it.