John Lutz - Mister X

She saw that Vitali had finished his brownie and advanced on him again with the pan. Though she had a slight limp, she was fast off the mark. "Do take another, Detective. They're sinfully delicious."

"They should be against the law," Mishkin said, and he and Ida Frost laughed.

Vitali took another brownie in self-defense. Or so he told himself, the brownies being hell on his diet. "You did call the precinct house," he reminded Ida Frost. "What was it you remembered, ma'am?"

"A hat. I understand the thug who attacked Mary wore a hat." She paused for what might have been dramatic effect.

"A hat," Mishkin said.

"I saw a man with a hat that very evening, standing outside and looking suspicious. I passed him when I went out for my daily walk."

"What time was that, ma'am?"

"Why, I couldn't say."

"Was it still light outside?"

"Outside, yes."

"What did he look like?" Mishkin asked.

"He was…just a man in a hat. A cap, rather. A baseball cap."

Mishkin glanced over at Vitali and almost imperceptibly shrugged. He couldn't recall if he'd mentioned to Ida Frost that the attacker had worn a baseball cap. "Do you remember the color, ma'am?"

"Blue, or perhaps gray. Or both. Now that I think of it, It was a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, I'm sure," Ida Frost said. "I spend enough time in Ebbets Field, I should be able to recognize a Dodgers cap."

"The Los Angeles Dodgers, you mean, ma'am?" Vitali asked. There was powdered sugar on his brown suit coat. "The Dodgers haven't been in Brooklyn for a long time."

"I attended the games often with my father when I was a young girl."

"We all miss the Dodgers," Mishkin said.

"The man in the cap. He might have been Pee Wee Reese."

Mishkin grinned broadly. "Say, you're a real Dodgers fan."

"I've always been partial to Pee Wee. Would you like a glass of milk with those brownies? I have nice cold milk for all my visitors."

Vitali and Mishkin regarded each other. Vitali had powdered sugar on his suit and the back of his right hand. Mishkin had more of the white dusting on his mustache and tie. Probably some on his white shirt that wasn't visible unless you looked closely. Some of the powdered sugar on Mishkin had drifted down and was on his right shoe.

"Milk would be great!" Mishkin said, and Vitali seconded him.

Ida Frost set the pan of brownies on a magazine on the coffee table and hurried off again to the kitchen. The two detectives shook their heads silently. They were going to get nothing of value from this witness other than brownies. Ida Frost was one of the older, lonely women who inhabited many of Manhattan's small, rent-controlled apartments. What she wanted was company, somebody to appreciate her brownies. She had found two such people. Alleviating her loneliness might have been the sole purpose of her phone call.

Mishkin helped himself to another brownie while Vitali stood brushing at the powdered sugar on his suit coat with the backs of his knuckles, making more of a mess.

"Pee Wee," Ida Frost said to them, when she came back from the kitchen with two tall glasses of milk on a tray, "would never have harmed Mary Bakehouse."

Not Pee Wee, they agreed.

After leaving Ida Frost's apartment, Vitali and Mishkin slapped at their clothes to rid them of powdered sugar, trailing a white haze as they strode toward the elevator.

They both saw her at the same time, a woman standing watching them from beyond the elevator, near the end of the hall. She was wearing a dark raincoat and a dark hat with the wide brim bent low so her face was in shadow.

As if she'd just noticed them, she turned and walked quickly away, rounding the corner at the end of the hall and passing out of sight.

"I'll go after her," Vitali said. "You take the elevator and beat her to the lobby, Harold. We'll have her between us, and we can flush her out."

Off he went.

The elevator was already at lobby level and took its time rising to where Mishkin waited.

When it arrived at his floor he quickly stepped in and punched the lobby button, then the button that closed the elevator door.

The elevator stopped at the floor below, and a woman with two identical corgis on red leather leashes got in. One of the corgis began licking Mishkin's right shoe.

Another floor down, an elderly but alert-looking woman with an aluminum cane boarded the elevator. She and the woman with the Corgis ignored each other. No one paid the slightest attention to Mishkin except for the corgi licking his shoe.

When they reached lobby level, Mishkin, out of habit and because they crowded past him, let the women and the two dogs exit the elevator ahead of him. He stepped out just in time to see the door to the stairwell burst open and a panting and heaving Vitali come skidding out.

Both men looked at the street door shutting slowly on its pneumatic closer as the women and dogs disappeared into the night.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Sal," Mishkin said, "but I think our shadow woman beat you down the stairs and got out of the building."

"How did you get your shoe wet, Harold?"

"Huh? Oh. Dog."

"She's probably gone, Harold, but maybe she didn't leave at all. Let's get some uniforms down here to check the building."

Two hours later, all the occupants and apartments were accounted for. The shadow woman had escaped again.

"I don't understand it, Harold," Vitali said, as everyone was leaving the building. "I was really flying down those stairs."

"Don't feel bad," Mishkin said. "She had a good head start."

They pushed through the pneumatic door out into the night.

Three radio cars were still parked at the curb. Two uniformed cops were lounging against one of the cars, and three more cops were standing around nearby on the sidewalk, chatting.

Ida Frost emerged from the building, wielding her pan of brownies.

In the Nickel Diner on Broadway in TriBeCa, Joyce House laid out a breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and coffee for the good-looking guy.

That was how she'd come to think of him, because that was what he was-good-looking. He was slightly built, with a mop of curly black hair and magnetic blue eyes, and always dressed a bit showily and expensively. This morning he had on designer jeans, pointy-toed boots that looked like they were ostrich skin, and a tailored short-sleeved black shirt with white buttons. His silver belt buckle was in the form of a soaring eagle. A silver stud earring glinted in each earlobe. Just this side of ghetto fabulous, thought Joyce. But somehow the good-looking guy could bring it off.

Joyce was no slouch in the looks department herself. She was medium height, trim, and buxom, eye candy even in her yellow and white server's uniform. She had straight brown hair with bangs, a perfect pale complexion, and widely set eyes that were like calm dark lakes.

Mick, the diner's owner and overseer of the kitchen, leaned down to look at Joyce through the serving window. His beefy red face was perspiring after a busy breakfast hour. Mick had one of those florid complexions, as if his tie were always too tight and choking him. It was almost ten o'clock, and the diner was empty except for an elderly couple at a table near the rear, and the good-looking guy in a front booth by the window.

"We stay slow," Mick said to Joyce, "why don't you come back and help with the dishwashing?"

Joyce nodded. It was their usual routine. She didn't know why Mick even bothered to ask.

Alice the cashier would remain at her place behind the counter to greet any customers who happened to wander in during the void between breakfast and lunchtime. Alice was a gum-chomping, henna-haired former stock trader who'd opted out of the world of finance five years ago to live a simpler life with Mick. For years they'd been going to get married someday.