John Lutz - Mister X

Loren was smiling inwardly, sensing the happiness and possessiveness emanating from Joyce. He knew things she didn't know, and he was enjoying that.

It was power.

It amused him that Joyce was contemplating tomorrow night, and her future beyond then. He knew she'd have no future beyond tomorrow night.

Manhattan Nocturne would be her last Broadway musical.

Vitali was at the wheel of the unmarked Ford he and Mishkin were returning to the vice squad. The two detectives would be sorry to see the car go. It was five years old, had a mismatched quarter panel painted with primer, and was one of the few unmarked city cars that didn't scream its police presence.

"We got one more thing to do today, Harold," Vitali reminded his partner, as he maneuvered the car around one of the city's long, jointed buses. Those things are too damned big for this city.

"You've got one more thing," Mishkin said. "Renz never wants to talk with me."

"What I tell him comes from both of us, Harold."

"Meaning if things go wrong, I'll drown in the same soup you do."

Vitali grinned. "That's pretty much it, crouton." He straightened out the car and left the bus behind. "Renz is supposed to have met with Quinn earlier this evening."

"So Renz might know more than we do."

"Not the kinds of things he wants to know."

"You ever feel like a spy or something, Sal? I mean, Quinn's a straight guy. I don't like ratting on anybody, but I especially don't like ratting on him."

"He knows we've got no choice," Vitali said. "It's like a game. He knows everything we tell Renz, anyway. So no, I don't feel like a spy. And you shouldn't, either. We're not actually ratting on Quinn. It's not like he's Valerie Plame or anything."

"Who's that, Sal?"

"No one, Harold. Ancient history."

"Oh, I know who you mean. Plum, isn't it? Wasn't her name Valerie Plum?"

Vitali drove for a while silently.

"Might have been, Harold," he said at last.

"When you get done talking to Renz," Mishkin said, "he's gonna talk to that little media scum, Cindy Sellers. Set her off writing some bullshit about the shadow woman."

"That's the deal, Harold. Round and round we go. Like rats in a cage."

"Hamsters, I think you mean," Mishkin said.

"Hamsters," Vitali agreed.

"I feel like a rat sometimes," Mishkin said.

"She seems to have disappeared," Fedderman said. He was standing up and putting on his suit coat, preparing to leave the office.

"Our shadow woman?" Quinn asked. He'd just come from meeting with Harley Renz in the Campbell Apartment bar in Grand Central Station, where they'd had some of the best martinis in the city and Quinn had brought the police commissioner up to date on the investigation.

"Our client," Fedderman said. "I wanted to pump her for some other names. Common acquaintances she and her twin might have had. Been trying to call her all day on her cell."

Quinn realized Chrissie had never let him know where she was staying. Her cell phone was the only way to contact her, and now it appeared she'd rabbited again.

But why?

"Her cell's turned off," Fedderman said.

Quinn nodded and went over and sat behind his desk. "We've got a client not to be trusted, Feds."

"Yeah. Whaddya think her game is?"

"A different one from the one we're playing."

"Like chess and checkers."

"We need to make sure we're chess," Quinn said.

"Anything else going for today?" Fedderman asked.

"No. Go on home and get some rest. Or go see a movie or Broadway play."

Fedderman looked off to the left, as if calling on his memory. "I haven't seen a Broadway show since Cats."

"What'd you think?"

"One good song, but I can't remember it." Fedderman waved a good-bye, his shirt cuff flapping like a flag, and went out onto West Seventy-ninth Street.

Quinn watched him-tall, disjointed, with a head-bowed, lurching kind of walk-pass the window along with the steady stream of pedestrians trudging home from work. Fedderman always seemed to be pondering. Probably he always was.

Quinn settled back in his desk chair and got a Cuban cigar from the humidor in the bottom left drawer.

He fired up the cigar and sat for a while smoking, knowing that tomorrow morning Pearl would probably bitch about the lingering tobacco scent.

He pondered for quite a while himself, searching his memory, but he never was able to recall the one good song.

When Quinn got to his apartment he found that he wasn't tired. Too much adrenaline in his blood. Too much coffee. And probably the cigars didn't help.

He stayed away from both as he went to his den, sat behind his desk. He couldn't help noticing that the apartment was stuffy and smelled like cigar smoke. May would raise hell if she still lived here. So would Pearl. Women didn't seem to like cigars. Was there some Freudian reason?

Freud would probably say so.

Quinn got his legal pad from the shallow middle drawer.

He read over and thought about what he had so far: Tiffany Keller years ago, last victim of the Carver. Her twin, Chrissie, wins the Triple Monkey whatever slot-machine jackpot and finds herself suddenly moderately wealthy. Decides to use the money to find sister's killer. Or, more accurately, to avenge sister's death. NYPD demonstrates no interest in reopening the case. Chrissie, after pretending to be Tiffany's ghost to get attention, finally admits who she is and hires Q. amp; Assoc. to find the Carver. After paying a handsome retainer, Chrissie disappears. Pearl notices Chrissie deleted any and all photographs of Tiffany from news items in the folder she left with Quinn. Photos on the Internet reveal that Chrissie and Tiffany looked nothing alike. Renz phones and tries to warn Q amp;A off the case.

Then there was the notation that Chrissie was not to be trusted. Well, nothing had changed there.

The next entry on the legal pad read: Maureen Sanders found dead, wounds unlike those made by the Carver, too shallow, silver spoon in mouth, like Carver's sick humor. Carver, but older so more hesitant? Mary Bakehouse attacked before Maureen Sanders. Carver frightened away? Chooses more helpless victim Sanders? Chrissie still missing. Carver victim?

Quinn noticed as he had the last time he'd used the pad that there were too many question marks.

He picked up a pen from the desk and added on the legal pad: Renz tries to shut down case. Q. calls Cindy Sellers to help pressure Renz to continue investigation and so info flows both directions. Chrissie returns. (Brown eyes now blue-used contacts to look more like Tiffany.) Shadow woman almost caught in Mary B. apt. bldg. (Trust no one.)

That was about it, Quinn thought, putting the pad back in the desk drawer. He wasn't sure whether to call it progress or additional frustration.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of Famous Grouse scotch in a water glass, added some ice cubes.

Then he went in to watch television. A French movie was on PBS. Quinn was partial to French movies. You never knew what direction they were going to take. So like life.

"You should move in with me," Yancy said to Pearl.

"We hardly know each other."

"We know each other superficially, and that's the best way."

They were having breakfast in his kitchen. Pearl had made cheese omelets. She had a lacy but functional apron tied around her waist. Yancy had wanted her to wear it and only it, but she'd demurred and gotten dressed in slacks and a knit pullover before donning the apron. She hadn't felt so domestic in years.

"I mean," Yancy continued, "you're spending your nights and parts of your days here anyway, so why shouldn't you throw some clothes in a suitcase and stay here with me?" He was showered and fully dressed in shirt and tie, looking at her as if all he saw on her was the apron. Theater of the mind.