John Lutz - Mister X

"Jesus!" Keller said. "You do know a lot about me."

"Enough for my purposes," Quinn said.

Let the bastard know he's between a rock and a rock.

"This is a rotten thing you're doing," Keller said. "You're mucking around in a world I left behind. I even legally changed my name, built another life. Now you're threatening to rip it all apart if I don't cooperate in some kind of impersonation of my old self."

"Your true self," Quinn said. "I'm giving you a chance to be a real father. To stick your neck out for your daughter."

"What's the neck-sticking-out part?"

"She's a suspect in several murders," Quinn said.

"Come off it! Chrissie?"

"The same."

"I don't believe it."

"Of course not. She's your daughter. And you might be right. She might be innocent. But either way, you can help her. We think if you come to New York and she finds out about you being here, she'll come to you."

It took Keller a few seconds to process that. "And when that happens you can apprehend her. You're using me as bait."

"I can't argue with that assessment."

"Listen, Quinn, this is almost like you asking me to do this for a stranger. After Tiffany was killed…well, everything came apart. For me, for my wife, for Chrissie. We all wanted, needed, new and separate lives. For all of us, the past is poison. Apparently more so for Chrissie than for anyone else. You don't understand what you're asking of me."

Quinn considered bringing up the child molestation, but thought better of it. The police would need Keller's cooperation, so let Erin call and put the knife in him and twist it.

"I know what I'm asking," Quinn said. "And I know that once you've weighed your options you'll comply."

"I need to think about this," Keller said.

"That sounds reasonable, but the sooner you say yes, the better for everyone-especially Chrissie. I need to know tomorrow. I'll give you my number to call."

"I have it on my cell phone from your call," Keller said.

"Fine. I expect to hear from you by three o'clock."

But Keller had broken the connection.

Quinn wasn't dissatisfied with the call. He knew Keller would come around eventually. But he didn't want eventually to be too eventual. He pecked out Erin's cell phone number.

She answered immediately.

When Quinn described his conversation with Keller, she laughed in an ugly way that was so acidic Quinn thought the phone might melt in his hand.

"I'll call him," she said. "I'll put that bastard right back in the poisonous past and then yank him into the poisonous present. And I'll remind him he helped create them both. He'll do as we ask, if he doesn't want his spiffy new life and his standing in the community shoved right up his ass."

"Just be sure to let me know-"

Quinn realized Erin had abruptly broken the connection, just as Keller had done earlier.

Maybe it was a family thing.

Quinn had just finished hanging up after his conversation with Erin when Pearl called from the hospital.

"Lisa Bolt checked herself out of here an hour before I arrived," she said.

Quinn opened his desk drawer and reached for a cellophane-wrapped cigar. "Say again, Pearl." Anger sizzled in his voice.

"You heard me the first time, Quinn."

"What time exactly did she leave?"

"Hospital records have her leaving at eleven thirty-one."

Half an hour after you were supposed to be at the hospital. Are you slipping, Pearl? Is it grief over Yancy, or something more?

Only because of Yancy, Quinn didn't ask Pearl why she'd been late. "Why did the hospital let her leave?"

"They couldn't stop her. They say she's well enough anyway."

"What about the uniforms who were supposed to be guarding her?"

"She waited until they were between shifts and yakking away down the hall by the coffee machine. They figured it'd be okay for a minute or two because they were between her room and the elevators. She must've taken the stairs down a floor before getting on an elevator. The uniforms couldn't have made her stay, even if they'd been there to try."

"Didn't it occur to them that somebody might have come up the stairs to get to her?"

"I'm sure they've been asked that question."

"Did she leave with anyone?"

"No. I'm told she got into a cab."

"Does the hospital have an address or contact number where she can be reached?"

"Address is an apartment in the West Nineties. Phone number's to a pet shop on Amsterdam."

"Would it be safe to say she's missing again?" Quinn asked, keeping his anger on simmer.

"Unless she's turned into a puppy. I'll check out the pet shop and the apartment address and let you know."

"There won't be an apartment at that address. Or if there is, it won't have anything to do with Lisa Bolt."

"Undoubtedly."

"Are we in the wrong business?" Quinn asked, looking at the wrapped cigar and changing his mind about lighting it.

"It's the only business we know."

"Sometimes I don't think we know it very well."

"It's hard to keep strings attached to people who don't want it that way," Pearl said. "Stop being critical of yourself and kicking yourself in the ass."

"I was being critical of you, Pearl. Kicking you in the ass."

"Oh. Well, that won't work."

Quinn stopped at the Lotus Diner the next morning and had a breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee. He read the Times over a second cup of coffee and then read a City Beat he'd gotten out of a machine down the street.

He wasn't surprised when he saw the headline: SHADOW WOMAN OUT OF HOSPITAL. The piece went on to say how Lisa Bolt, strongly suspected of being the so-called "shadow woman" in the Carver murder investigation, had checked herself out of the hospital and again dropped from sight. A certain little NYPD bird had informed the reporter (Cindy Sellers, according to the byline) that the police had no way to guard Lisa Bolt around the clock, nor could they legally hold her if she decided to check out. Sellers went on to say that it was still a free country, for the most part, and even someone of interest to the police could come and go as they pleased.

All of this deliberately downplayed the momentary negligence of the NYPD uniforms assigned to keep watch on Lisa Bolt. That was to lessen the embarrassment of the department and of Renz in particular. Renz was, Quinn had no doubt, the talkative little NYPD bird.

How did it happen, Quinn asked himself, as he laid the folded paper aside in a puddle made by his water glass, that both he and Renz were indebted to Cindy Sellers? She could obtain information from either source and then cross-check it with the other. The opportunistic muckraker must have been born making a deal.

Quinn glanced around and decided the diner was too crowded for him to make a call on his cell phone and not be overheard. He slid from the booth and handed enough money for breakfast and a tip to Thel the waitress.

"In a rush, Captain Quinn?" she asked, slipping the bills into her apron pocket.

"Always," Quinn said.

"Somebody being murdered?"

"Always."

"Want a coffee to go?"

"Al-"

"Never mind," Thel said.

He walked back to the counter with her and waited while she filled a white foam cup full of coffee and fitted it with a tight plastic lid. He accepted it and thanked her. "Thel," he reminded her, "I'm no longer a police captain."

"In my mind," she said, "always."

Outside the diner, he strode through the warm morning and the sweet spoiled smells of trash waiting to be collected, to where the Lincoln was illegally parked with his NYPD placard on the visor. Inside the car, he placed his steaming cup in a holder and watched the windows immediately begin to fog up. It was time to play dumb. Or at least uninformed. He pecked out Cindy Sellers's direct number.