Driving fast and skillfully through midtown traffic, Quinn talked with Renz on his cell phone, setting up a rendezvous point near the Waverly Hotel. It had already been determined that Jeb was in his room, and most of that floor was quietly being evacuated. When the time came, SWAT team members would take the elevator to the floor above Jeb and station themselves in the stairwell. Then power to the elevators would be stopped, the stairwell below and fire escape would be blocked by uniformed cops and SWAT members, and Jeb Jones would be trapped.
When Quinn got off the phone and concentrated on weaving his way through stalled traffic, Pearl used her own phone to call her apartment and check for messages. Maybe there was one from Jeb.
My God, Jeb…
As she listened to her phone ring on the other end of the connection, Pearl wondered if she'd be able to stop Jeb if he bolted. If he decided to make a fight of it, or commit suicide by cop, would she be able to shoot him? The prospect made her intestines tie themselves in knots. The pain made her actually bend forward in her seat.
Pressing the cell phone to her ear, she listened to her message machine in her apartment click on. One message:
'Pearl?'
Her mother.
'Pearl, are you there? I've had a conversation with Mrs. Kahn, a nice lady, about her equally nice, not to mention handsome, nephew Milton, who comes here and visits with her often. At my suggestion Mrs. Kahn phoned him and he's extremely interested in meeting you, dear, so since tomorrow was his regular visiting day anyway, I got together with Mrs. Kahn and set up a lunch in the nursing home cafeteria for the four of us, so the two of you can get to know one another without any pressure. At what would be the proper time, Mrs. Kahn and I would agree that we had to go for mahjongg and you two would be alone so nature could do what nature's been doing best for thousands if not millions of years. That's tomorrow at noon, Pearl. It's pot roast day. Pot roast is the only dish they do well here, but they do it very well and with mushrooms, which are said by some to be an aphrodisiac. If you can't make it, be sure to call me. If I were you, dear, I would wear that navy dress of yours with the matching shoes. Definitely not the red, Pearl. As for accessories-'
Pearl's clamshell phone snapped closed with the force of powerful jaws.
Quinn didn't slow down, but he took his eyes off traffic for a second to glance over at her. 'Trouble?'
'Not unless I let it become trouble.'
Another curious glance. 'Jones?'
'My mother.'
Quinn nodded grimly and drove on.
Quinn flashed his shield for the uniform standing next to a radio car that was skewed sideways in the street and blocking traffic. The cop stepped back and waved for Quinn to drive around the car. This required putting a front wheel up on the curb, but Quinn didn't seem to mind. Pearl placed both hands on the dashboard to keep from getting bounced around.
He pulled the Lincoln in at the curb half a block up and just around the corner from the Waverton Hotel. The cross street was blocked, too, by a black Traffic Enforcement car. More than a dozen radio cars and two unmarked vans were parked at haphazard angles. Half a dozen SWAT guys were standing in a knot. About a dozen uniformed cops in bulky flak jackets were grouped near them. The SWAT people had dark, stubby automatic rifles. Some of the uniforms had shotguns. Quinn recognized Officer Vern Shults and his female partner, Nancy Weaver. Shults was nearing retirement and shouldn't have been there. He was armed only with his regulation nine. The intrepid and promiscuous Weaver was carrying a shotgun. She spotted Quinn and Pearl and waved to them. A small woman with a backpack was standing off to the side, talking into what looked like a recorder.
This was much more backup than Quinn had requested. They were here to arrest a killer, not start a war. What the hell was Renz-
There was Renz, standing near one of the vans alongside a tall, blonde woman Quinn recognized as a local cable TV news anchor. As he and Pearl walked toward them, a brightly lettered news van entered the blocked street and parked at the opposite curb.
'Good,' Renz said, as Quinn and Pearl approached. 'Now we can get to this.'
'Because we're here, or the press?' Quinn asked.
Renz ignored the question and said something into the two-way clipped to his lapel. The anchorwoman, a blonde whose name Quinn remembered now was Mary Mulanphy, smiled faintly but knowingly.
'Who's the woman with the SWAT guys?' Quinn asked.
'Cindy Sellers of City Beat,' Renz said. 'We owe her. She gets the print scoop.'
Quinn wondered if newspaper people themselves still used the word scoop.
There was activity among the backup cops. A couple of car engines started, and a radio car backed swiftly toward where the one-way street was blocked.
Fedderman appeared out of nowhere and said, 'He's still in his room.'
Renz tucked in his chin and spoke into his lapel again to relay that information on his two-way. A two-man crew with a shoulder-mounted camera emerged from the TV news van, moving slowly and gingerly under the burden of technology, like a team of almost-drunks walking with exaggerated precision. Staying more or less on course, they crossed the street to get closer. They stopped about twenty feet away, and Mary Mulanphy stood out in the middle of the street and began speaking into a cordless microphone, facing the camera. Quinn knew he and the cops around him were part of the shot's background.
Renz spoke into his lapel yet again, saying exactly what he'd said the last time and apparently getting an identical answer. Was this one for real, or was it for the media?
Quinn looked across the street and saw that the SWAT team and most of the uniformed cops had disappeared, and one of the unmarked vans was gone. Cindy Sellers had disappeared, too.
After a few minutes, Mulanphy backpedaled smoothly in her high heels to where she'd started from, stepped deftly aside, and nodded to Renz. 'We're still taping.' Quinn noticed she was the only one who didn't have perspiration stains on her clothes. She in no way seemed bothered by the sun's glare or the heat radiating from the summer-baked concrete.
'Traffic has just been interdicted up the block from the hotel,' Renz said loudly and with crisp enunciation, looking directly at a somewhat surprised Quinn. 'We have all possible escape routes blocked. It's time to start the operation. Main investigators will be accompanied by uniformed officers Shults and Weaver.' Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman glanced at one another. Renz said, 'I want everyone to please be careful. I don't want anyone hurt.' He looked toward the camera, pretending to notice it for the first time, and raised a palm toward it, shaking his head. 'We don't have time for that now.' Loudly, back to Quinn: 'This is a go.'
Quinn motioned for his team to follow, then walked toward the corner. By the time he'd turned it, Pearl and Fedderman were on either side of him. Shults and Weaver, in their bulky flak jackets, Weaver with her shotgun, brought up the rear.
Almost the rear. Actually, Mary Mulanphy and her camera crew brought up the rear, about fifty feet behind the others. Renz had stayed back at the rendezvous point to issue executive orders.
Pearl's throat was dry. She felt like an actor in some kind of eerie movie as they approached the hotel's marquee. The uniformed doorman who sometimes stood outside was nowhere in sight. All traffic, vehicular and pedestrian, had disappeared from the block. She hoped Jeb, up in his room, wouldn't notice the sudden absence of traffic noise from directly below. Then she remembered his room didn't face the street. They could catch him unawares.
They had to.
Without hesitating, they turned and entered the hotel lobby.
It wasn't much cooler inside.
'You okay, Pearl?'
Quinn's voice. He sounded farther away from her than just a few feet.
She nodded.
The lobby was deserted except for a guy in a gray business suit who'd been undercover but now had his shield displayed dangling in its leather case from his breast pocket. He unbuttoned his suit coat, like an Old West gunfighter getting ready to quick draw. There was no one behind the desk. Another plainclothes cop stood stone- faced and unmoving in the archway to the coffee shop.
