it up, pressed it to his ear, and said, 'Yeah,' again. 'Okay, Feds.'
He cut the connection and laid the phone back on the sill.
'Myrna's back.'
Pearl instantly stopped pacing, sat down at the desk, and slipped the headphones back on.
'I happen to like being a bank guard,' she said, with a sideways glance at Quinn.
'Probably the uniform,' Quinn said.
No mercy.
58
'You have other things to do all the time,' Wormy told Lauri.
They were in the kitchen of the Hungry U, a busy place full of spicy aromas, the blur of motion, the clink and clatter of dishes and flatware.
'Not all the time, but tonight,' Lauri said. She was checking on a customer's order of shahi korma, wondering what the delay was. She had to have something to tell the man, who was a valued regular, meaning he'd been in the restaurant at least twice.
'Be ready jus' about three minutes,' said Jamal, the African American-Pakistani chef.
'Lauri-'
'Really, Wormy, you don't have a title proving ownership of me. Women aren't chattel any longer.'
'Cattle?'
'Chattel. It means we don't have to spend every minute together you want to spend, but not a single moment you don't.'
Wormy seemed puzzled by her phrasing. Or indignant. Maybe he was still thinking about chattel. Lauri didn't have time to sort it all out.
'Damn it, Lauri. Ain't any call to be so hard-ass. You know you're my woman.'
Jamal, racketing a whisk around in a metal bowl to whip up a sauce, gave him a look.
Not half so withering as Lauri's. 'I'm nobody's woman. And you don't have any business in the kitchen, Wormy.'
'She be right on that one,' Jamal said. 'Them two.'
'I know what you're doin',' Wormy said, ignoring Jamal. 'You're goin' out with somebody else.'
'Whee-ooh!' Jamal said.
'If I were seeing someone else,' Lauri said coldly, 'it'd be none of your concern. You think I don't know about you and your friends, and what goes on at those clubs when I'm not around?'
Jamal stopped with the whisk and looked from Lauri to Wormy.
'That kinda thing's nothin', Lauri. Nothin'! I don't feel about any of those girls the way I feel about you. You're everything in the world to me.'
Nodding approval, Jamal began whisking vigorously again.
'You don't act like it,' Lauri said. 'And that's the operative word-act!'
'Girl's education showin',' Jamal said.
Wormy stepped toward him, the upper half of his body seeming to move much slower than the lower half. 'I about had it with you!'
Jamal smiled. 'C'mon, I stab you with this whisk.'
Wormy took another threatening step toward Jamal, but Lauri stopped him, grabbing his stringy upper arm. 'You're going to get us all fired,' she said, squeezing hard enough to make Wormy wince.
'Screw that! Sometimes you gotta-'
'And no place in the Village will hire you again to play music.'
That gave Wormy pause.
'I don't like what's happenin',' he said, wrenching his arm from Lauri's grip and turning his back on Jamal.
'Nothing's happening.'
'Shahi korma's happenin',' Jamal said. 'Right there ready to serve an' startin' to cool.'
Wormy glared back over his shoulder at him, then said again to Lauri, 'I don't, goddamn it, like it!'
'Like there's some law,' Jamal muttered.
Wormy stormed out of the kitchen, not bothering to check and see if anyone was coming the other way through the swinging doors. Fortunately, no one was.
Lauri picked up the plate of shahi korma and placed it in the center of a circular tray, then lifted the tray so it was perfectly level.
'You should be ashamed of yourself,' she said to Jamal.
'That Joe guy been around askin' for you,' he said, deadpan.
'When?'
'Now an' again.'
She carried the tray from the kitchen, careful to go up on her toes and check through the tiny window to make sure Wormy wasn't lurking outside the swinging doors.
No sign of him. But that didn't mean he'd left.
'Ever think of goin' out with me?' Jamal asked behind her. 'Shed yourself of that worm man?'
If Wormy was still in the restaurant, Lauri didn't know it. She looked neither left nor right as she bore the shahi korma to its table with the regal bearing of a queen.
It didn't take the Butcher long to locate the hotel. The low marble steps, the dark lower edge of the marquee, the glass revolving door set in a wall of brick and smooth white stone-all were like features of a face.
He'd spent a while at his computer, visiting the websites of New York hotels, before he'd found the right one-the Meredith-and compared it with the newspaper photograph to make sure. It was a mid-priced-which in Manhattan meant merely astronomical-business hotel, with all the amenities to make it competitive. He took a virtual tour of several rooms, as well as the restaurant and coffee shop. Most useful.
Later that day he rode past the Meredith in a cab in order to see it in three dimensions and get a feel for the place. Then he got out and walked around the surrounding neighborhood, terrain into which he might someday have to escape.
It had been only hours since he'd learned this morning that his mother was in the city, and already he knew her exact location. Knowing it somehow made her even more real, more menacing. Her presence haunted him like a specter as he walked the streets, mulling over what to do. Even in a city this size, it was possible they'd pass each other on the sidewalk, perhaps not even glance at each other.
Or one of them might glance. The thought gave him a chill.
He was surprised when he looked at his watch and saw that his research had taken most of the afternoon. Though he wasn't hungry, he had a tuna melt and coffee in a small diner before returning to what he increasingly thought of as his lair.
He did feel somewhat better since gaining the essential knowledge of his mother's whereabouts when she slept. The Meredith Hotel. Now what? Time to practice to deceive?
Not yet. Time to learn more.
He poured a Jack Daniel's, walked to his recliner, and situated himself where he could see out the window at the darkening city. Such a long way from that time years ago in the swamp, but time could be folded like an accordion. More and more lately his dreams carried him back, his nightmares that weren't as horrifying as the actuality that gave them birth. The swamp had invaded his mind and become a part of him, and there were things living and crawling there he didn't want to touch. He thought he'd escaped them but they'd been there all along.
Some nights he lay in bed staring into darkness, terrified of falling asleep. Was it only because of his dreams, or was he feeling the pressure the literature on serial killers proclaimed them to feel as their victim count climbed?
