'I'm a lobbyist,' he said. 'For the National Wind Power Coalition. I've been assigned to convince people of wealth and influence to commit funds to an effort to convert New York City to wind power.'
'You mean windmills on skyscraper roofs?'
He smiled. 'Not exactly. They'd be cowled units computerized always to face the wind. And they could be incorporated into existing architecture to protrude from the walls of buildings and take advantage of the winds that often blow along the avenues. The generated power could be made to supplement the grid and-' He broke off his explanation. 'Whoa. You don't really want to hear the technical details of the concept.'
'Will it really work?'
'I haven't the slightest idea.'
'But you're lobbying for them.'
'I'm a professional lobbyist. It's my job to convince people.'
She grinned. 'Sort of like a defense attorney who knows his client is guilty.'
'Exactly. Only I don't know for sure that wind power isn't the answer. Nobody really knows the answer. I just pretend to.'
'That's terrible!'
'Only if the wind power project won't work. And I don't know that it won't.'
'The point is, you don't know that it will.'
'That's a difficult one to get around,' Yancy admitted. 'That's why the coalition hired a professional lobbyist.'
'That isn't ethical, Yancy.'
'I'll grant you that. But being a lobbyist, I lobby. I have a sliding code of ethics.'
She laughed. 'Jesus! Those aren't ethics at all. They're just-'
Pearl was interrupted by the first four notes of the old Dragnet series.
'My phone,' she explained, digging her cell from her purse, thinking there must be a pun in there someplace, a cop with a cell phone.
She saw that the caller was Quinn.
When she answered, he said, 'Pearl, we've got a dead woman in the five-hundred block of West Eighteenth Street. You better get down here.'
'Chrissie?' she asked.
'No. But it looks like the Carver might be active again.'
Oh, God! 'On my way.'
'Coming from your apartment?'
'Sure am,' she replied, keeping her personal life personal.
'Vitali can have a radio car sent for you.'
'It'll be faster if I take a cab,' Pearl said, with a glance at Yancy Taggart.
She broke the connection before Quinn could reply.
'Crime beckons?' Yancy asked.
Pearl was already sliding out of the booth. 'Yeah. Sorry, I've gotta go.'
'You look upset. Not bad news, I hope.'
'Not for me,' Pearl said. And she realized she meant it. Though she had compassion for this latest Carver victim-if it turned out Quinn was right-a part of her was also glad this had happened. It meant the investigation had gotten off the dime. The game was on.
'So you really are a police detective.'
'I really am.'
'Shall we meet here tomorrow evening about this time?'
'We shall,' Pearl said.
Maybe he did have a yacht to go with his sliding ethics. Sometimes that was where sliding ethics led, right to a yacht.
'Bring your handcuffs,' she heard Yancy call behind her, as she was moving toward the door.
That was how it began.
21
While the cab she'd flagged down bounced and jounced over Eighth Avenue potholes, Pearl thought not about the murder scene she was speeding toward, but about Yancy Taggart. She found that odd.
Would he meet her?
Did she care?
Never one to lie to herself, she figured the answers were yes and yes.
Why did this guy appeal to her? He was probably at least fifteen years older than she was, and not her usual type.
Then she realized what might be the basis of the attraction. Taggart was sort of an anti-Quinn. Where Quinn was duty-bound and relentless, Taggart didn't mind whiling away a morning over coffee and a racing form in a bar. Taggart would gamble his money; Quinn chanced every other kind of gamble but didn't like the odds of house games. Taggart was slim and graceful-even languid-in posture and attitude; Quinn was lanky but powerfully built, stolid, calm, and intense. Taggart dressed stylishly and was neatly groomed; Quinn always looked like what he was-a cop in a suit-and his hair looked uncombed even when it was combed. While Taggart was elegant and classically handsome, Quinn was somehow homely enough to be attractive.
Maybe, she thought, Yancy Taggart was what she needed to chase Quinn completely out of her thoughts.
In time she might chase them both from her thoughts.
Pearl saw the yellow crime-scene tape, and her thoughts were jolted to where she was, and why. She asked the cabbie to pull to the curb half a block from the tape. She wanted to take the scene in as she walked toward it from a distance. Sometimes it was smart to begin with the long view.
Several radio cars were parked at crazy angles to the curb, as if they were the toys of some giant child who'd tired of them and walked away, leaving their colorful roof bar lights flashing. Beyond the police cars, Pearl could see Quinn's black Lincoln with two wheels up on the curb to allow the remaining lane of traffic to pass. She noticed for the first time that the old Lincoln had whitewall tires. She hadn't thought they made those anymore. But Quinn would know where to get them. Like his Cuban cigars.
The Lincoln's engine was still ticking in the heat as she walked past it. Inside the trapezoid of yellow tape a group of large men huddled over what looked like a bundle of clothes on the sidewalk.
When Pearl got closer, she saw that the bundle was a woman.
One of the men standing over the dead woman was Quinn. He spotted Pearl and motioned her over. A uniform held up the tape so she could duck under it like a boxer entering a ring. He gave her a look, as if he might wink at her. Didn't the idiot think she'd ever seen a corpse before?
This part of Eighteenth Street was being improved or marred-depending on your point of view-with neo- modern architecture, most of it angular glittering glass and metal, some of it appearing precariously balanced. The building the body was next to was an almost completed condominium project. According to the plywood sign leaning against the wall near the silvered glass door to what would become the lobby, it was The Sabre Arms. The optimistic advertising didn't mention price.
Quinn nodded to Pearl and moved over to make room for her in the huddle. Pearl nodded back. Quinn's sport coat collar was twisted in back, and he needed a shave. It struck Pearl again how different he was from Yancy. Yancy the lobbyist with the gift of gab and the sliding ethics. Quinn the taciturn engine of justice with a moral code like Moses that sometimes transcended the laws of man.
Pearl shook off her flash of dubious insight and refocused her mind on her work.
Julius Nift, the obnoxious little medical examiner who looked and acted like Napoleon, was bent over the dead woman. Pearl didn't bother nodding hello to him.
