her sweatshirt. He pointed, and Fedderman dipped low on shaky knees and pulled the object free. It was a small, zippered purse with a faded beaded design on it.
They backed away from the body and let the paramedics take over, two husky guys with incredibly gentle hands, charged with getting the injured woman to a hospital.
Fedderman handed the purse to Quinn, who unzipped it and examined its contents. There was a wadded tissue (as there seemed to be in every woman's purse he'd ever examined), comb, lipstick, pen, notepad, cell phone, and worn leather wallet.
Quinn searched through the wallet. Sixty-four dollars in bills. Credit cards in the name of Lisa Bolt. A Blue Cross card. Various other forms of identification, including an Ohio driver's license, all in the same name. And there was a dog-eared business card that surprised Quinn.
Stuffing everything back in the wallet, then the wallet back in the purse, Quinn handed the bundle to Fedderman, along with his car key.
'Our shadow woman and mystery client is one Lisa Bolt,' he said, 'a private detective from Columbus, Ohio. Take the purse and stay with her at the hospital, Feds. Use my car. I'll ride with Sal and Harold and catch up with you there later.'
The paramedics were unfolding a gurney with practiced efficiency and would soon have the woman in the ambulance.
One of them had a roll of thick blankets tucked under his arm. Better than a body bag, Fedderman thought. He recovered his damp suit coat. Holding it and the purse well away from him in one hand, he began trotting back toward the parked Lincoln.
Over his shoulder he yelled back at Quinn, 'You better call Pearl.'
It was as much a warning as a suggestion.
While he watched Lisa Bolt being loaded into the ambulance, Quinn called Pearl on his cell. She wouldn't like being woken at 2:10 in the morning. She'd like it even less if he didn't wake her.
He remembered her saying Yancy Taggart was on a lobbying junket or some such and she'd be at her apartment.
Pearl's home number was familiar enough to Quinn that he didn't bother with speed dial. He pecked it out rapidly without even having to glance at his phone's keypad.
Pearl ran true to form. She didn't at all like it when the chirping of the phone near her bed dragged her up from uneasy dreams. She pulled the damned, noisy thing to where she could grasp the receiver, fitted cool plastic to her ear, and emitted a sound something like a growl.
'Pearl?'
Quinn's voice. She squinted at the luminous numerals on her clock. Said, 'Who the hell did you think?'
'Sounded like something fighting for food,' Quinn said.
'Fighting for sleep,' she said. Then in a clearer, deliberately more alert voice, knowing something important must have happened or was happening: 'So why'd you call me as if I were somewhere in Europe where it'd be much later but still too early to call if it wasn't damned important?'
'I didn't follow that,' Quinn said. 'How about if you tell me your Social Security number so I know you're wide enough awake to understand what I'm saying?'
Pearl expended considerable effort and sat up in bed. The old Social Security number thing. It went back to their early days together. She knew Quinn would keep picking at her until he was sure she was all the way awake before he unloaded on her.
She said, 'Forget my Social. Get to the goddamned point.'
Quinn did, filling her in on the Lilly Branston murder and the Lisa Bolt development.
'Why the hell didn't you call me?' Pearl said when he was finished.
'I just did call you.'
'I mean earlier.'
'It's two-fifteen a.m., Pearl. There is no earlier.'
'You know what I mean.'
'I wanted at least one detective tomorrow who was more than half awake. Then things developed fast, and I didn't have time. Get dressed. I'll find out what hospital Lisa Bolt's gonna be in and call you back on your cell so we can meet up there.'
'If she's our shadow woman, make sure somebody keeps a close watch on her so she doesn't disappear again.'
'If she disappears this time,' Quinn said, 'it'll be where nobody can follow. See you soon, Pearl. And, oh yeah, call Addie Price and alert her to what's going on.'
'Yeah,' Pearl said, 'I'll be sure and do that.'
She hung up the phone and then climbed out of bed and stumbled through darkness toward where she knew the door to the hall and the bathroom was located.
The geography of the night escaped her. She missed the door by several inches and stubbed her big toe so painfully she thought she might pass out. She stood still for a few minutes on one foot, propping herself dizzily on the door frame and holding the throbbing toe, uttering a string of obscenities that would certainly have earned the shock and disapproval of her mother.
The pain brought her all the way awake, and she got smart and flipped a light switch.
Owww!
There was her world in an abrupt illuminated clarity so brilliant that it hurt.
Squinting and blinder than before she'd flipped the wall switch, she limped on toward the bathroom, hoping not to stub the toe a second time. That would be unbearable. If that happened again…
What?
She made it all the way into the shower and stood beneath the miracle of the water.
56
It was almost three o'clock when Pearl got to Roosevelt Hospital at Tenth Avenue and West Fifty-ninth Street. She joined Quinn and Fedderman in a nicely furnished waiting room handy to Critical Care. On the opposite side of the long room sat two large black men with their heads in their hands. One of them appeared to be silently sobbing.
Quinn was standing holding a paper cup of coffee. Fedderman had a cup, too, and was slouched almost horizontally in a gray upholstered chair with wooden arms. On a TV mounted to a metal arm above Fedderman, a guy in jeans and a black T-shirt was silently leaping around, holding himself and making faces as if he'd just been injured in the testicles. There were occasional close-ups of people in the audience laughing hysterically. The Comedy Channel. Oh, yeah. Pearl noticed that a damp heap of material on the floor appeared to be Fedderman's suit coat. It had blood on it.
'You two look like you've had a hell of a night,' Pearl said.
Quinn said, 'You call Addie?'
'Damn it! I forgot.'
He glanced at his watch. 'Too late now. Let her sleep.'
Let her sleep all damned day, Pearl thought. She said, 'So what's the latest on this Lisa Bolt, private eye?'
'Condition critical but stabilized. Internal injuries, fractured skull. She's in a coma.'
'Anything in her possessions that provides a way to contact family?'
'Nothing,' Fedderman said. 'She was traveling light. If she has family, she probably didn't want them getting mixed up in whatever it was she was doing.' He sounded down, so weary he might doze off any second. But more than that, Pearl thought. He sounded depressed.
'Doctors say how long the coma's gonna last?' Pearl asked. Lisa Bolt's coma, not yours.
Fedderman used the tips of his forefingers to massage the corners of his eyes. 'Not only can't they say,
