Those are tears.
I am crying.
I really screwed up.
Will I ever stop paying the price?
10
Pearl and Fedderman searched everywhere in Millie Graff’s apartment for pornographic material or other evidence that she was involved in a deviant lifestyle. Quinn had instructed them not to tell Harley Renz what they were doing, or why, unless they found something. There was no point in unnecessarily stirring up Harley.
Except for the aftermath of murder, the apartment was neat. Millie had been a tidy housekeeper. The sink held no dirty dishes. The small, stacked washer-dryer combination in the bathroom held no wadded clothes. The furniture was arranged with symmetrical precision. On the kitchen windowsill was a ceramic planter with bright red geraniums that appeared healthy even without recent care. Pearl thought briefly about watering them, then decided that wasn’t the thing to do at a crime scene.
“Something…” Fedderman said, holding up rumpled black net panty hose. “Sexy, I’d say.”
“Remember Millie was more than just a hostess in a hot new restaurant,” Pearl said. “She was also a dancer. We need to keep that in mind. Look in her closet and you’ll find highheeled shoes that look like implements of torture, maybe with steel taps on them.”
Maybe they were instruments of torture. Quinn hadn’t known Millie at all as a grown woman.
“Here’s some kind of tight elastic thing,” Fedderman said.
“A leotard,” Pearl said. “Also worn to shuffle off to Buffalo.” She had a feeling she should be the one searching through Millie’s dresser.
“Buffalo?”
“Keep looking.”
“Whoa!” Fedderman said, after a few minutes. “How about this?” He sounded like a kid who’d found a trinket in a treasure hunt.
He was holding up a vibrator dildo. He’d found it in a padded brown envelope taped to the back of a dresser drawer, a favorite hiding place of many an amateur. In addition to being blue and having buttons at its base, the vibrator wasn’t at all lifelike but had ridges in it and a small protuberance near the bottom, obviously meant for clitoral stimulation. Obviously to Pearl, anyway.
“This what I think it is?” Fedderman asked, grasping the object between finger and thumb and handing it over to Pearl.
“It’s not to let you know your table’s ready,” Pearl said.
“So Millie had her fun.”
“Yeah, like millions of other women in New York.”
“Pearl…?”
“Don’t ask,” Pearl said.
Fedderman wisely took her advice. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “We’ve tossed the place pretty thoroughly.” He knew tossed wasn’t quite the word; they’d be leaving the apartment almost exactly as they’d found it. As if Millie Graff might do an inspection and approve of their work. “So we searched everywhere and this is all we came up with, this-It kinda looks like some weird electrical bird with a long neck.”
“Millie was what cable TV would call normal,” Pearl said.
Pointing to the vibrator, Fedderman said. “Quinn isn’t gonna like that we found it.”
“Let’s put it back where we got it,” Pearl said. “Quinn won’t be shocked to know about it. Hell, it isn’t whips or chains. It’s a woman’s private accessory.”
“When I think accessory,” Fedderman said, “I think purse or maybe scarf.”
“Right now,” Pearl said, “I’m thinking testicle clamp.”
Fedderman winced and then motioned with his head toward the vibrator. “One thing we oughta know about that…”
“Yeah,” Pearl said, and pressed one of the buttons. The vibrator began to quiver and jumped so violently she almost dropped it. At the same time, it flickered with a dazzling blue light.
“That’s really something,” Fedderman said in admiration. “I mean, how the hell can we fellas compete with that?”
Pearl switched off the vibrator and handed it to him. “We found out what we wanted to know. The batteries are up and the… accessory is in good working condition. Now put the damned thing back where you found it.”
“There’s no writing of any kind on the envelope it was in,” Fedderman said. “So it wasn’t mailed to her.”
“Not in that envelope, anyway. That one is probably just for storage.”
“It might help if we knew where she bought it.”
“I imagine the first thing she did when she got it was remove the price tag,” Pearl said.
“Or instructions,” Fedderman said. He brightened. “Maybe I should look for instructions.”
“Put the goddamned thing back,” Pearl said. “We’ll tell Quinn about it, and tell him we didn’t find any handcuffs or leather restraints or masks or what have you. Millie was a good girl. Let’s let her stay that way.”
“You know a lot about this stuff, Pearl.”
“I spent a lot of time with Vice.”
“Well, all of us-”
“It’s time to get out of here, Feds.”
He silently agreed. Pearl watched as he replaced the vibrator in its padded envelope. He slid the dresser drawer back onto its tracks and made sure it was closed all the way. They took a long last look around the apartment. Both of them could feel the strange silence and sadness that lingered at scenes of violent death.
They left the apartment, with its neatness and geometric arrangement of Millie Graff’s life, for the landlord and movers to disassemble. Soon every memory or touch of her personality would be gone. Her refrigerator would contain different brands of food. Someone else would be sleeping in her bedroom, soaking in her bath, hurrying to answer the buzz of her intercom. She would be totally gone from the still point and center of her existence. Her home would belong to another.
Pearl thought that if Millie Graff could somehow know about it she’d be horrified.
Quinn rang the bell of the rehabbed brownstone not far from where he lived on the Upper West Side and waited. An intercom crackled and a male voice asked who was at the door. Quinn found the talk button and identified himself.
The same crackly voice told him to come in, and a raspy buzzer sounded. He opened the heavy door with its built-in iron grille and stepped into a small, carpeted vestibule that smelled faintly of cat urine.
A door beside him opened, and a small, stooped man with a wild sprout of curly gray hair stared out at him. Quinn immediately thought of Albert Einstein, but he said, “William Turner?”
“Bill will be fine,” the man told him in a high, phlegmy voice. “You said you were a detective?”
“Yes. Name’s Quinn.”
Watery blue eyes brightened. “Ah, the renowned serial-killer hunter.”
“I’m flattered,” Quinn said.
“I admire your work. Your entire career, in fact.” The hallway’s odor-cat urine-seemed to waft also from the man’s clothing. “You see, I’m kind of a cop groupie. I’ve always admired the police.” He emitted a high, peculiar laugh. If birds could laugh, this was how they’d sound. “Listen, I had a good working relationship with the police in my day.” Suddenly, as if on a whim, he moved back and motioned for Quinn to step inside. “I won’t ask for identification,” he said. “I know you from your many newspaper photographs.”
“You keep a scrapbook?”
The high laugh again, not quite a giggle. “No, I don’t go that far in my idolatry.”
Quinn stepped into what could only be called a parlor, and suddenly it was 1885, about the time the brownstone was built. And the year when Quinnn’s own brownstone was constructed. The ceilings were at least twelve feet high, with intricate crown molding. Long red velvet drapes puddled on the patterned hardwood floor.
