comparison look… like Fedderman.
There were chairs angled around the viewing room, but no one was sitting down. Penny had refused the offer of a chair, and the two men felt obligated to stand with her. She was slightly behind Renz’s man and standing on Fedderman’s right, about a foot away from him. Fedderman recalled the victim’s bulging eyes and horror-stricken expression. He knew what might happen and made himself ready to catch a falling body.
But Nora Noon’s head-shot photo was surprisingly without the horror of yesterday in that stifling apartment. Her eyes were closed and her facial muscles worked into a neutral expression. The photo was cropped so it showed none of the burn marks on her neck and farther down on her body. None of the stripped flesh.
“Her,” Penny Noon said from somewhere deep in her throat. And in a steadier voice: “That’s Nora.”
Then she emitted a soft sound halfway between a sigh and a sob, and her body sagged against Fedderman.
He caught her and helped her-carried her, actually-to one of the padded black chairs and lowered her gently into it.
She came around suddenly, as if someone had waved smelling salts under her nose. She looked into Fedderman’s eyes, causing something in him to turn over and over, and appeared profoundly embarrassed.
“It’s all right,” he heard himself say. He watched his arm move independent of thought and his hand pat the back of hers.
He realized he was kneeling down in front of the chair like an idiot about to propose marriage. His knee was sore from supporting his weight on the hard tile floor. For some reason he was afraid to look again into her eyes, as if a part of him knew that something profound might happen. Again.
Listening to his aching knee creak, Fedderman made himself stand and turn at the same time. As he did so he glanced up, and was relieved to see a blank monitor screen rather than the dead woman’s photo.
“It’s all right,” he repeated. “This part’s over.”
“For Nora, everything’s over.” He thought she was going to start sobbing, but she bit back any show of emotion or loss of control. “It’s so goddamned unfair,” she said in a resigned voice.
“It is,” he agreed.
“I guess everyone says that.”
“Everyone’s right.”
She looked around slowly, as if gradually waking from a dark dream and finding herself in strange surroundings.
“God!” she said, shaking her head.
“He’s in the mix somewhere,” Fedderman said, knowing as he heard the words that it was an inane thing to say.
She gave him a closer look, curious, her eyes intent and traveling in brief glances, as if she was mapping his features. He could not look away.
“Are you a religious man?” she asked.
“I have been a few times,” Fedderman said, “when I was sufficiently scared.”
Her wide lips curved upward in a slight smile that stayed. Her hands were in her lap, turned palms up and trembling, as if she were waiting for her fortune to be told and dreading the prognosis.
“That applies to me, too,” she said.
Renz’s man had come over and was standing looking down at her. “You okay, ma’am?” he asked.
“Okay enough.”
He nodded, gave her a smile that meant nothing, and left the room, his mission as witness to the identification completed.
“There goes a piece of the bureaucracy,” Penny said.
“I’m a piece of the bureaucracy, too.”
“You don’t seem a precise fit.”
Fedderman didn’t know what she meant by that remark, but he was sure he approved.
“I need something,” Penny said.
“A drink?”
“Something warm. Coffee, decaffeinated. I think I saw a vending machine when I entered the building.”
“You wouldn’t want to drink anything that came out of that,” Fedderman heard himself say. “I know a place where we could go.”
I must be out of my mind.
She looked at him for several seconds before nodding, as if confirming what he’d been thinking.
17
Despite the early hour, Quinn and Jerry Lido sat next to each other on bar stools at O’Keefe’s Oasis. They were the only ones in the place consuming alcohol. The three other drinkers, two men and a woman, were sipping coffee. Quinn had consumed only half of his mimosa-a mixture of champagne and orange juice-when he generously ordered another scotch and water for Jerry. It had been Quinn’s idea to come here.
“Better ease up on those,” the bartender said to Jerry, as he placed the drink on the bar.
“Not to worry, Jim,” Jerry answered with a grin. “I got my desecrated driver.”
Jim glanced disapprovingly at Quinn as he moved away down the bar. O’Keefe’s was near Jerry’s apartment, and Jerry was one of the regulars. Maybe they liked him here. Jerry wasn’t a bad guy when he wasn’t involved in selfflagellation.
Quinn got Jerry talking about the investigation and his computer expertise, and suggested they leave so Jerry could demonstrate something online. On the walk to Jerry’s apartment, they ducked into a liquor store and bought a bottle of J amp;B scotch, Jerry’s favorite. Quinn paid. He knew Jerry was great with his computer when he was sober. Drunk he was brilliant.
After about an hour, Quinn said good-bye and left Jerry’s apartment. Deep in an alcoholic and electronic trance, concentrating on his monitor and mouse and nothing else, Jerry barely noticed.
When Quinn entered the office, Pearl looked at him pretty much as Jim the bartender had in O’Keefe’s.
“You smell like booze,” she said.
“I’ve been-”
“I can guess what you’ve been doing. Drinking with Jerry Lido. Where is he?”
Quinn glanced around. “Where’s who?”
“Are you drunk, too?”
“Who’s too?”
“ Too would be Jerry Lido, who I’m sure is soused despite the early hour.”
“No, I’m not soused. Nor am I smashed nor looped nor plastered. Jerry’s on the edge, I’d say.”
“You’re sure right about that.”
“He’s working now on his computer. Maybe he’ll come up with something.”
“Like sclerosis of the liver.”
“Don’t be so rough on him, Pearl.”
Pearl simply stared at Quinn. She made him feel drunk, though he was sure he wasn’t. She could do that.
He shrugged. “I’ll be working,” he said. “At my desk.”
“Don’t try to drive it,” Pearl said.
That afternoon Quinn was alone in the office when a short, stocky man wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt entered and glanced around with his head tilted back, as if orienting himself while making sure the air was safe to breathe. He walked directly to Quinn’s desk. Quinn figured he was in his fifties, a fit fifties. His hair was buzz cut and his chin was thrust outward and upward. His bearing was that of a small person who’d grown up in a tough neighborhood. If his forearms were larger he would have made a great movie Popeye. He stood in front of Quinn’s desk and fixed a calm blue stare on him. Up close like that, Quinn could see the road map of fine wrinkles on his face and upped his estimate of the man’s age to over sixty.
