whatever type of lonely woman they preferred. It was like browsing through a catalog. The killer found the website immensely entertaining. Tech was wonderful. Other people struggled with each new device or application that made its way to the market. Not the killer. He seemed to have been born to be a tech head.
“May I have some nuts?”
A waiter nodded and disappeared inside the restaurant.
The killer turned his attention to the two bearded men playing chess. They appeared to be in their sixties. Each was bent over the board, giving the game his rapt attention. One of them had several more pieces than the other. Traffic hummed and fumed past only a few feet from them, but they were oblivious to what was happening out in the street, beyond the shade of the awning. Right here, right now, the game was everything to them. Winning was paramount.
The killer had to smile. The chess players were completely unaware of him. They had no idea that going on very near them was a much more serious game of move and countermove. A game where lives were involved.
And deaths.
After another slow sip of espresso, the killer smiled even wider, at least on the inside.
He was contemplating how women, if you chose them carefully, became terrified and evasive when they knew they were being stalked, when they understood what was intended. They became truly desperate.
Then, at a certain point, they became played out and tired of watching and taking alternate routes, of double-checking locks, of constantly being cautious, of being afraid. They wanted it to happen, to be over. They welcomed it, whatever it was. They welcomed him.
Women. The perfect prey animal, surely made that way by God for the predators.
Of course, when they learned what it was really like, they changed their minds. Always. But too late.
They were like the prey animals on television nature channels that stood gasping and heaving after the chase, waiting for the inevitable because finally, on a primal level, they understood what and why they were. They would run no more. They accepted their predetermined end.
But when fang and claw were applied, when their last seconds arrived, they always struggled meagerly and futilely. A final and feeble burst of life force, not enough.
It interested him, that inevitable summoning of dying effort. Why did they cling so to every last tick of life? What did they know, or see, that frightened them so? A glimpse behind the curtain? Perhaps something looking back at them.
Or perhaps, nothing at all
He thought of Ann Spellman. Of how she’d fought so for her last few seconds of life. Of how her fingers had fluttered like a poignant good-bye at the end.
Of Frank Quinn and his dangerous band of misfit detectives.
Of Pearl.
God, he loved the game they were playing! A part of him worried that maybe he was beginning to love it too much and it cautioned him with inner voices. But for now he’d ignore those voices. He hated to use the word fun, because it seemed so inadequate to describe what he was capable of feeling. But the fact was-
The waiter reappeared, and the killer beckoned him with a languid wave of his hand.
“Some nuts, please.”
22
T he Times had the heat wave above the news about Ann Spellman being murdered. An odd order of importance, but Quinn guessed it made sense, depending on who you were.
While Pearl held down things at the office, and Fedderman, Sal, and Harold were in Ann Spellman’s neighborhood talking to neighbors, merchants, and friends of the deceased, Quinn went to Clinton Industrial Designs to question Louis Gainer. He left the Lincoln parked outside the office, in a loading zone he knew was seldom used, and took a subway downtown to Third and Lex. Then he returned to the surface world and walked to East Fifty-fourth Street.
Clinton Industrial Designs occupied the top floor of a ten-story office building. A financial adviser and a dry- cleaner occupied the first floor. Quinn entered the building through a door located between them. He stepped into an ancient, creaky elevator, pushed the 10 button, and up he went with surprising smoothness.
A small, bustling woman scurrying about in a reception area informed Quinn that Louis Gainer didn’t see people without an appointment. Quinn flashed her his ID and told her again he wanted to speak with Gainer.
The woman didn’t seem impressed. But she thought things through for a moment, then hurried over to a desk and said something into a blue phone. She replaced the receiver, staring at Quinn and obviously wondering about the nature of his visit.
Then the blue phone jangled, and she picked up the receiver and talked and listened. Mostly listened.
When she hung up, she smiled and came over to Quinn at almost a dead run.
“Mr. Gainer will see you. I’ll take you back.”
Quinn had to walk fast to keep up with the woman. They went through a door in the back wall of the reception area, down a narrow hall, and then through another door that led to a large loft area with skylights illuminating desks and drafting boards. Three men and two women were at the boards, working away like kids taking a final exam. Another man, sitting at a desk, stood up when they approached.
He was average height, lean, and muscular, wearing a white shirt, and a tie with a loosened knot. His brown slacks were made voluminous by pleats. He had dark wavy hair, open Irish features, and an engaging white smile.
The kind of guy people would describe as a lady-killer.
Quinn wondered how close that description was to the truth.
He introduced himself and, when the woman who’d escorted him was gone, Quinn told Louis Gainer he wanted to talk to him about Ann Spellman.
At the mention of her name, Gainer seemed about to start sobbing.
But he didn’t. Instead he simply nodded, his eyes moist, and led Quinn to a room containing a long table and ten identical wooden chairs down each side. There were matching black leather upholstered chairs at each end of the table. In one corner were a fax machine and phone. A computer with a large flat-screen monitor mounted above it was in another. The walls were adorned with framed color photographs of what looked like building lobbies. There were no people in any of the lobbies, only ferns.
Gainer sat down in a large leather chair at the head of the table, and motioned for Quinn to sit in the first wooden chair on his left. Some kind of power play?
Quinn lowered himself into the chair and was surprised by how comfortable it was.
“What exactly does your company do?” he asked.
Gainer seemed relieved that they weren’t getting right to the topic of the late Ann Spellman. “We design and install both public and private common spaces, taking into account ambience as well as functionality.”
“Ah,” Quinn said. He leaned slightly toward Gainer. “And Ann Spellman was one of your designers?”
At the mention of the victim’s name, Gainer winced. A normal enough response. They’d been close. “She was one of our best designers, and was in charge of one of our industrial units.”
“Yet you fired her.”
“No, no. The board fired her. We-they had no choice.”
“Something about her work or attitude?”
“Something that became inevitable,” Gainer said.
“Her reaction to being dropped by you?”
Gainer obviously didn’t like where the conversation was going. “You mean on a personal level?”
“The most personal.”
Gainer seemed to give that some thought, shifting position in his high-backed chair. “Well, yes. It was partly my fault for letting our relationship go as far as it had. She and I were good with each other, but in a temporary way. I knew that, and I thought she did. When I had to end it, I knew how she’d take it. Especially since I didn’t give her the kind of explanation I owed her.”
