right?”
I smiled at the thought. “What about the guy from the Texas Syndicate?” I said.
“He didn’t follow up on her, far as I know. I think he had enough problems of his own, trying to stay in power.”
We were quiet a minute, and then I chuckled.
“What,” he said.
“She ever do that love song for you while in the throes of passion?”
“Which one—the asthmatic alley cat, or the singing horse?”
“The horse is the one I remember.”
Quinn gave a sudden imitation of her that made all the surrounding tables take notice. I laughed like I hadn’t laughed since the days of Kathleen.
Quinn said, “Alison was really something, she was.”
“So was Kathleen,” I said.
Quinn nodded. “So when do you want me to kill her fiance?”
Chapter 51
Of course I didn’t want Quinn to kill Kathleen’s fiance, but I appreciated the gesture. Hell, I’d thought of killing him myself and starting over with Kathleen, but like Callie said about quitting the business, each time I thought about it, I came to my senses.
Quinn and I had our steaks and split an order of truffled mac and cheese. During dinner we drank an outstanding cabernet, the 2004 Oracle, from Miner Family Vineyards.
“I only eat like this when I’m alone or with somebody,” I said.
“You were due,” he said. “Keep working out and eating like this and you’ll be back to normal strength before you know it.”
I almost told Augustus how much I’d missed him, but changed my mind at the last second. It wouldn’t have been worth all the shit he’d give me for saying it.
“What brings you to Philly?” he said.
“I came to see you.”
He twisted his face in the manner I’ve come to recognize as his signature smile. “That’s nice,” he said.
“People like us,” I said, “can’t afford to have many friends. I like to think of you and Callie as people I can count on.”
Quinn said, “I feel the same way. They’d have to pay me a lot to kill you or Callie.”
Coming from Quinn, that was quite a compliment. On the other hand, it was scary to think that this monstrous man who would kill me for the right price was the closest I had to a guy friend.
I looked at him as he stared at the women coming and going on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and wondered if our team of surgeons could do anything about his extreme deformities. I decided they could not.
Quinn wasn’t as ugly as Joseph Merrick, the Elephant man, but at least Merrick enjoyed two years on earth as a normal human being before the growths began forming on his face and head. Quinn was born this way, and his world view was formed in response to the reactions he got from others.
Doctors couldn’t agree on the source of Quinn’s particular malady, but the consensus pointed to a form of Proteus Syndrome, a condition so rare that less than a hundred cases have been documented world wide.
Proteus would explain the deformed facial features on one side of Quinn’s head and face, but none of the reported cases shared the strange, multi-colored striations that covered the left side of his face and neck. It wasn’t a skin disease, and there was no odor to his skin, so one theory was that the splotches were a giant, multi-colored birthmark.
Bottom line, Quinn’s poster boy looks were closer to Joseph Merrick than Brad Pitt. As you might imagine, there were gaping vacancies on Quinn’s social calendar, a situation that afforded him plenty of time to ogle the women that entered his field of vision.
A model-thin stunner entered the main dining room at Smith & Wollensky’s and took a seat at a table
