Pearl and Fedderman stood up. Fedderman stretched, extending his back and flailing his arms, which still looked abnormally long even though he’d put on weight. Then he and Pearl walked in the warming sun toward Quinn. They all knew they were probably wasting their time, but nobody objected.
Quinn was pleased with the way their first meeting had gone. Beneath the bullshit and hopeless humor was the beginning of mutual understanding, maybe even respect.
Maybe the beginning of a team.
14
He lay curled in a corner, a folded white cloth clutched in his left hand. He was smiling.
Slowly he raised the saturated cloth to his nose and inhaled deeply of the benzene fumes. Benzene was a solvent not often used these days, but he’d become accustomed to it a long time ago, adapted to it. His drug of choice for the visions and memories long and short.
He inhaled again, his eyelids fluttering. He was back in the Elzners’ kitchen, carefully, silently, removing groceries from plastic bags and placing them on the table before putting them away. As usual, he was wearing flesh-colored latex gloves. He giggled, looking down at them in his dream; they were like real fingers, only without fingernails. He reached for the tuna can.
And there was Martin Elzner, the husband. This time he’d been willed there, but he appeared as he had that night-that early morning. Elzner was stunned, his mouth hanging open, surprise, anger, fear…all flashing like signs in his eyes. His sandy hair was mussed from turning in his sleep. Had it actually stood up in points like that? It made him look even more astounded to find this stranger in his kitchen, busy at a domestic task.
The stranger-who wasn’t a stranger-set the tuna can on the table. The husband’s sudden presence in the dim kitchen was a surprise to him, too. Yet not exactly a surprise. He was doomed to disappointment and betrayal and knew this could happen, would happen, and he was prepared for it. Wanting it?
He smiled.
He inhaled.
Back to Elzner, too astounded even to speak. More fear in his eyes as he saw the gun with its bulky silencer. A terrible understanding. He grimaced and turned sideways, raising a hand as if to wave some irritating insect away if it buzzed near again. Death could be such a pest.
Step close… Don’t shoot the hand… They must think he died last…a suicide, poor deranged creature.
The betrayer would die second.
Close enough. Up came the gun, steady in seconds, inches from his head. The satisfying putt! of the silenced gun, like a tiny engine trying once to turn over. Martin Elzner, down with a loud double thumping sound on the kitchen floor.
Backward, step backward, as it actually occurred. The choreography of dreams.
A sudden clattering. His free hand had brushed the tuna can near the edge of the table. As it actually occurred. If the sound of Elzner hitting the floor hadn’t awakened his wife, the can striking and rolling across the tiles would.
He inhaled. He wondered if the tiles had been damaged. The floor was actually quite attractive. An unusual beige with flecks of-
Enough. There she was as she’d been, standing in the doorway with the sudden alteration of her life, the cancellation of her past and future, all on her face. They knew. They always knew.
His hand not clutching the cloth moved down to his crotch as she instinctively lurched toward her fallen husband, her true love, her only, her lifemate, her deathmate, drawing her, drawing her, gravitation, the inevitable physics of love, the end of love…
The end of love…
After a while it was time for the second show. He played in his mind once more that night in the Elzners’ kitchen. It amazed him the force of his intellect, the control he had over his recall. He’d reached the point where he could even fast-forward or rewind the reconstruction, as if he were pressing mental buttons, watching the sped-up images moving back and forth across his spectrum of recollection: stop, pause, replay. Slower now-relishing it, seeing it, and reliving it from a more vivid angle…
Unpacking the groceries, the tuna can. There was Martin Elzner, the husband. Surprise, surprise… Pause, play, speedup, aim, fire the silenced handgun. The acrid scent of the shot lingering in the air, in his mind. Fast- forward. He inhaled. Jan Elzner was barefoot, in her knee-length flimsy nightgown… half speed… She sees her husband on the floor, the blood, a rich scarlet almost black, and moves toward him, the blood… Wait until she’s very near him, almost over him… slow motion…
Her eyes… what she knew!
The hand without the folded, saturated cloth moved back down.
He climaxed as he squeezed the trigger again and again.
The colors! The colors are magnificent!
He inhaled.
Finally evening.
It hadn’t even hinted at rain that warm summer day, so Quinn met with his team of detectives again on the park bench just inside the entrance at Eighty-sixth Street. He sat awkwardly but comfortably on the hard bench, sipping from a plastic water bottle he’d bought from a street vender, and watched New Yorkers enjoying their park while there was still daylight and the muggers hadn’t yet come out with the stars. There were more people now that it was cooler, a woman pushing a stroller, a few joggers, and some helmeted and padded rollerbladers zooming about like cyber creatures who’d escaped a video game.
Pearl and Fedderman approached together. They looked hot and tired. Pearl’s pace was dragging and Fedderman had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up and was carrying his suit coat slung over his shoulder. Quinn thought back to a time when the younger Fedderman had entered rooms with his coat slung like that on a crooked forefinger over one shoulder and would say “ring-a-ding-ding,” like Sinatra when he was a hot item in Vegas and everywhere else. Quinn couldn’t imagine that coming out of the older, heavier Fedderman, who carried the weight of his experience on his shoulders along with the coat.
“Ring-a-ding-ding,” Fedderman said wearily.
Quinn grinned and Pearl stared at both men. She still looked beautiful, her irises so black in contrast with the gleaming whites of her eyes. Her mascara had run a little with the heat, making the right eye appear slightly bruised, as if she’d gotten into a scuffle sometime today. Not impossible.
“Old joke,” Quinn explained.
“Secret male-bonding bullshit,” she said.
“Nothing to do with you, Pearl,” Fedderman assured her, thinking he was too tired to put up with her if she decided to be in one of her moods.
Quinn thought the brief ring-a-ding-ding jingle could apply to Pearl. She was somehow even more attractive when worn down from a difficult and probably futile day’s work. He pulled from beneath his folded sport coat, where they’d stayed cool out of the sun, the other two water bottles he’d bought and handed them up to Pearl and Fedderman. Both detectives expressed gratitude, then uncapped the bottles and took long sips. Quinn watched Pearl’s slender pale throat work as she swallowed.
“So what’ve we got?” he asked when they were finished drinking.
“Nothing new,” Pearl said, using her wrist to wipe away water that had dribbled onto her chin, “but at least we’re more sure of what we do have. I mean, we’ve got everything in the file almost goddamn memorized.”
“Cop work,” Fedderman said with a shrug. He rested a hand on Pearl’s shoulder while looking at Quinn. “One thing she hasn’t mentioned yet. We questioned the witnesses again and one of the tenants in the Elzners’ building, a lonely old guy down the hall, responded to Pearl’s feminine wiles.”
Quinn took a sip of water and stared at Pearl.
“I use them sparingly and selectively,” she said.
“So how did this old guy respond?”
“By remembering something he hadn’t had a chance to tell the police. He’s three apartments away and was
