“It’ll work out for you, Frank. I’ve got a feeling.”
Do you have a feeling I didn’t rape Anna Caruso?
But he didn’t put the question into words.
They talked for a while longer, about their daughter, the upcoming wedding, where May and Elliott were going on their honeymoon-Cancun. At least it was a place where Quinn and May had never been.
After hanging up, Quinn couldn’t come close to going back to sleep.
May Franzine…
Around midnight he gave up and climbed out of bed. He went into the kitchen and got down an unopened bottle of scotch from the back of a cabinet shelf.
May and Lauri Franzine…
What was he, disappearing?
It was raining the next morning, so Quinn went to meet Pearl and Fedderman at the Lotus Diner on Amsterdam.
It was a long, narrow place, with wooden booths along a wall of windows opposite the counter. A haze of cooking smoke hung just beneath the high, stamped tin ceiling. There were half a dozen customers eating breakfast alone, three at the counter, three in the booths. Two of the ones at the counter were having only coffee and reading the Post, probably about the Night Prowler. The scent of overfried bacon made Quinn a little queasy the moment he came through the door. The line of booths went beyond the counter and windows. He sat in one of the back booths and was trying without much success to get down coffee and a glazed doughnut while waiting for his detective team.
He’d used an umbrella and walked here from his apartment in order to clear his mind. It had worked to an extent, but his head still ached and his stomach objected to the half bottle of scotch he’d killed last night. His ankles felt cool every time somebody came or went, and the draft from the open door flowed over his pants cuffs that were still wet from his walk through the rain.
Pearl was the reason for the latest cool draft. She’d driven her unmarked here alone. Fedderman and a detective named Drucker had worked late yesterday evening questioning the Grahams’ neighbors who held jobs and weren’t available during weekdays. Fedderman and Drucker were going to reinterview neighbors in adjacent buildings today and would arrive soon in Fedderman’s plain Ford Victoria.
Quinn started to stand to make himself noticeable, but Pearl spotted him and walked toward the booth. She had on black slacks today, black boots that looked waterproof, and a black raincoat that was trimmed in green and came to her knees. She wasn’t carrying an umbrella.
She unbuttoned the coat, draped it over a brass hook on the opposite wall, and slid into the booth to sit across from him. He saw the alarm on her face. “You look like shit, Quinn.”
He knew he should take offense but didn’t; she was, after all, right. “Tough night.”
She made a face as she got a whiff of his breath. “And you smell like a still.”
“I did imbibe.”
He explained what had happened, telling her almost everything about May’s late-night phone call. Once he’d begun talking, he couldn’t stop; the words were inside him like winged things that had to get out, had to be heard and shared.
Her reaction surprised him. “Your sleeve’s unbuttoned. Your cuff got dunked in your coffee.”
Quinn looked down and saw the brown triangular stain on his dangling white shirt cuff. He tried to button the cuff with his left hand but couldn’t. His fingers were trembling in a way they hadn’t for months.
Pearl reached across the table and deftly fastened the button. “Is Feds bringing Drucker by here this morning?”
“That’s the plan,” Quinn said.
“Let’s change the plan. You don’t want anybody else to see you like this. I’ll drive you home.”
Quinn must have noticeably recoiled at the thought.
“On the other hand,” Pearl said, “there might be some booze left in that bottle. You’re going to my place and catch up on the sleep you should have had last night.”
“Pearl, I really don’t think I’m at that point.”
“You look like a goddamn wino, Quinn. C’mon.”
She stood up and reached for her coat.
Quinn looked again at his stained cuff and his unsteady hands. His head throbbed and his stomach was sour. He decided not to argue with Pearl. He trailed her meekly out of the diner.
As they were walking toward the car, she said, “I think you need a real breakfast instead of that jolt of caffeine and sugar you were working on.”
Pearl taking care of him. Maternal Pearl. Quinn couldn’t help wondering where this might lead.
“After you get something to eat, you sack out on my sofa and I’ll tell Fedderman and Drucker you’re not feeling well today.”
“Listen, Pearl…”
“Don’t thank me, Quinn. And don’t question what I say. It’d be best if you skipped working today and were sharp tomorrow, instead of being a booze zombie two consecutive days.”
Less than an hour later he sat with his sleeves rolled up at her tiny kitchen table, where she served him a cheese omelette and toast with a glass of orange juice, no coffee.
When he’d finished breakfast and was ensconced on Pearl’s sofa with his shoes off, she tinkered around in her bedroom a few minutes, then left. He opened a narrowed eye and caught her smiling at him as she went out the door.
It was a particular kind of smile that Quinn recognized, both affectionate and proprietary.
Lord, Lord, Lord…, he thought, and dropped into a sleep blacker than black.
Claire had just finished washing the bedroom windows when there was a knock on the door. That was odd, she thought. Someone had bypassed the intercom and somehow gained entrance to the lobby and elevators.
On the other hand, not so odd. Probably whoever was knocking had simply entered along with another visitor or one of the tenants. Or maybe for some reason the intercom wasn’t working today.
Claire’s lover, actor Jubal Day, had lost his role in Metabolism when it folded last week in Kansas City; he was back in New York with Claire. He’d decided to stay with her, even if it meant having to accept roles he didn’t want in off-off-Broadway theaters with folding chairs and leaky ceilings. Though she feigned disappointment about the Kansas City play, Claire was delighted. Handsome, lanky Jubal, with his tousled dark hair and piercing blue eyes, belonged with her. Belonged to her.
As she entered the living room, still holding the folded rag she’d been using on the bedroom windows, he was standing up from where he’d been dozing on the sofa. She grinned and waved him back down, since he looked too sleepy to be coherent anyway, and continued to the door.
When she opened it, she needed a few seconds to recognize the man standing in the hall. He was tall, blond, and muscular, wearing a black suit with a black pullover beneath the coat.
He smiled. “Lars Svenson,” he reminded her.
“I know. It took me a while.”
“I’m not always a furniture mover. I have another life.”
Claire grinned. “Everybody has several.”
“I thought in this one,” Svenson said with an easy confidence, “I’d come by and see if you wanted to share a little of it.”
“Uh, Mr. Svenson…”
He shook his head, widening his smile that was too obviously meant to charm. “Claire, it’s Lars. And I don’t mean any harm. It’s just that for some reason you stuck in my mind. I move furniture for a lot of people, and usually it’s just a job. But-”
He stopped talking abruptly and his expression changed. The smile was gone as if Claire had Windexed it off with the rag in her hand.
“Somebody looking for a job?” Jubal asked behind her.
Svenson recovered nicely and the smile was back. “Already did the job,” he said, his full attention now aimed at Jubal. “I just came by to make sure everything was to the lady’s satisfaction. We do that.”
“We?”
