murder? I mean, during daylight, working hours?”
Pearl and Fedderman stared at Quinn.
“No,” Fedderman said, “but we didn’t specify those hours and we didn’t go back as far as two weeks.”
“You will tomorrow,” Quinn said.
Pearl took a pull on her beer and glanced at Fedderman. “I told you we shouldn’t come here.”
An incurable wiseass, Quinn thought. But so was Sherlock Holmes.
Pearl and Fedderman had left less than five minutes ago. Quinn had just finished throwing away the empty beer cans and putting the potato chip bag back in a kitchen cabinet when there was a knock on his apartment door. Someone must have bypassed the intercom and let themselves in as Pearl and Fedderman were leaving.
But when Quinn peered through the glass peephole into the hall, there was Pearl.
“I forgot my purse,” she said when he’d opened the door. “My gun’s in it.”
Quinn stepped back so she could enter.
She went to the middle of the living room, placed her fists on her hips, and glanced around. Quinn looked, too. No purse.
Pearl went to the sofa and felt along the sides of the cushions.
“Ah!” she said, and pulled the small purse up from where it was jammed between the cushions.
She held the purse up by its strap, as if it were a fish she’d just caught, and smiled at Quinn. “You got any more beer?”
“I can get you one,” Quinn said.
He went into the kitchen and came back a minute later with an opened can of Budweiser. “Tell Fedderman I’d have given one to him, only he’s driving.”
“Oh, he went ahead with the car. I told him I’d subway home. It’s not that big a deal, and there was no point making him wait.”
Quinn felt his pulse quicken. He looked closely at her.
“This apartment,” she said, motioning with her arm, “probably hasn’t been this neat in years.”
“Pearl, you never forgot anything in your life, much less your gun.”
She stooped and placed the beer can on the carpet, then came over and stood too close to him. “I can save you, Quinn.”
“How is that, Pearl?”
“I can give you back your self-respect.”
“You helped me clean my apartment, now you’re ready to start on my life.”
“Question is, are you ready?”
The scent of her hair, even her perspiration, was like perfume to Quinn. He remembered the way she’d looked at him as he was leaving her apartment after spending the night there and felt a tightening in his groin even as internal alarms were triggered. “Fedderman knows you didn’t forget your purse.”
“Piss on Fedderman. You’ve been friends with him a long time. You must have something on him.”
Quinn grinned. “Pearl, Pearl…”
“I can save you,” she said again, and stood high on her toes and kissed him.
He kissed her back and felt her lips part, then the warm strength of her eager tongue.
When they pulled away from each other, she smiled up at him. “I’ve got another side, you know.”
He did know. He picked her up and carried her into his bedroom.
She seemed to like that.
Their lovemaking qualified as frenzied, Quinn surprising himself. Pearl was on top, grinning down at him, working her hips to a marvelous silent beat, her large breasts swaying with the rhythm. After a while he rolled her off and mounted her, careful to support himself with his elbows and knees. She was so small, yet there was a compact strength to her. He was gentle but took control. She was ready for it and clamped her legs around him, somehow still managing to work her hips in response to his powerful thrusts. Her warm breath was near his ear and she made urgent, throaty sounds that grew louder and louder.
When it was finished, they lay on their backs, side by side, staring at the cracked ceiling and listening to their ragged breathing gradually even out. They’d wanted and enjoyed each other more than either of them had imagined possible. They were both still shocked and, in a way, frightened by what still gripped them. During the past half hour everything had changed for both of them, forever.
After a few minutes the only sounds in the small, warm room were of the city outside the window, the complex stage on which they would continue to act out their lives.
Where the hell…, Quinn wondered.
…is this going? Pearl asked herself.
Less than a mile from where Quinn and Pearl lay, the Night Prowler was curled in his corner with his benzene and his dreams. These were some of the best times, knowing what he was going to do next, who would be his next victims.
He wasn’t completely a slave to his compulsion. He had free will. He knew the actress would be perfect, with the graceful, practiced music of her every move, as if her walk drew energy from the ground. But she wasn’t married and so wouldn’t do and couldn’t do. Living together in sin, delicious sin, that wasn’t like marriage, no matter how hard people pretended.
The actress had called to him without knowing. She was unaware of her own silent voice and that she was an actress in more ways than she suspected. Yet she wasn’t one of them, one of his, so he’d decided to forget her, as he had so many others. They were like bright coins of little value that he hadn’t bothered stooping to pick up.
He closed his eyes and pushed all thoughts of the actress away, and lovely Lisa strode toward him across vistas like a high-fashion model on a celestial runway. She emerged from shadow into light and into focus. Staring inward, he marveled at her beauty.
My God!
Tears tracked down his stiffened cheeks. There was no need for the actress. Not if he had Lisa.
He could see her clearly now in every detail. Such was the power of his mind to re-create beauty and essence. Lisa tucking in her chin and giving him a flirtatious look. Lisa smiling. Lisa whirling. Lisa complete.
He rewound time and there she was, Lisa Ide, manager of the jewelry store she and her husband, Leon Holtzman, owned on West Forty-seventh Street. Lisa working behind the glittering showcases. Lisa in her kitchen, yellow, at the big white stove, hot grease smell, stretching and reaching to get something from the back of the refrigerator, white blue, doing dishes by hand, suds yellow rubber fingers, facing away from him, wearing the tight, tight black slacks he’d seen her in, her flesh, her flesh. She had her auburn hair swirled high and piled jauntily toward the back of her head, precisely the way she’d worn it when he’d watched her leave the jewelry store and stride along the crowded sidewalk.
Fading…
He raised the folded cloth to his face and inhaled, smiling but still crying.
There she was! In focus, in color…
He could dial in on her much faster now, the way he needed to, the way he needed her. Lisa Ide, with her bright blue eyes so widely spaced, ocean, and her wide mouth with its full lips, wet red, and slight overbite. Lisa Ide dining at the sidewalk cafe across from Lincoln Center with her husband Leon, raising her coffee cup to her mouth, pursing her lips so softly. A small woman but so complete, so perfect in so many ways. Her lushness, the endless and wonderful spectrum of her coloring. A man like Leon, a simple merchant whose work was his life, would never in a thousand years understand Lisa. He dealt in precious stones and yet was unaware of what was precious and so near him.
A man like that deserved nothing but death.
Yes, there was no doubt who was next. The Night Prowler could feel the fatal knowledge stirring in him like a thing aborning that would begin its rapid and relentless growth. It was barely potent now, harmless, but it would grow teeth and claws. And it would have its way.
He pressed the folded cloth hard to his nose and inhaled deeply, but the benzene was losing its effect and he felt himself simply falling asleep.
The buzzing, briefly, but fading away…
And he dreamed, unable now to escape from her: Lisa standing in the bathtub, about to lower herself into the
