Nobody wanted the cheap-ass silencer, so he tossed it in the trash five or six months ago.”
“So you hit a dead end.”
“Not necessarily. One of the other silencers might have been bought somewhere else and transported to the New York area. Maybe even from another country.”
Quinn didn’t bother to say he’d pointed that out to Renz weeks ago. Enough about the silencer.
“You sure nobody else knows about my hospital stay?” Quinn asked.
“Not in the department, no. And I won’t tell anyone. It’s not that I don’t have a heart myself, but I’m thinking of the greater good. It’s my duty to protect the public, and you’re our best bet to nail this fucking Night Prowler.”
“You were born to command, Harley.”
Renz chuckled. “To serve, you mean.”
“Whatever you’re doing, the condition of my heart’s the last thing you better discuss with the media or anybody else.”
“Not to worry, Quinn. It’s between you, me, and your arteries.”
Quinn broke the connection.
Pearl looked over at him. “What was all that heart talk?”
“Renz knows about my night in the hospital. He’s got a connection there who told him.”
“Is he pulling you off the case?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. He doesn’t know what a heart is, because he doesn’t have one.”
“He’s not going any further with the information,” Quinn said. He gave Pearl a look she hadn’t seen before. One that scared her. “And neither are you.”
Pearl nodded and put the car in drive.
She thought about the expression on Quinn’s face, what was in his eyes. Her breathing was coming a little hard. She’d been on the Job long enough to know people, and men in particular. The genuinely bad guys. The flip side. This Quinn had healed stronger where he’d been broken and was not a man to be messed with. The real and dangerous deal.
Pearl rather liked that about him, but she decided it would be wise to pull in her horns.
Until he loosened up, anyway, with her help. And she could help him because she knew how guys like him thought, and they all thought the same way. Quinn couldn’t throw away the rage because he thought it made him strong.
It was something she’d have to change.
That and some other things.
49
Fedderman joined Quinn and Pearl for lunch at the Diner on Amsterdam. They had a booth that looked out on the street. The sun blasting through the spotted window made the place too warm. It was also noisy and the food wasn’t very good. There were dead flies on the windowsill.
Pearl was afraid to eat the tuna sandwich she’d ordered. Quinn picked at his egg-white omelette. Fedderman voiced doubts about his meat loaf sandwich but devoured it, anyway. Pearl suspected it would make him sick. She said they weren’t coming back here-ever. Neither man disagreed with her.
“So what’d you get out of Janet Hofer?” Quinn asked Fedderman, sipping diet Pepsi through a straw, certain the guy behind the counter had screwed up and given him the real stuff.
“Nice woman, sells jewelry. I bought this from her.” Fedderman lifted his wadded brown suit coat from the seat beside him and held it out to show a bejeweled red, white and blue top hat pinned to the lapel.
“Patriotic,” Pearl said.
“It cost less than you think.”
“You have no idea what I think.”
“Hey! Easy, Pearl.”
“Stick to the job, Feds, so we can get outta this shit hole as soon as possible. I don’t wanna hear about goddamn lapel pins.” She looked at Quinn, who was obviously struggling not to laugh. Pearl frowned.
“She’s right,” Quinn told Fedderman. The wink was in his voice, and it made Pearl even madder, but she said nothing.
Fedderman told them about his interview with Janet Hofer. It didn’t add anything, but it corroborated Abby Koop’s account of the conversation the three women had at lunch. Lisa Ide had been receiving anonymous gifts, including expensive jewelry and her beloved caviar. Lisa Ide had received yellow roses. Lisa Ide was dead, along with her husband.
Since it was no secret, and was going to be in the news if it wasn’t already, Quinn told Fedderman about the shots that had been fired, and how he’d almost caught up with Luther Lunt last night. He didn’t mention the chest pains or the night in the hospital. Neither did Pearl.
“Renz is feeding the information to the media,” Quinn said. “Along with details about clues left behind in the Lisa and Leon murders.”
“That’s gonna pressure Lunt,” Fedderman said in a concerned voice, “and he’s already hunting for you.”
“That’s another way of saying he’s being flushed out into the open.”
“Or that he’s doubled back on his trail like a tiger and is about to ambush the hunter.”
Pearl looked at Fedderman. “I didn’t know you knew anything about hunting.”
“I do about hunting people,” Fedderman said, “and the people I hunt. And our Night Prowler’s about ready to crack. News reports that we’re practically inside his clothes with him are gonna drive him up the wall.”
“Nothing there but the ceiling,” Quinn said.
Fedderman nodded. “That’s my point. No place to go next but out the door, and we’re between him and it. Especially you, Quinn.”
“That’s the idea,” Quinn said, “to bring him and us together.”
“I hear you,” Fedderman said. “And for the first time I think it’s really gonna happen.” He shook his head. “But, at this point, who can predict what this sick freak is gonna do? All that pressure-”
“On everybody involved,” Pearl said. She took a sip of her iceless iced tea and made a face. “Something’s gotta crack someplace soon.”
“Or somebody,” Fedderman said, giving her an appraising look.
Another of those composite drawings, all distressingly black and white. They thought they knew everything about him now, Quinn and his loathsome companions. They did know about the anonymous gifts, what the anchorwoman called my- his — sick obsession. The Night Prowler made a mental note of the woman’s name and the local channel she appeared on, and the red, red of her full lips carefully shaping her black vowels. Maybe someday he’d demonstrate to her about obsessions, make her obsessive about dying because it was better than living another moment under his hand.
He knew what Quinn was doing, trying to increase the pressure on him to crack, like those serial killers in all the films and novels. Didn’t the fools ever stop to think it seldom happened in real life? Almost always it was chance that led to such a killer being caught-unpaid traffic tickets, official black on white, an improbable crossing of paths with an unknown witness, a call to jury duty, a neighbor’s complaint about noise… Minimize those kinds of risks and the police might chase their blue tails forever.
But he knew it was true that the dark, cold pressure, the unreasonable fear that was being brought to bear, might lead to one of those minimal risks actually working for the law. What might not have been a mistake early in his magnificent run of victims might be a fatal error further down the road of rage and redemption.
And maybe it didn’t have to be a mistake. Yesterday on Columbus Avenue the Night Prowler had encountered an old man he used to play chess with in Central Park. Wilhelm Whitmire had been old when they’d first met, and seemed ancient now. In their conversation he mentioned that the police had talked to him recently about a silencer he’d bought and then thrown away months ago.
The Night Prowler recalled hearing about the silencer when it had been discarded, then secretly digging it out
