Night Kills. John Lutz

      A pause.

      “Yes,” he said, still smiling. “Of course. Of course. Yes. Yes. You know I do. Yes.”

      He put down the gun and wandered the room as he talked, as if motion would lend import to his words. Whoever was on the other end of the connection was receiving his full attention.

      “Okay,” he said, “I’ll see you there. You can’t know how much I’m looking forward to it.” He idly picked up the broomstick and observed its sharpened point as he listened to the caller.

      “See you there,” he said again. “Love you.”

      6

      Death had drawn them together again. They met at Quinn’s first-floor apartment on West Seventy-fifth off Columbus in the room he’d converted into a den. Quinn sat behind his big cherrywood desk, his rough-hewn features sidelighted by the shaded lamp, making his oft-broken nose seem even more crooked. One of the Cuban cigars he had illegally supplied to him was propped at a sharp angle in a glass ashtray. The cigar wasn’t burning. It was pointless to start things off with Pearl already bitching.

      She was seated cross-legged in an armchair to the left of the desk, facing Quinn, wearing faded jeans, a blue Mets T-shirt, gray socks. The loafers she’d slipped off lay askew on the floor near the chair. Her raven-black hair was pulled back and wound in a knot. She wore her usual dark eyeliner, which made her almost black eyes appear even darker. Quinn thought she looked fabulous.

      Fedderman, perched on the less comfortable wood and leather casual chair, looked his usual discombobulated self. Though his face had gotten thinner, it still had its expectant, hangdog look, as if he’d just committed some transgression and now needed forgiveness. He’d lost a bit more of his graying hair since Quinn had last seen him and was now almost bald on top. Quinn was sure he recognized the baggy brown suit Fedderman was wearing, and noticed that his right white shirt cuff was unbuttoned and hanging out of his coat sleeve. For some reason that often happened to Fedderman’s cuffs when he used a pen or pencil for any length of time. Quinn almost smiled, seeing the frayed, loose cuff peeking out of the coat sleeve at him. Old times.

      Fedderman looked over at Pearl. “I heard you had some trouble at the bank.”

      “Screw you,” she said, dismissing Fedderman. She turned her attention to Quinn. “Lauri’s no longer living with you?”

      Lauri was Quinn’s daughter, now almost twenty. “She and Wormy are living in California, trying to promote his music career.” Lauri’s lover, Wormy, so called because he was tall and painfully thin and kind of undulated when he walked, was front man for his band, The Defendants. Lauri’s last letter said the group was close to a record contract. Her next-to-last letter had said that, too.

      “I thought the boy had talent,” Fedderman said.

      “But what about his music?” Pearl asked.

      “What about these murders?” Quinn said, reminding them why they were here. He picked up four green binders, then moved out from behind his desk and handed two to each of his detectives. “Renz supplied copies of the murder books. I made copies for you two.”

      “You must already have looked yours over,” Fedderman said. “Any conclusions?”

      Quinn sat back down behind his desk, automatically reached for his cigar, then drew his hand back when he noticed Pearl giving him a look. “I already told you some of the basics: two torsos, female Caucasian, each shot through the heart, no prints on file, and no way to identify them. Twenty-two-caliber hollow-point bullets. Both of them separated when they entered the victims, but the pieces stayed in the bodies and the lab managed to reconstruct them enough to be sure they were fired by the same gun. Both victims were sexually penetrated by what seems to have been a long, sharp stake of some kind that left a residue of oil.”

      “A sexual lubricant?” Pearl asked.

      “Furniture oil,” Quinn said.

      “He polished them off,” Fedderman said. He seemed obviously pleased by his humor.

      “Shut up with that kind of stuff,” Pearl said.

      Fedderman noticed his shirt cuff was unbuttoned and fastened it. “Where were they found?” Mr. Serious now.

      “The first in a Dumpster behind a restaurant on the Upper West Side. The second in a vacant building in lower Manhattan.”

      “Vacant why?” Pearl asked.

      “Being renovated.”

      “Actively?”

      “Yeah. A condo conversion.” Quinn knew where she was going with this and was pleased.

      “Found on a Monday?” Pearl asked.

      “You guessed it.”

      “The workmen would be bound to find it, then. And the torso in the Dumpster would be found next trash pickup.”

      “Which was scheduled for the morning after it was placed there,” Quinn said. “Restaurant employees said they would have seen it during working hours, so it must have been put in the Dumpster the night before.”

      Pearl uncrossed her legs and placed her stockinged feet on the floor, wriggling her toes. “The killer wanted the torsos found soon after they were dumped. Any idea why?”

      “Not as yet,” Quinn said.

      “I take it there’s been a missing persons check on the two victims,” Fedderman said.

      “Sure. No women their sizes, ages, or ethnicity have been reported missing lately in and around New York. Both were in their early thirties.” Quinn leaned back slightly in his desk chair and began swiveling gently an inch or so each way. He’d oiled the chair recently and it didn’t make a sound. “Another thing. A journalist, Cindy Sellers of City Beat, knows everything I just told you and is sitting on the story as a favor to Renz.”

      “I remember her,” Pearl said. “She’s an asshole.”

      “No more so than the other media wolves,” Quinn said, thinking Pearl would have made a good investigative reporter.

      “Pearl’s right,” Fedderman said. “The Cindy Sellers I remember won’t sit on the story for long. Not unless Renz has got something on her.”

      “If he does,” Quinn said, “it isn’t enough to keep the lid on very long. That’s why he activated us. He wants to be out in front of the story.”

      “Wants to be mayor,” Pearl said.

      Still astute, Quinn thought.

      Pearl suddenly wondered what she was doing here. Why had she chosen this option? She seemed unable to escape Quinn’s presence and influence. Another appeal from Renz to Quinn, another critical case, another psychopath, the call to her from Quinn, and here she was again. This held the repetition of madness. It was as if she were on a masochistic treadmill that she couldn’t get off because some part of her didn’t want to leave. This case…she felt in her bones it was something special. She had to be in on it.

      “Go over the files on both killings,” Quinn said, “and we’ll meet back here tomorrow and brainstorm.”

      “We gonna keep meeting here?” Pearl asked. She had lived here with Quinn and wasn’t comfortable with the idea. Their bedroom had been right across the hall.

      “Renz has promised to get us office space, as usual. He won’t want us in a precinct house. The idea is we can be NYPD, but at the same time more independent than ordinary homicide detectives. We’ll be reporting only to him.”

      “It’ll be a roach-infested dump, as usual,” Pearl said. “But anyplace is better ’an here.” Maybe not. She remembered the last office space Renz had found for them, and the shrill scream of the drill from the dental clinic on the other side of the wall.

      Quinn looked at