Mister X (14 page)

In the Nickel Diner on Broadway in TriBeCa, Joyce House laid out a breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and coffee for the good-looking guy.

That was how she’d come to think of him, because that was what he was—good-looking. He was slightly built, with a mop of curly black hair and magnetic blue eyes, and always dressed a bit showily and expensively. This morning he had on designer jeans, pointy-toed boots that looked like they were ostrich skin, and a tailored short-sleeved black shirt with white buttons. His silver belt buckle was in the form of a soaring eagle. A silver stud earring glinted in each earlobe.
Just this side of ghetto fabulous
, thought Joyce. But somehow the good-looking guy could bring it off.

Joyce was no slouch in the looks department herself. She was medium height, trim, and buxom, eye candy even in her yellow and white server’s uniform. She had straight brown hair with bangs, a perfect pale complexion, and widely set eyes that were like calm dark lakes.

Mick, the diner’s owner and overseer of the kitchen, leaned down to look at Joyce through the serving window. His beefy red face was perspiring after a busy breakfast hour. Mick had one of those florid complexions, as if his tie were always too tight and choking him. It was almost ten o’clock, and the diner was empty except for an elderly couple at a table near the rear, and the good-looking guy in a front booth by the window.

“We stay slow,” Mick said to Joyce, “why don’t you come back and help with the dishwashing?”

Joyce nodded. It was their usual routine. She didn’t know why Mick even bothered to ask.

Alice the cashier would remain at her place behind the counter to greet any customers who happened to wander in during the void between breakfast and lunchtime. Alice was a gum-chomping, henna-haired former stock trader who’d opted out of the world of finance five years ago to live a simpler life with Mick. For years they’d been going to get married someday.

“I see you and Mr. Hotshot over there,” Alice said, “and I can’t help thinking I’m looking at two of God’s beautiful creatures. He’s been coming in regular for a few weeks now. He ever put any moves on you?”

“None that I noticed,” Joyce said.

“You think he might be gay?”

“Hmmm. No.”

“Married?”

“Irrelevant.”

“So maybe you oughta go over and talk to him. Strike up a conversation about his pancakes. If you don’t, I will.”

Joyce laughed. “Yeah, you will. With Mick in the kitchen with all those knives.”

“He might be in show business or something,” Alice said, watching the good-looking guy fork in a bite of pancake. “Now that I look at him, I think I might’ve seen him in something.”

“He might need more coffee,” Joyce said.

She lifted the glass pot of decaffeinated from its burner and approached the good-looking guy, who was chewing and staring out the window.

He caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window but didn’t turn around, letting her come to him.

“Top you off?” she asked.

He counted to three and swiveled around on the booth’s hard wooden seat. Gave her a smile. “Pardon?”

“Your coffee, I mean.”

“Sure.” He nodded toward the pot. “That decaf?”

“Sure is. Always the pot with the orange top.” She poured steaming coffee into his half-full cup. “My friend over there thinks you might be somebody. I mean, in show business.”

He laughed. He had very white, very even teeth, made to appear still whiter because he apparently spent time in a tanning salon. And there was something about his hair, like maybe it wasn’t so dark and had been dyed. So it could be he was a celebrity who had to be careful about his appearance. He didn’t look like the type to be in any kind of outdoor work. Theater in the park, maybe.

“You’re an actor,” she said.

Big smile. “Yes, I’m Brad Pitt.”

Joyce gave him his smile right back. “Well, I guess that makes me Angelina Jolie.”

He added cream to his coffee from the little silver pitcher on the table. “Would you really be Angelina if I were Brad?”

The coffeepot was getting heavy, so she set it down. “Why not? That would be kind of a perfect world.”

He kept his smile as he leaned back and studied her more closely. It made her uneasy, but not in a bad way. “A perfect world…”

“But it sure isn’t that,” she said. She picked up the coffeepot, keeping her elbow in tight and back so her right breast strained her uniform blouse.

“Don’t go away,” he said.

She felt herself heat up like the decaf, and her heart started to hammer.

“Work to do,” she said. “Sorry.”

She turned away, hoping to hear his voice calling her back. Waiting…

I’m hard to get, hard to get but worth it…. Come on….

“If you go away,” he said, “I’ll have to order something else to make you come back.”

Ah!
She grinned. She did feel like one of God’s beautiful creatures. The good-looking guy made her feel that way.

She turned back around to face him, being careful to keep a neutral expression.

“I wanted to talk, is all,” he said.

“About what?”

“Why is it called the Nickel Diner? There’s nothing on the menu that’s a nickel.”

“They always said about Mick, the owner, that he never saw a nickel he didn’t pick up.”

“Interesting. See, we talked and I learned something.”

She smiled. “I didn’t.”

“Well, we haven’t talked long enough. Don’t you ever get lonely? Don’t you sometimes just want somebody to talk to?”

She put the coffeepot back down on the table. “Yes and yes.”

“What size shoe do you wear?”

Huh?
“Seven,” she said. “Why?”

“I can get you shoes. I’m in New York to help design a new shoe store.”

“You’re not an actor?” She feigned disappointment.

“Close,” he said. “Shoe business.”

“God!” she said, and rolled her eyes.

But she did like a man with a sense of humor.

“I can get you shoes,” he said again. “You like pumps?”

“Joyce!”

Alice’s voice from behind the counter. When Joyce looked over at her, Alice made a sideways motion with her head toward the kitchen. A signal that Mick might be taking an interest in where Joyce was, what she was doing. Mick could make a big commotion, like a major storm with thunder but no lightning. Except maybe if he thought she was flirting with a customer. Then there would be lightning to go with the thunder. He had a thing about that, said it was one of the
shalt nots
in the diner Bible.

“I really better get back to work,” she said to the good-looking guy. “The boss doesn’t like even the thought of the help getting to know any of the customers too well.”

“We don’t know each other
too
well. But I’d like to get to know you better. It’s not just the pancakes talking, Joyce. I mean it.”

She almost asked how he knew her name, and then she remembered Alice had just called her. Also, it was on all his breakfast checks along with a little smiley face.

“I’m Loren Ensam,” he said, holding out his right hand. It was narrow but long-fingered; he had a pianist’s hands.

She shook the hand, feeling its surprising strength though he didn’t seem to have squeezed very hard.

“Joyce House,” she said.

“Got a phone number, Joyce?”

“
Joyce!
” Alice called again. With more desperation this time.

“When I go over and total your check,” she said, “I’ll write it on the copy you keep.”

He smiled up at her. “Okay. I’ll be honest. I’m in the middle of an ugly divorce, and it wouldn’t be to my advantage if my soon-to-be ex learned I was seeing another woman. And if your boss found out about us, you might lose your job and I’d have to find another breakfast stop. So we’ll have a secret relationship.”

“Sounds like fun.” Joyce was already moving away from the booth.

“Oh, it can be,” she heard him say behind her.

Of course, he’d never seen Mick blow up.

When she was back behind the counter, Alice grinned at her and said, “So how’d you do?”

“He’s married with three kids,” Joyce said without hesitation.

She didn’t like doing it, but how could she not lie to Alice, who slept with Mick?

Joyce realized that her life had suddenly become more complicated. Secrets, lies, sex. Well, not sex yet. But it was inevitable.

Joyce was looking forward to all of it. She felt an inner turmoil that she didn’t at all mind. What was happening was like out of a book, too good to be anything but fiction.

What if he doesn’t call?

After she totaled up his check, she wrote her name and drew her customary little smiley face above it. The smiley face didn’t seem as happy as usual. She saw that her hand was trembling.

He’ll call. Why wouldn’t he?

Below her name, on the check’s customer receipt, she meticulously printed her phone number, even the area code so there would be no doubt. If Mick was watching, he’d probably think she was diligently itemizing prices.

Careful not even to glance at the good-looking guy, she walked over and laid the check on his table.

He’ll call. He’s got my number.

The entire team, including Vitali and Mishkin, were in the office. They were sipping coffee, passing around Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts, and talking over the appearance—then disappearance—of the shadow woman in Mary Bakehouse’s old apartment building yesterday.

“I can’t quarrel with your tactics,” Quinn said, “one of you giving chase on foot on the stairs, and the other taking the elevator down to the lobby, so you have her trapped in a squeeze.”

“Couple of things might explain why the tactic didn’t work,” Fedderman said. He was half sitting on his desk, trying not to dribble more coffee on his tie as he dipped a doughnut. The journey from cup to mouth was perilous, and he wasn’t having much luck. “The elevator was too slow, and it’s possible our shadow woman is young and spry, or Sal has lost a step in his advancing age.”

“Screw you,” Vitali said in his gravel-pan voice.

Quinn raised a hand for silence and motioned for Fedderman to continue.

Fedderman dribbled more coffee, just before hastily fitting the last bite of a soggy doughnut into his mouth. He chewed, gulped, and continued. “Another possibility is she ducked into one of the apartments on the way down and managed to stay hidden while the building was searched.”

“Or became somebody else,” Pearl said, bringing everyone up short. Doughnuts froze in midair.

“Whaddya mean?” Vitali asked. “She got into an apartment where nobody was home and posed as a tenant?”

“Might even
be
a tenant, for all we know,” Pearl said.

Pearl thinking outside the universe. Quinn almost smiled.

“I see what she means,” Mishkin said. He was seated in Fedderman’s chair. “Since we don’t have the slightest idea who this woman is, she might be anybody. Very illuminating angle, Pearl.”

“It’s like she reads minds sometimes,” Fedderman said.

“The shadow woman, or Pearl?” Mishkin asked, looking slightly confused.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Pearl said. “You haven’t been around Fedderman long enough to realize he’s full of shit.”

“You have been around Sal a long time, though,” Quinn said to Mishkin. “You think he mighta been slow enough coming down those stairs that the shadow woman made it out of the building before either Sal or you reached the lobby?”

Mishkin looked at Sal, obviously torn. Sal had some gray in his hair now, and he’d developed a slight stomach paunch. The truth demanded that Mishkin dis his partner.

“Yeah, that could be,” he said. Then: “Sorry, Sal.”

“Maybe it was the brownies,” Vitali said.

“Brownies?” Pearl asked.

Vitali shrugged. “Never mind.”

“Brownies and doughnuts, Sal. You’re not gonna be any faster on stairs next year.”

“Give him a break,” Fedderman told Pearl. “You don’t fit so well anymore into your—”

“Enough, Feds,” Quinn said.

Pearl was glowering at Fedderman. “I’ll show you a whole new way to eat that doughnut.”

“Let’s wrap this up,” Quinn said. He knew the uneasy truce between Pearl and Fedderman, while conducive to progress, could sometimes become genuinely hostile. The trick was to prevent spark from becoming fire—or explosion. “Anybody got any theories on the shadow woman’s identity?”

“You mean if we had to guess?” Mishkin asked.

“Sure,” Quinn said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll all guess the same person.”

“My guess is Chrissie,” Fedderman said. “She hasn’t played straight with us yet.”

“The woman in Bakehouse’s building coulda been Chrissie,” Vitali said.

“My guess is Cindy Sellers,” Pearl said.

“Or somebody we haven’t met yet,” Mishkin said. “Like a relative of one of the other victims. Or maybe she’s Tiffany’s ghost.”

Pearl looked curiously at Quinn. “So what’s your guess?”

“I’m not in the guessing business,” Quinn said. “This isn’t some kind of party game.”

“You’re in the double-crossing pain-in-the-ass business,” Pearl said.

Vitali said, “What if we’d all guessed the same woman?”

“Then we’d try to figure out why,” Quinn said. “And maybe we’d have something.”

“Like Tiffany’s ghost,” Pearl said.

She jumped at the first four notes of the immortal
Dragnet
theme. They were coming from her purse where it rested on the corner of her desk. She scooped up the purse and fished the phone out, peered at it to see who was calling.

Somebody at Golden Sunset Assisted Living.

Her mother. Just what she needed while she was in a murder investigation brainstorming session.

“Jesus!” Pearl said.

“Better pick up then,” Fedderman said.

Pearl made the connection, put the phone to her ear, and said hello, all the time moving toward the door.

“Pearl?”

Her mother, all right.

“Reception’s better outside,” she said to the dead-eyed stares she was getting.

“Did you say something, Pearl?” her mother asked.

Fedderman grinned. The others simply looked at her. Pearl went out the door.

Outside in the morning heat, she said, “I’m pretty busy, Mom.”

“It’s never busy here in nursing home hell, Pearl.”

Her mother insisted on referring to Golden Sunset Assisted Living as a nursing home. Pearl had become tired of contradicting her. Absently wandering along the sidewalk toward Amsterdam, it occurred to her that cell phone reception outside the office really was noticeably better.

“Pearl?”

“I’m here, Mom, but I can’t talk long. I’m interrogating a suspect. You’re breaking up some anyway.”

“Can’t talk long? Is one of the criminal element more important to you than your own mother, dear?”

“You know better than that.”

“But do
you
, dear?”

“Did you call for a—”

“Yes, for a reason. His name is Yancy Taggart.”

Huh?
How could her mother know anything about Yancy? Know Yancy even existed?

“I speak, as you know,” her mother said, “of the fancy shmancy Yancy. The man, so called, you’ve been wasting your time with instead of spending it with a fine man like
Doctor
Milton Kahn, or even your mensch policeman Captain Quinn, who is—”

“He’s not a captain any longer, Mom. He’s not with the NYPD.”

“Not exactly and precisely, but still—”

“How did you find out I was seeing Yancy?”

“Not from a little bird, dear. Mrs. Kahn, Milton’s aunt here at the nursing home, as you know, has a sister who has a half sister who has a daughter who frequents a lounge where the Yancy lizard does his womanizing. She saw your photograph during one of her visits here at the nursing home and recognized you from when she saw you at another lounge with the Yancy lizard.”

Pearl was furious. “It’s nobody’s business where I was or who I was with, especially not the business of this niece twice removed or whatever the hell she is.”

“No, dear. Mrs. Kahn’s sister’s half sister’s—”

“I don’t give a damn, Mom!”

“Don’t use abusive language, dear. Did it make you feel better? Did it?”

No, it didn’t.
“Yancy’s not a lizard. He’s a lobbyist!”

“Well, dear, if you would look in the dictionary—”

“If Mrs. Kahn would look in the dictionary, she’d find the definition of busybody!”

“But facts are facts, dear, whatever their source, and it seems to me that it’s my motherly duty to at least make you aware that the Yancy lizard you’re going out with sees other women.”

“I see other men, Mom.”

“But sequentially, dear. Sequentially. There are rumors about the Yancy lizard, some of them bordering on the perverse, if you understand my meaning, which, while only speculation at this juncture, might in all honesty turn out to be true, so you might take a step back and reconsider your relationship.”

“By ‘speculation’ you mean guessing,” Pearl said. “I’m not in the guessing business.”
Quinn’s words. Quinn, damn you!
She hated it when men got inside her mind, especially Quinn.

“I’m in no way accusing anyone of anything in any way improper, Pearl, but a mother knows things because a mother knows, and there is a motherly duty to make a daughter aware, and to—and I’ll come right out and say it—warn a daughter when a ship, figuratively speaking, is about to smash apart on the rocks of romance in a sea so rough—”

Pearl broke the connection and turned off her cell phone.

Couldn’t help it.

Pearl had walked faster and faster while talking and wandered far. When she returned to the office, Vitali and Mishkin were gone. Quinn and Fedderman were at their desks.

“Your mom doing okay?” Quinn asked.

Like you care!

“You look angry, Pearl,” Fedderman said.

Pearl didn’t bother to answer. She
was
angry, at her mother, at Mrs. Kahn, at Mrs. Kahn’s…whatever she was. At Fedderman, at Quinn, at all men.

At all men!

What did she really know about Yancy?

She stalked over to the Mr. Coffee and poured herself a mug of the steaming brew, muttering to herself.

“Say what?” Fedderman asked, overhearing but not understanding.

“I said there’s nothing wrong with lobbyists,” Pearl said, adding powdered cream and stirring violently enough to slosh coffee over the cup’s rim.

Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other, puzzled.

“We’re all God’s creatures,” Fedderman said.

Pearl fixed him with a look, and he smiled slightly.

Saving his life.