Mister X (2 page)

It had all been so quick, and the eye could be fooled.

Pearl Kasner, acting as hostess, stood off to the side in the dim entrance alcove of Sammy’s Steaks, unsure of what she’d just seen.

She’d waited patiently, making sure she was on the periphery of Linda’s vision. A slender and tireless young woman with hair that dangled in natural ringlets around her ears, Linda was one of the busier food servers at Sammy’s. The customers were crazy about her.

As she ran another diner’s credit card, Linda casually drew what looked like a small black box from her pocket, laid it on the counter, and swiped the card a second time.

Back went the box into her apron pocket.

It was all done so quickly and smoothly that you had to be watching for it, looking directly at it, to notice it.

Pearl edged back completely out of sight and smiled.

She’d been right when she’d noticed Linda the first time. Whenever Linda was alone settling a diner’s check, she would run the card twice, once legitimately, the second time to record the card’s number in the device she carried concealed in her apron pocket. For several days, the customers’ names and card numbers could be used safely to purchase merchandise. When finally the diners realized what was happening and notified the credit card company, they wouldn’t be likely to connect the stolen number with a not-so-recent steak dinner at Sammy’s.

Pearl left the foyer unattended and weaved her way between white-clothed tables and across the restaurant. She was slightly over five feet tall, with vivid dark eyes, red lips, and black, black shoulder-length hair. Pearl drew male attention, and when attention was paid, said males saw a compact, shapely body with a vibrant energy about it. Her ankles were well turned, her waist narrow. She had a bust too large to be fashionable, but only in the world of fashion.

No one who looked at Pearl was disappointed.

She approached a booth where a lanky but potbellied man in a wrinkled brown suit lounged before a stuffed mushroom appetizer and a half-empty martini glass. He was past middle age and balding, and the day Pearl started pretending to be a hostess, he had started pretending to be a slightly inebriated customer who ordered appetizers as an excuse to drink alone. That was better than drinking at the bar, where the mostly under-forty club was watching and discussing baseball. Discussing it loudly and sometimes angrily. They could really get worked up over steroid use.

The solitary drinker was Larry Fedderman, who had long ago been Quinn’s partner in an NYPD radio car, and later his fellow Manhattan South homicide detective. Fedderman, retired from the department, had been living in Florida when Quinn founded Quinn and Associates. Pearl had been working as a uniformed guard at Sixth National Bank in Lower Manhattan.

They’d both stopped what they’d been doing and went to work for Quinn as minority partners in Quinn and Associates Investigations. They were the associates.

Restaurateur Sammy Caminatto had hired QAI to discover how his cousin’s Visa card number was stolen, when the only place he’d used his new card and new number, before cutting the card into six pieces to keep it out of his new trophy wife’s hands, was at Sammy’s.

Quinn had assigned Pearl and Fedderman to the case, and they’d slipped into their roles at Sammy’s. Now it looked as if they’d found the answer to the riddle of the roaming card numbers. It was in Linda’s apron pocket. Which Pearl thought was a shame, because she liked Linda, who was cute as puppies, naïve, and probably being used.

“Looks like Linda’s it,” Pearl said to Fedderman.

He showed no reaction but said, “I’m surprised. She seems like a good kid.”

“Maybe she is, but she’s going down for this one. Carries a mimic card swiper in her apron pocket.”

“I watched for those and missed it,” Fedderman said. “She must be smooth.”

“You can tell she’s done it before.”

“Let’s not spoil her evening,” Fedderman said, sipping some of his martini that he hadn’t poured into his water glass. “Let’s let her copy some more numbers, build up the evidence against her.”

“Watch her keep breaking the law?”

“Sure.”

“Doesn’t that kind of make us accomplices?” Pearl asked. Since becoming an associate and not having the NYPD to cover legal expenses, she’d become cautious about exposing herself and the agency to potential litigation. Or maybe this was because she’d become fond of Linda and didn’t want to compound the mess the young woman was in.

“In a way,” Fedderman said, “but nobody’ll know but us. And you and me, Pearl, we’d never rat each other out.”

“I suspect you’re half right,” Pearl said.

She waited till an hour before closing time to call the NYPD, and Linda was apprehended with the card recorder in her apron pocket. It contained the names and credit card numbers of five diners who’d paid their checks with plastic that evening. Damning evidence.

As she was being led away, Linda was loudly and tearfully blaming everything on a guy named Bobby. Pearl believed her.

“Men!” Pearl said, with a disdain that dripped.

Fedderman didn’t comment, standing there thinking it was Linda who’d illegally recorded the card numbers.

A beaming and impressed Sammy told them his check to QAI would be in the mail, and Pearl and Fedderman left the restaurant about eleven o’clock to go to their respective apartments. They would write up their separate reports tomorrow and present them to Quinn, who would doubtless instruct Pearl to send a bill to Sammy even though it might cross with his check in the mail. Business was business.

Fedderman waited around outside the restaurant with Pearl while she tried to hail a cab. The temperature was still in the eighties, and the air was so sultry it felt as if rain might simply break out instead of fall.

It never took Pearl long to attract the eye of a cabbie, so they’d soon part and Fedderman would walk the opposite direction to his subway stop two blocks away.

Pearl extended one foot off the curb into the street and waved, kind of with her whole body.

Sure enough, a cab’s brake lights flared, and it made a U-turn, causing oncoming traffic to weave and honk, and drove half a block the wrong way in the curb lane to come to a halt near Pearl.

“It might have been Bobbie with an ‘I-E,’” Fedderman said, as she was climbing into the back of the cab. “A woman.”

Pearl glared at him. “Dream on.”

She slammed the cab’s door before he could reply.

Fedderman watched the cab make another U-turn to get straight with the traffic. He wondered if Pearl had always been the way she was, born with a burr up her ass. She was so damned smart, but always mouthing off and getting into trouble. What a waste. She’d never had a chance to make it any higher in the NYPD than he had. Fedderman was steady, a plodder, a solid detective, unskilled at departmental politics and wise enough to stay out of them. Staying out of things was another of Pearl’s problems. She couldn’t.

Another problem was that Pearl was a woman, and she had those looks. Her appearance drew unwanted attention, and she’d always been too hotheaded to handle it. She’d punched an NYPD captain once in a Midtown hotel after he’d touched her where he shouldn’t have. That alone would have been enough to sink most careers. It hadn’t quite sunk Pearl’s, but there was always a hole in her boat, and she’d had to bail constantly just to stay afloat. That was why she’d finally drifted out of the NYPD and into the bank guard job. She could be nice to people ten, twenty seconds at a stretch, so it had worked out okay for her. But she’d never been happy at Sixth National. She missed the challenge, the action, the satisfaction of bringing down the bad guys, even the danger.

The way Fedderman had missed that life while chasing after elusive golf balls down in Florida, or fishing in Gulf waters and pulling from the sea creatures he didn’t even recognize as fish.

Like Pearl, he’d been ripe for Quinn’s call.

Fedderman smiled in the direction Pearl had gone and then walked away, his right shirt cuff unbuttoned and flapping like a white surrender flag with every stride. If he knew about the cuff, he didn’t seem to mind.

He did kind of mind that there would be no more free drinks and appetizers at Sammy’s.

The next morning they were sitting in the arrangement of desks that made up Quinn and Associates’ office. Quinn was seated behind his desk, Pearl and Fedderman in chairs facing him. Low-angled sunlight invaded through the iron-grilled window and warmed the office. The Mr. Coffee over on the table in the corner was chuggling away, filling the air with the rich scent of fresh-brewed beans.

Fedderman had his suit coat off and was slouched sideways, taking notes. His right shirt cuff was already unbuttoned. That usually happened because of the way he cocked and dragged his wrist over paper as he wrote. A sunbeam alive with dust motes had found Pearl and made her more vividly beautiful than ever. Quinn wished, as he often did, that what they’d shared together hadn’t ended. He liked to think that maybe it hadn’t. He knew Pearl liked to think that it definitely had, for her, anyway. Could be she was right.

Quinn had made copies of the clippings Chrissie Keller had given him, and he explained the situation. Pearl and Fedderman listened carefully. This was the sort of investigation they all liked—multiple murder rather than credit card pilfering. In the world of catching the bad guys and setting things as right as possible, solving this one could make a person feel useful. If only the case weren’t more than five years old. They all knew the odds of rekindling the past and nailing the Carver were long.

“I’ve read a lot about the mystical link between twins,” Pearl said, when Quinn was finished talking. “I’d like to say it’s bullshit, but I’m not so sure.”

“I don’t see how the mystery of twins is in any way relevant to this,” Fedderman said. “Other than motivating our client.”

“That’s enough relevance,” Quinn said, “considering we’re no longer paid by the city.” He looked at Pearl. “Or by a bank.”

They had all stuck their necks out to create this investigative agency, and they knew it.

Three people, working without a net. No one said anything for a while.

“That was a pregnant pause if ever I didn’t hear one,” Pearl finally said.

Fedderman, who’d been adding tooth marks to his dented yellow pencil, glanced over at her. “Does that mean we can expect another, smaller pause?”

“Point is,” Quinn said, “however a client’s motivated, if it’s legal and ethical, we’ll gladly accept payment.”

“One out of two would be okay,” Pearl said.

She was ignored.

“You mentioned our client had won some sorta jackpot,” Fedderman said to Quinn.

“Slot machine thing. She hit a kind of tri-state trifecta and got temporarily rich. This is how she feels compelled to spend her money.”

“That mysterious twins business,” Pearl said. She’d also been taking notes. She tapped her pencil’s eraser on a front tooth in tiny bounces. “I remember the Carver murders, how they confounded the hell out of everyone. You looked through this stuff already, Quinn. Do you think we’ve really got a chance of finding the killer?”

“A chance, sure.”

“It’d help if we could get the murder books outta the NYPD cold-case files,” Fedderman said.

“Right now,” Quinn said, “I don’t think the NYPD would be very cooperative. Understandably, they don’t want us stirring up something they failed to solve.”

“Maybe you could talk to Renz,” Pearl said.

Harley Renz was the city’s popular police commissioner, and a longtime acquaintance of them all. He was an unashamed, ambitious, and corrupt bureaucratic climber. “Renz would have the most to lose if we came along after five years and solved a serial killer case,” Quinn said. “In Harley’s eyes, that’d be making the NYPD look like dopes.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Fedderman said. “So what would he lose?”

“Political capital. To Renz, that’s like losing his own blood. In fact, it is his blood.” Quinn laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back in his chair. Maybe too far back. Pearl was watching him, waiting to see if this time he’d topple backward. Maybe hoping. “We need to have something solid before we go to Renz,” Quinn said. “And some way for him to gain by us solving the case.”

“Meanwhile,” Pearl said, “we do our jobs, and never mind if our efforts are hopeless.”

“I’ll miss the free drinks and food at Sammy’s,” Fedderman said. “But to tell you the truth, I was getting tired of playing the alcoholic businessman. And Pearl was putting on weight.”

“I’ll come over there and put some weight on your goddamned head,” Pearl said.

Quinn thought about settling them down so they could all get to work familiarizing themselves with the five-year-old murder investigation; then he decided against it. He knew Pearl, and she wasn’t yet at the point where she would physically attack Fedderman. And experience had taught Fedderman how to tread around Pearl just out of range while sticking her with his barbs. So let them agitate each other, Quinn thought.

It was how they worked best.

It had been a grueling series of hot and dusty bus rides from Bennett, South Dakota, to New York City. You could measure the distance in more than miles. Mary Bakehouse didn’t want to make the return trip. Ever.

She’d spent the weekend moving in to her new apartment in the East Village. Mary had enough money that she could afford the place for a while. In the meantime she’d be job hunting.

The apartment was the third-floor east unit of a six-story building. The previous tenant had been a smoker, and the scent of stale tobacco smoke made itself known at unexpected times, when closet doors were opened or summer breezes worked their way in through the window and played across the floor. The window was stuck only two inches open and wouldn’t budge, so usually the living room was stale and stuffy. Mary would buy some kind of aerosol air freshener when she got a chance. Or maybe one of those things you plugged into an electrical socket and it hissed every fifteen minutes or so and deodorized the air. Something was needed. She didn’t like tobacco smoke and could smell it for what seemed like blocks. She had a nose like a beagle, a boyfriend had told her once, not quite grasping what he’d said. She hadn’t gone out with him again, figuring him to be mentally inferior.

A few people had warned Mary about living in this part of the Village. It could be dangerous. Mary didn’t take those warnings seriously. She’d dealt with thugs before, in Bennett. They were just like New York thugs, only they wore cowboy hats.

The way she dealt with them was by showing a complete absence of fear. Mary had a sweet, heart-shaped face, a frail body, and rather sad brown eyes. A frail person who looked as if her photo belonged in an old locket. But there was something about her that strongly suggested she would hold her ground. Anything done to her would be at a cost. People with the wrong kind of thing in mind usually backed off.

Something else about Mary was that she had a gun. A .32-caliber Taurus revolver with a checked wood grip. She’d shot targets and plunked varmints with it for years on her parents’ ranch. Brought it with her in her suitcase on the bus. The security people didn’t check bus luggage the way they checked suitcases for airline travel. Or if they had checked her suitcase, they hadn’t found the gun, rolled up in an old pair of Levi’s.

The apartment was partially furnished, so moving in had been easy. She’d simply opened her suitcase and transferred her clothes to the dresser drawers in the tiny bedroom.

The bedroom smelled better than the living room, so maybe the previous tenant hadn’t smoked in bed. The bed itself was a twin size, and the mattress was pretty saggy. She did always allow herself a good bed, so she would buy a better mattress and put this one in the basement storage area that went with the apartment. Her mother had advised her that a good mattress and good shoes were of prime importance. She had a new pair of Nike joggers. The mattress and a few more pieces of furniture—a table, a lamp—were all she should need. Things she’d pick out and that would make the place uniquely hers.

She slid her empty suitcase under the bed and then turned her attention to her big vinyl portfolio that held samples of her work. Mary was a graphic designer with a degree from Happer Design College in South Dakota. Her instructors had told her she was the most talented student they’d ever taught. They said as much in letters of recommendation. She realized that wouldn’t make getting a job in New York easy, but surely it should make it possible. She wasn’t looking for an easy time here. A chance was all she wanted.

Back in the living room, she stood with her fists propped on her slender hips and looked around.

What have you done, Mary Bakehouse?

The walls were painted a mottled off-white, and the gray carpet was stained and frayed. What furniture there was appeared to be a flea market hodgepodge, but some of it, like the sturdy old matching bookcases that stood side by side against a living room wall, looked to be of pretty good quality. The bookcases held a small TV, an odd assortment of vases, and even a few old books without dust jackets. Mary thought she’d put some flowers in those vases, and maybe even read some of the books.

This will work. It has to work!

She switched the air conditioner in the living room window on low, thinking it would partially cool that room and the bedroom while she was away running errands. There were black ornamental iron bars on some of the windows, along with a U-shaped iron horizontal bar that held the air conditioner fast in its window so it couldn’t be removed except from inside the apartment. The windows that looked out over the small courtyard outside her bedroom didn’t have bars on them, probably because that was the way to the fire escape. Still, there were bars on enough of the windows that from the inside at least, the apartment had the aspect of a prison.

Okay, Mary thought, the real estate people who’d warned her were probably right; it was a dangerous part of town in a dangerous city. But she wasn’t the shrinking innocent they seemed to assume. Mary figured her accent made her seem more naïve than she was. She was twenty-five and had been away to college. She’d been around some.

Right now, she needed some groceries, and a few things for the bathroom, such as toothpaste, soap, and shampoo. And that air freshener. When she was finished with shopping for those items and had put them away, she’d go out and see if she could find a place to buy an easel and some art supplies. That shouldn’t be hard to do in the Village. It was an artsy place.

An artsy place with bars on the windows.

Mary went into the
L
-shaped kitchen, gazed into the empty refrigerator, and decided to make a list.

As she was turning around to go get her purse in the bedroom, she noticed the large blue ceramic canisters on the sink counter near the stove. They were lettered
FLOUR, COFFEE, SUGAR
, and so on. Mary liked them and might have chosen them herself.

She was a tea drinker, so when she returned from the bedroom with her purse, she put her gun in the empty coffee canister.

As she was going out the door, Mary glanced back and smiled. The apartment was nothing like the ones in those old Doris Day white-telephone movies. More like the apartments in
Seinfeld
, only shabbier. But it was already beginning to feel like home.

This was going to work, Mary assured herself again, making sure the door was closed tight and locked behind her.

Everything was going to be okay.