Slaughter (21 page)

 

T
he Happy Brat sandwich shop was close enough to the ballpark that, when the ball club was in town, there was no shortage of customers. Fran and Willie had opened the place after the previous owner had put it up for sale and retired to Kissimmee, Florida. They had themselves retired two years ago, almost died of boredom, and saw it as their fate to at least make an offer when the diner went on the market. Their offer was rock bottom, but the owner knew them and liked them. And sold them the Happy Brat.

Willie was a big man, and strong, but he was in his seventies now. His hair was thinning and gray, his back bent, but his arms were still powerful. There was a hitch in his gait. He knew he'd soon have to have a hip replacement. Fran was wiry and stronger than she looked, but she, like Willie, was surprised to discover that retirement had been wearing. They needed help, full-time and part. A fellow retiree, Henry Lodge, who was a longtime friend of Willie's, bought a percentage of the diner and sometimes spent weekdays there with them. There were days when business dragged.

When the Cardinals ball club was in town, it was another story. The Happy Brat couldn't afford much, but hired a series of short-order cooks and countermen to handle the additional business. Henry helped, especially on those busy days when the Chicago Cubs were in town for day games. Baseball fans loved bratwurst on a bun with sauerkraut and mustard. And what could go better with that than beer, which Fran and Willie sold on draught and ice cold?

All went well beneath the neon bratwurst on a bun sign until, during a long home stand, a need for a dishwasher and sometimes short-order cook became too obvious to ignore.

This home stand, the Cardinals stayed in town almost three weeks. Fran was beginning to look haggard and tired all the time. Willie and Henry took to sniping at each other.

“Enjoy the backbreaking work while you can,” Willie was fond of saying. “There'll be plenty of slow days in our future.”

But this was the present, profitable even if it was a test for nerves. The economy was such that it would be easy to hire temporary help, maybe for the rest of the baseball season.

Hiring seemed the solution to their problem.

Fran put a help-wanted sign in the lower right corner of the window, and within an hour the kid turned up. He was small, said he actually wanted to become a jockey. But things other than horses were slow at the track across the river in Illinois, so he was looking for a job he could do for a while.

Fran, who was at the register, listened carefully to the boy, and motioned for him and Willie to come to her end of the counter where she could take part in the job interview.

Up close the boy looked to be in his teens. Willie, with his aging linebacker's body, dwarfed him. The kid wasn't the cleanest, but he probably hadn't planned on seeing a help-wanted sign. The hand-printed sign also said “part-time,” down at the bottom, but that was okay, if a person was getting desperate.

“What's your name?” Fran asked.

“Pablo Diaz.”

She looked at him for what seemed a long time. Then: “You don't look Mexican.”

“On my father's side,” he said, as if that explained any questions about his ethnicity.

Fran was the practical one, but there was something about this boy that made her feel maternal. A basic goodness that was more than youthful idealism. On the minus side, there was something he was holding back.

Fran decided to put it aside, for now. “If he's not afraid of hard work, I say we hire him.”

“Can we do that on our own?” Willie asked. “Remember, there's three of us that own this place.”

“Henry might make it two out of three, if it comes to a vote. But I don't think he would. Ain't no reason not to hire this lad.”

“What about the girl?” Willie asked.

When no one answered, Fran said, “She tells me her name's May, and she and the boy are married.”

“We hiring her, too?” Willie asked.

“Not likely. She don't look strong enough to lift a pea.”

“They'll fool you, though, those country girls.”

“You think any of that's true?”

“I dunno. Do you?”

“Like I'm married to Robert Redford,” Fran said.

 

D
espite the effectiveness of Lido's software, the composite image of the alleged Gremlin struck a note with no one. Possibly when finally they ran the Gremlin to ground, there would be no real resemblance.

“This guy,” Harley Renz said, “is at least as lucky as he is tricky.”

He and Quinn were seated on a bench in one of Manhattan's pocket parks. Though it was near a busy street, the park had a lot of greenery. It seemed more private than it was. A man in a gray suit and a woman with a ponytail sat on another bench, side by side and facing away from Quinn and Renz. The woman appeared now and then to toss bread crumbs to the pigeons. Three of the birds seemed to take turns in pecking at the gift of bread. Others stood nearby and solemnly observed. Quinn knew what they were thinking, like all the earth's creatures: It might be a trap.

“Nobody's called in with any information or identification of our artist's rendering of the Gremlin,” Renz said. “Probably if anybody gets a good look at him, they still won't have paid enough attention to recognize him from that composite.”

“It hasn't worked so far,” Quinn admitted. He was wondering why Renz had suggested this meeting.

He didn't have to wait long to find out.

“We've got another victim,” Renz said. “Woman over on West Seventy-seventh Street. Dora Palm.”

Quinn felt the stab of anger and sadness that he always felt when informed of a victim, especially a victim given a name. Somehow the name made the murder even more grotesque, the victim more real and alive—a person with a past and present. Until a short time ago, a future. “Any doubt it was the Gremlin?”

“None. The ME even says he can tell it was the same blade. Says the killer used a sharp knife here and there, but a jigsaw for hard to reach parts or heavy-duty cutting.”

“When did it happen?”

“Last night around ten o'clock. After a steak dinner with a good Merlot. At least she got that.”

“We all get that,” Quinn said, “sometimes not knowing when it's coming. Maybe it's better that way.”

“Or not.”

“Crime Scene techs find anything useful?”

“Not yet. But they're still looking. Why I called you about this one was to warn you to be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“What you say. Who you say it to. Extra careful. This is a somewhat complicated case.”

Quinn leaned back on the bench, watching the woman with the ponytail feeding the pigeons. “Tell me what I need to know, Harley.”

“You like dogs?”

“Depends on what kind.”

“Greyhounds.”

“A couple of them have run fast enough to win me money—but not much.”

“We're talking about a racing dog,” Renz said. “Here's to You.”

“Huh?”

“That's the dog's name.”

“This a racing dog?”

“Doesn't matter,” Renz said. “It's a dog.”

“How old?”

“About eight years.”

Quinn understood now what Renz was trying to say. “Here's to You was probably a rescue dog, saved from an abbreviated life by some animal lovers' organization that arranged homes for dogs that found themselves without owners. Here's to You was probably adopted by Dora Palm when it retired from racing. Along with its new owner, it had been killed by the Gremlin.”

“You might say the killer autopsied the dog,” Renz said.

Quinn thought that over. “The bastard wanted to see why it could run so fast.”

“You know, that might be possible,” Renz said. “It was a greyhound, poor thing.”

Quinn knew Renz was making a joke by stating the obvious about his concern for an aging racing dog that had come to a bad end. That was contemptible but not unexpected.

Renz was aware that Quinn was a dog lover. A simple all-around pet lover. While Quinn felt genuine concern about Here's to You, Renz felt none. What scared him was that Quinn might say or do something the public or some organization like PETA might build into an issue. Renz knew that if it helped to nail the Gremlin, however the dog was used would be okay with him. He would not be thinking of the dog.

Quinn would be.

That was a weakness.

Renz glanced at his watch and stood up, buttoning his voluminous suit coat. “Uniforms are still at the victim's apartment. They and the ME know you're on your way.” Renz tried to impress Quinn with an unblinking stare, but Quinn stared back mildly, unimpressed.

Beyond Renz, the pigeons had finally gotten out the word. Over a dozen now hopped and pecked around the bench where the ponytailed, beneficent woman sat casting out bread.

“I'll swing by and pick up Pearl,” Quinn said.

Renz grinned. “Make sure she behaves.”

“Like always,” Quinn said, and walked toward where his black Lincoln sat gleaming in the blazing sun.

O
nce in the hushed quiet of the Lincoln, Quinn called Pearl on his cell and told her he'd be by the office to pick her up for the drive to Dora Palm's address. Pearl said she was having lunch with her daughter, Jody, and would take the subway there as soon as possible.

Quinn told her he'd meet her at the victim's address but to take her time, the person they wanted to see wasn't going anywhere. “Better, too,” he said, “if you don't bring Jody.”

“She wouldn't be interested anyway,” Pearl said, sotto voce. “She's all involved in an animal rights case. Can lizards be classified as pets that—”

“Never mind,” Quinn cut in. “I don't want to hear it.”

“The lizards just might have a case. Of course, the roaches wouldn't—”

“Still don't want to hear it,” Quinn said, using his thumb to break the connection and turn off his phone.

He hadn't told Pearl that the medical examiner assigned to the case was her antagonist, Dr. Julius Nift.

She was, after all, eating lunch.

Dora Palm's apartment was in a midtown brick and stone structure that had once been an office building. Like many midtown buildings these days, its face was made temporarily anonymous by scaffolding.

Quinn saw a uniformed cop within the maze of scaffolding about the same time the cop saw him. When he flashed his ID, the cop motioned him over.

After parking the car, Quinn went on foot and zigged and zagged through the scaffolding, along a temporary plank walkway.

The cop motioned again, this time to indicate the building entrance. Quinn thought he might know the cop, but he wasn't sure. The guy had one of those average-this, average-that faces. They might simply have glimpsed each other along the way. Be a cop long enough and faces were indelible once seen, stored somewhere along with identifying marks and bloody crime scenes and the indignities of death. A cop's mind . . .

“This way, Captain,” the cop said. That was when Quinn recognized him. Vincent Royston, from Homicide South. It had been a couple of years.

“How you doing, Vince?”

Royston's face lit up. He was pleased to be recognized by Quinn, whom he saw as someone reasonably famous. At least in cop circles.

It was a rhetorical question, but Royston said he was doing the best he could.

“Aren't we all?” Quinn said.

But sometimes he wondered.

“Third floor,” Royston said, realizing he wasn't going to be engaged in a lengthy conversation. “Left off the elevator.”

Quinn went through a narrow, unmarked doorway he would never have guessed was an entrance. He found himself in a fairly large foyer that had been created when several other spaces were taken down. It was the kind of place that ordinarily would have a doorman, if it weren't for all the remodeling. Eight or ten people were coming and going through the maze of iron pipes supporting the scaffolding in the lobby. Almost everyone wore work clothes, and some had on hard hats. A sign was nailed crookedly to a vertical support beam reading
EXCUSE OUR DUST.

The elevator looked purely functional on the outside, but when Quinn stepped inside and the door closed, everything looked finished, mostly in oak and brushed metal. Quinn's mind went back to the elevator in the Blenheim Building, to what must have gone on among the passengers during the five or six seconds it took to reach the basement once they realized what must be happening. His mind recoiled.

The elevator stopped smoothly and the door opened on the third-floor hall. Quinn stepped out, turned left, and saw that on this floor everything looked as finished and usable as in the elevator. Oak wainscoting and brushed metal was the theme here, too. It appeared that interior rehabbing had begun in the upper floors and was working its way down. Probably a money thing, Quinn thought. Rents collected on the high-priced upper-floor apartments would help to finance the lobby's modern curved marble registration area, and what might someday become a fashionable bar and restaurant.

A stalwart uniformed cop stood next to an open apartment door about fifty feet down the hall from the elevator. Quinn was sure he hadn't seen the man before, who looked capable but about twenty pounds overweight. Gained recently, Quinn suspected, noting the cop's youth, and the taut material stretched over a stomach paunch.

When Quinn flashed his ID the uniform stepped aside so he could enter.

Quinn was directed to the apartment's one bedroom. Techs and the dance of the white gloves were everywhere except the bedroom. They'd finished in there, interpreting the bloodstains and gathering possibly minute evidence to be examined later. Trying to recreate what was.

Nift, the atrocious little medical examiner, was kneeling beside this victim in the way Quinn had often seen him, more intensely curious than somber. His lips were moving slightly and silently. It was almost as if he and the corpse were getting to know each other on the most intimate terms, which in a way was half true.

As he saw Quinn, Nift said hello, removing from the torso of the dead woman what looked like an indicator to probe for liver temperature, a valuable part of the calculus that would provide time of death.

The victim, Dora Palm, was on the floor, lying in an awkward position that needed a second look to be sure she was real. The observer would see that her arms, legs, and head were about a quarter of an inch from where they should have been attached.

“Skillfully done, isn't it?” Nift said.

“Strange skill, though. And why in this cramped little room did he put her on the floor instead of the bed?”

Nift looked thoughtful. “Could be he wanted her in the lowest position possible. A measure of her importance compared to his. Gremlin the conqueror, his conquest lying on the floor like a detached and broken doll.”

“Or it could be that it's difficult to pose a dead woman on a soft mattress, especially with her limbs and head severed.”

“I could think of more interesting poses,” Nift said, looking beyond Quinn.

“I'm sure you could,” said a woman's voice.

Pearl had walked in. Nift looked instantly interested. Pearl had on a light tan raincoat over a gray pants suit and a white blouse open at the neck. The neckline was low enough to show the swell of her more than ample breasts. Why would she unfasten that top button on her blouse, knowing Nift might be here?

Or had the blouse come unbuttoned and she hadn't noticed?

The things women did that made men think. But then, he was the one doing that kind of thinking.

“Hello to all three of you,” Nift said.

Quinn considered saying something to Nift, then decided Pearl could speak for herself. She had once punched out an over-amorous police captain when she was in the NYPD. Promotion was difficult for her after that, if not impossible.

Nift began packing his instruments in a container that would keep them separate from the sterile ones. He straightened up slowly, as if his back hurt. Pearl hoped it did.

It occurred to Quinn that Nift was getting up in years to be acting like a nasty lothario who might have a strain of necrophilia in his horror-house mind.

“Unless you have some reason for her not to,” Nift said, “it's okay now for Dora Palm to leave for our rendezvous in the morgue. I'll phone you later and give you facts and figures, among them a more accurate time of death.” He glanced around to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything.

“By the way,” he said, “there's a uniformed officer downstairs, a big cop named Vincent something. He can give you the name of the guy who found the body. Lives in Brooklyn and works for the company that's doing the work now on rehabbing this area.”

“I'll talk to him,” Quinn said.

“His name's Stan Gorshin. You'll recognize him. He's the only hard hat out there in a suit.”

Quinn said, “Did he have on the hard hat before all the unscheduled demolition?”

Nift thought for longer than a minute. “Yeah. I think so. But I can't be certain.”

“Seems nothing in life is certain.”

“Or in death,” Nift said.

There Quinn disagreed with him.