Mister X Part 31

"Right. Pearl and I both saw her just after you left to drive back here. She was standing across the street again, near where she was last time. Had her arms crossed, the way she does. Just then one of those two-piece buses like short trains went past, and when we could see across the street again, she was gone. But she'd been there, watching."

Watching what? Quinn wondered. The three of them, Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman, had simply stayed in Joyce House's apartment building most of the time, when they weren't visiting witnesses in surrounding buildings to clear up inconsistent statements regarding the time leading up to and including House's murder. Nothing useful had been learned, other than additional confirmation that any two people could see or hear the same things quite differently. Quinn wondered. The three of them, Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman, had simply stayed in Joyce House's apartment building most of the time, when they weren't visiting witnesses in surrounding buildings to clear up inconsistent statements regarding the time leading up to and including House's murder. Nothing useful had been learned, other than additional confirmation that any two people could see or hear the same things quite differently.

"So did you go after her?" Mishkin asked Fedderman.

"Pearl did, but it wasn't much use. She'd had plenty of time to lose herself in all the traffic and people headed home from work."

"It looked like she was wearing the same gray outfit," Pearl said. "Gray sweats, and a blue baseball cap worn low over her eyes."

"Yankees cap?" Vitali asked.

"Could have been Mets," Pearl said. "They're both blue." She felt like adding that if they knew which team the woman rooted for, they could search the ballpark next time there was a home game. But she knew Vitali wasn't an easy target for sarcasm like Fedderman. The gravelly voiced little b.a.s.t.a.r.d would catch on to what Pearl was doing and maybe take offense. Vitali was laid-back, but he could also bite back.

Addie, who'd worked a computer and answered the phones in the office all day, said, "There are lots of blue ball caps floating around that aren't connected to sports teams. Maybe it was even one of those generic caps you buy at sidewalk sales. The kind that come straight from where they're made and haven't been stenciled or embroidered with anything yet. A lot of them are from China."

Pearl thought, We're really zeroing in on this cap. Stick to profiling, toots. We're really zeroing in on this cap. Stick to profiling, toots.

Quinn was looking at Pearl, maybe in a cautioning way. Or maybe he was still p.i.s.sed because of her engagement to Yancy. Pearl hadn't meant to hurt his fragile male ego, and when was the last time he'd he'd proposed marriage to her? proposed marriage to her?

"What about the missing Chrissies?" Quinn asked Sal and Harold.

"I'm afraid they're still missing," Harold said. "The phony Chrissie's hotel room was long ago cleaned and has had two guests stay there since her disappearance. Any DNA evidence we gathered wouldn't tell us much, even if there happened to be any after the maids did their spit-and-polish work."

"Our a.s.sumed actual Chrissie was never even in New York, for all we know," Sal said. "We checked with her hometown police and sheriff's department. There's nothing on her, no sheet, no friends or neighbors who say anything negative or revealing about her-or about her mother, for that matter."

"What about the father?" Pearl asked.

"Long gone after the divorce. You know how it works. Tiffany's death tore up the family. There was no way it could survive intact. The father was a sales rep for an auto parts company and moved to Detroit."

Detroit, Pearl thought. Where Geraldine Knott was attacked years ago by a man who was probably the Carver. Where Addie Price was also attacked, possibly by the same man, then fought for her accreditation, worked as a profiler, and went on to a career as a local media talking head. A bit of a coincidence.

Pearl filed the information away in the back of her mind.

Quinn stood up behind his desk and stretched, clenching and unclenching his powerful hands as if to make sure they still worked. "We'll do legwork again tomorrow," he said, "and see what, if anything, comes of it. Pearl and Feds can go back to House's neighborhood and haunt it, see if our shadow woman turns up again. Maybe even find out who she is and what she wants."

"It'll probably be in tomorrow's City Beat City Beat that she was spotted across the street from where Joyce House was murdered, and then disappeared again," Pearl said. She shot a look Addie's way, letting Addie know she was under suspicion, at least as far as Pearl was concerned. Addie had learned Pearl's game and ignored her. that she was spotted across the street from where Joyce House was murdered, and then disappeared again," Pearl said. She shot a look Addie's way, letting Addie know she was under suspicion, at least as far as Pearl was concerned. Addie had learned Pearl's game and ignored her.

"Maybe I'll call Cindy Sellers and tell her about the latest shadow woman sighting," Quinn said. "It might shake something loose out there. Could be that somebody else in the neighborhood saw our mystery woman and knows who she is."

"Could be," Pearl agreed.

And the killer is going to shoot himself outside 1 Police Plaza and leave a confession.

"So we sleep on it," Quinn said.

Everyone was ready for that. Chairs groaned. Notebooks snapped shut. Desk lamps began winking out, and someone switched on the fluorescents for the last one out the door to switch off.

Quinn stayed behind so he'd be the last to leave. Pearl was next to last. He watched her go out the door without looking back, not bothering to say good night.

She was no doubt irked by his reference to Cindy Sellers. Quinn couldn't understand why. They all knew what kind of journalist Sellers was, and that she had informants in the NYPD. Informants everywhere, in fact.

Quinn watched Pearl walk past outside the window that looked out on West Seventy-ninth Street. In the illumination from headlights and the nearby streetlight, her expression was serious and her dark eyes were trained straight ahead. The breeze blew a lock of raven-black hair across her forehead, and she instantly brushed it aside. Then she was out of sight.

He sat feeling the loss of her presence like a dull ache.

They were in business together, so Pearl would be in his life as long as that lasted. In his life during their working hours, anyway.

For now, he'd settle for that because he had no choice.

But when Pearl became Mrs. Yancy Taggart, would she continue with the agency? Would she feel the same drive she and Quinn felt now?

Or would she no longer need the hunt? Would she no longer share the feeling that at least some of what was wrong with this screwed-up, dangerous, and unfair world had to be set right, and that for some reason accomplis.h.i.+ng that was their responsibility?

Would Mrs. Yancy Taggart think that way?

Quinn knew it was possible, even likely, that someday soon Pearl would walk out of his life for good.

On a practical level he should be able to live with that, but he had no idea how.

49.

They'd each had two gla.s.ses of wine, white and red, with a gourmet dinner at Le French Affaire. Or had Lilly had three? Two gla.s.ses of red? She wasn't sure, and it wasn't like her to lose count.

She'd dressed up for this meeting, this date. No simple black outfit for this one. She was wearing her pale blue Aghali silk dress, with a low neckline and a skirt cut on the bias so it showed a lot of leg without seeming too immodest. When she'd tried the dress on, the sales clerk had described her as an asymmetrical dream. Her ivory cultivated pearl necklace set off the dress and her pale and flawless complexion. A touch of Givenchy dabbed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and here she was. Ready for the jousting of the heart. Ready, as ever, to close the deal. Watch out, Gerald Lone. Watch out, Gerald Lone.

Gerald, sitting across from her, turned out to be charming, and obviously a skilled jouster himself. He was witty and involved in conversation, with a direct manner of looking at her-into her-that caused something inside her to stir in a way she hadn't felt in a long time. He seemed, on this first meeting beyond mere chat and coffee, to be...well, a man who was her equal. Lilly had, in her mind, encountered few of those. her-that caused something inside her to stir in a way she hadn't felt in a long time. He seemed, on this first meeting beyond mere chat and coffee, to be...well, a man who was her equal. Lilly had, in her mind, encountered few of those.

They were both players with the same objective, who didn't waste time or talk. Neither wanted to reveal too much information during the usual blather about finding things in common. Gerald had described his occupation as "helping to put pieces back together in the financial community," but avoided going into detail. Lilly had told him she was in "high-end" Manhattan real estate, but didn't mention that she was at the moment virtually unemployed. She figured a few secrets at the beginning of a relations.h.i.+p didn't matter. Neither of them was searching for a lifetime soul mate.

On the other hand, if things developed as swimmingly as they were going now...

Or maybe it was the wine.

Whatever, they were still taking each other's measure, like two characters in a sophisticated play, having a grand time and ad-libbing the scene as they went along. No script for tonight, but the Cole Porter mood should be maintained.

"There's a German Expressionism display at MoMA," Gerald said, over raspberry sorbet.

"Maudlin stuff," Lilly said. "I love it." Keep him off balance. Keep him off balance.

"Didn't you mention that your apartment was near the museum?"

"I did," Lilly said. "Maybe we should take it in. German expressionism can be very erotic." Stealing the play from Gerald. Staying in charge. She was getting a kick out of this verbal exchange with pretentious sharp swords. Two deft fencers.

Gerald smiled and glanced at his watch. It looked like a gold Rolex, but who could tell these days, with all the brand-name knockoffs floating around New York?

"I believe that at this hour the museum is closed," he said.

"It is. I was thinking about in the morning."

"After breakfast at Benentino's?"

"After we screw each other's brains out."

That took him slightly aback. But he recovered nicely, as she knew he would.

"You are a Lilly and not a shrinking violet," he said with a smile.

She nibbled at her sorbet and took a sip of wine, enjoying herself immensely. "My sense is that we're both people of intelligence and experience. People who don't waste time but go in short order to the quick of matters."

His smile became a grin. "That would be my impression of you," he said. "And I admire that. In all honesty, I admire you."

"And I you."

"And not only your mind."

She leaned across the table, letting some cleavage show, and gripped his right hand gently with both of hers. "Do we really want to finish dessert?"

"The wine," he said. "It's too good to waste." He held up the bottle and studied it. "Almost empty. I know what. I'll order a bottle to go, and we can enjoy it at your place."

"Afterward," Lilly said.

He laughed. "Let's drink to that and then leave."

Lilly laughed with him as he poured what was left of the wine into their gla.s.ses. She studied him without seeming to do so.

He always has something to say. He should be selling something other than himself, with his gift of gab. Or be a politician. Or lobbyist. He should be in something that requires copious amounts of blarney.

And for all she knew, maybe he was.

"Is that you, Pearl?"

Pearl winced when she heard her mother's voice. That would teach her to rush to the ringing phone and s.n.a.t.c.h it up as soon as she entered her apartment.

"Me, Mom." She slumped down on the sofa and used each foot to work the shoe off the other.

"What I called for was an awful thing I learned," her mother said in ominous preamble.

Pearl went cold with sudden alarm. "Something happen? You okay, Mom? I mean, your health?"

"My health, never a finely tuned mechanism, is not so good insofar, as the doctors say, the mind affects the body, which it does."

There was something not only in her mother's words but in the tone of her voice. Pearl sensed something wrong that didn't at all concern her mother's physical well-being.

"So what's affected your mind, Mom?"

"My peace peace of mind, you mean, dear. As a mother grows older she forgets more and more, to be sure, yet we grow in motherly wisdom." of mind, you mean, dear. As a mother grows older she forgets more and more, to be sure, yet we grow in motherly wisdom."

"You think you're missing a piece of your mind, Mom?"

"Are you being facetious, dear?"

Pearl wasn't.

"It was the news I heard," her mother said. "News that skewered your mother's troubled heart like a sword."

"We're at war?"

"Worse. Much worse. My only and lovely daughter is, as it came to me, even to me, here where I sit alone-and should I not have been the first first rather than last to hear?-that she is engaged to the reptile Yancy Taggart." rather than last to hear?-that she is engaged to the reptile Yancy Taggart."

"Quinn told you," Pearl said, her anger rising.

"Only when I called him to check on your health and well-being, as I do frequently from here in my isolation. He a.s.sumed that I'd already been told, being, as I am, your only mother."

"I was going to call you tonight and tell you the news, Mom. I just got home."

"Tell me the tragedy, you mean. You may take it, Pearl-and I offer this with love and even some small hope that the consummation of such a proposed legal and unblessed union will not occur-that I do not approve of the match."

"If you spent some time with Yancy, Mom, took the time to really get to know him, you would approve. I guarantee it."

"The mongoose approves of the cobra, and in point of fact is fascinated by the cobra, just before the strike."

"I'm not a mongoose, Mom. I've never even seen a mongoose. And Yancy is not a cobra"

"A reptile is a reptile, dear."

"I'd like for you to meet and talk with him before you lock yourself into that conclusion," Pearl said.

"People met and talked with Hitler. Hitler loved to talk. Loved to ensnare people in the webs of his lies. He could fascinate people and make them do anything he wanted for every evil purpose. Sound familiar, dear?"

"Maybe if you talked to Yancy you would fall for him like Mussolini did for Hitler," Pearl said.

"I discern insubordination, dear."

"I'm sorry, Mom. I just want you to give Yancy a chance. He and I would both like your approval. It's important to us both."

"Both? You and your mother? Or you and the reptile?"

"The rep-to me, and to Yancy, it's important."