Mister X. John Lutz

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СКАЧАТЬ you and your team. Or, to be more specific, the NYPD is hiring Quinn and Associates Investigations to help work on the reactivated Carver case.”

      Quinn was surprised, but he shouldn’t have been. Renz could always be counted on to come up with some kind of bold countermove. Usually one that furthered his career. “So the popular and daring police commissioner goes outside the NYPD again for the public good and safety.”

      “You forgot imaginative,” Renz said.

      “Imagine that.”

      “Our arrangement has proved successful in the past. And when you weren’t on the Carver case, we weren’t able to close it. This time around, I’m hitching my wagon to a winner.” Again, Renz’s doglike smile. “I’ll get some NYPD shields to you so you and your team can come and go at crime scenes unmolested, maybe wrangle some free doughnuts.”

      “Is there a possibility of discussing whether I agree to this?” Quinn asked.

      “Not really, considering Cindy Sellers has shot our previous agreement all to hell. It isn’t worth much now that the media seem to be getting shovelfuls of information on this case. Matter of days before our more vocal members of the public—some of them political office holders—will be demanding that the case actually gets solved.”

      “You’ve gone from trying to scare me off this case to hiring me to continue my investigation,” Quinn pointed out.

      “That’s called being outmaneuvered.”

      Quinn had nothing to say to that. After all, the investigation was not only going to continue, but at an accelerated rate. So who’d been outmaneuvered?

      “You’ll be initiating the NYPD investigation and consolidating it with what you have so far,” Renz said. “I’m assigning a detective team to work with you. You’ll be lead detective, of course. And you’ll report to me.”

      “Do I have a choice?” Quinn asked again.

      “Stop asking me that. It’s annoying. You don’t want a choice. You got what you wanted.” Renz watched the people playing with the wooden balls for a while. “There was a lot of spin on that ball you tossed me the other day,” he said.

      “Conversational ball, you mean?”

      “Whatever.”

      They both sat quietly observing the people playing the mysterious game with the balls.

      “I think they’re trying to knock their opponents’ balls out of a circle,” Quinn said.

      “The thing to remember,” Renz said around the smoldering cigar wedged in his jaw, “is that, like in most games, they take turns.”

      Quinn had been warned. It didn’t much concern him.

      Renz nodded knowingly and smiled his jowly smile, then stood up from the bench and sauntered toward Sixth Avenue.

      Quinn sat watching him walk away. He knew that when it was Renz’s turn, the ambitious police commissioner would make the most of it. And he wasn’t above playing out of turn.

      It must be liberating to be so blithely corrupt.

      As soon as Renz had disappeared, Quinn lit a Cuban cigar.

      18

      “It’s better than having him shut down the investigation,” Quinn said, after returning to the Seventy-ninth Street office and telling Pearl and Fedderman about his conversation with Renz.

      The air conditioner wasn’t very efficient, and the air was still and muggy and smelled, as it often did, of subversive cigar smoke.

      Fedderman had his suit coat off and his tie knot loosened. The top button of his shirt was undone. Pearl had a shimmer of perspiration above her upper lip that somehow looked good on her.

      Neither of Quinn’s two detectives was crazy about the idea that the NYPD had landed with both flat feet in the middle of their investigation.

      “Did we plan for this development?” Pearl asked.

      “Not exactly,” Quinn said. “We’ll have to improvise.”

      “They do that in comedy clubs,” Fedderman said.

      “We’ll try not to make it funny.”

      “At least we’ll be working with Vitali and Mishkin again,” Fedderman said.

      The NYPD homicide team of detectives Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin had shared the load with Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman in a previous serial killer case. The gravel-voiced, intense Vitali and the deceptively meek Mishkin were a crack team and meshed well with Quinn and his crew.

      Pearl, who’d been working her computer, sat back and stretched her arms, clenching and unclenching her fists as if she were working little exercise balls. “It’d be nice, though, if we had a client.”

      “We do,” Fedderman said. “We just can’t find her. Pearl keeps checking her computer, but Chrissie’s not on Face-book or YouTube or any of the other mass Internet connectors. There are some people there looking for dates, though, so Pearl’s not giving up.”

      “I got a YouTube for you,” Pearl said.

      “Wouldn’t doubt it.”

      Pearl fumed. Fedderman liked that. Quinn didn’t, but he hesitated in acting as referee when Pearl and Fedderman went at each other. Their frequent bickering seemed to stimulate their little gray cells.

      “Ease up,” was all he said, and not with much conviction.

      Pearl swiveled slightly in her chair to look directly at him. “Did you mention to Cindy Sellers that we can’t seem to locate our client?”

      “Slipped my mind.”

      “Sure it did.” Pearl knew better than to believe that. Hardly anything slipped Quinn’s mind.

      Having forgotten for now about Fedderman and his jibes, Pearl smiled. Quinn thought she was beautiful when she smiled while still flush with anger. It was amazing the way she could switch gears like that. Like speed-shifting a race car.

      “She called here while you were talking to Renz,” Fedderman said.

      “Sellers?”

      “The same. Pearl took the call.”

      “I can’t stand that woman,” Pearl said.

      “That’s just because she has no taste, compassion, or ethics,” Fedderman said.

      “I can stand you,” Pearl said. “Barely, sometimes, and in short doses, but I can stand you.”

      Quinn was getting fed up with the verbal rock fight. What were they, in high school? But he knew it was because they were stymied in their investigation. Couldn’t even find their client. “What did Sellers want, Pearl?”

      “The СКАЧАТЬ