by John Lutz
Pearl stayed behind and helped Nevins, out of pity, while Quinn and Fedderman left the office to look over the vacant apartment Pearl had seen the new Madeline leaving.
Just in case she hadn’t found what she might have gone there to retrieve.
“Happy hunting,” Nevins said, as they went out the door.
Pearl rolled her eyes.
51
A white van with the peel-off magnetic sign of a painting company was parked in front of the building the new Madeline had lived in. Peel-off signs. Sometimes Quinn thought they’d been invented especially for the convenience of criminals.
Quinn and Fedderman decided not to bother with the super. They entered the building, pushed the elevator’s “up” button, and didn’t see a soul on their ascent to Madeline’s floor.
They’d guessed right. The door down the hall that was propped open was to the new Madeline’s unit. Quinn went in first. A rug-sized canvas drop cloth covered most of the living room floor. A guy in paint-splattered white coveralls was perched on the next-to-top step of an aluminum stepladder, using a brush to apply paint where ceiling and wall met. There was a pleasant but nose-tingling smell emanating from whatever kind of paint he was using. The new color was peach. Quinn would have preferred the previous white.
“Help you?” a woman’s voice asked.
A young woman wearing white coveralls and a painter’s cap stuck on top of a lot of carrot-colored hair came in from the kitchen. She was carrying a plastic bucket of spackling compound and a small trowel that looked as if it’d had a lot of use.
Quinn and Fedderman showed both painters their shields. They seemed satisfied. The one on the ladder set back to work. The woman was probably the boss.
“We want to take another look around the apartment,” Quinn said.
“For clues?” Carrot top couldn’t say it without smiling.
“Before you paint over them,” Fedderman said.
She raised red eyebrows. “Was a crime committed here?”
“We don’t know for sure where the murder took place,” Quinn said. “That’s what the clues would be about.” There was no point in telling her the crime didn’t occur in the apartment. Let her be impressed.
She didn’t seem impressed.
“Did somebody say murder?” the painter on the ladder asked. Apparently he wasn’t up on the news.
“We’re from Homicide,” Fedderman said. “Murder it is.”
“Oh, great!” the man said. “I hope we didn’t paint over any fingerprints.”
“Not to worry,” Quinn told him. “That part of the investigation’s already been done.”
“By the crime scene unit?”
“You must watch TV,” Fedderman said.
“Law & Order,” the man said.
“We’re for that,” Quinn said.
“Well, you’re in luck,” the woman said. “We just got started. This is the only room we’ve worked in. That shouldn’t matter much, should it? I mean, aren’t most murders committed in the bedroom or kitchen? Nobody ever gets killed in the living room.”
“Depends on what’s on TV,” Fedderman said.
“Football,” the woman said. “Football on TV brings out the violence in men.”
“Oprah, too, sometimes,” Fedderman said.
The woman laughed. “You gotta be jesting. Everybody likes Oprah. Like with Raymond.”
“You must sniff a lotta paint fumes,” Fedderman said.
“We’ll take a look around,” Quinn said. “Thanks.” He thought the redheaded woman might be about to get genuinely angry at Fedderman. He’d seen it before with Oprah.
The apartment was small, so there wasn’t much to look at, especially considering they’d been there before. Quinn took the bathroom, while Fedderman began in the bedroom.
The medicine chest had been cleaned out, as had the small closet built into the wall, where towels and other bathroom supplies had been stored. Even the old tub looked as if it had been cleaned. The plastic plates were removed from the switches and sockets. The painters had been there, preparing. A clear plastic shower curtain lay neatly folded beneath the washbasin. Quinn used it to pad his knee as he knelt down and craned his neck so he could look at the underside of the porcelain basin.
Nothing there but plumbing.
He took a last look around, then went into the bedroom to join Fedderman.
It had been cleaned out, like the bathroom. Whatever the new Madeline had left behind had been either sold, stolen, or hauled away. The bed had been stripped down to the mattress and box springs.
“Look under the bed, Feds?”
“I always peek under the bed,” Fedderman said. “Even at home.”
Fedderman walked over to the closet and opened the door. It was as empty as they’d seen it last time. The two or three tangled wire hangers seemed to be dangling in the same pattern as before, like a wire mobile. Cops remembered things like that. Patterns.
Fedderman started to close the closet door.
“Wait a minute,” Quinn said, staring into the empty closet.
The painted, thin piece of plywood on the closet’s back wall, maybe eighteen inches square, that allowed access to the bathroom plumbing behind the tub didn’t look quite the same. Something…
“Was that access panel slightly crooked like that?” Quinn asked.
Fedderman stared at it. “No.” An ancient line of paint was even visible halfway along one edge. “Somebody’s been in there and didn’t put the panel back quite straight. Maybe because they were in a hurry.”
“Or maybe we got us a careless plumber,” Quinn said.
He bent down, listening to the cartilage in his knees crackle. There was a fine dusting of white powder on the closet’s bare wood floor near the access panel. Some of the powder had gone down into the cracks between the boards.
Fedderman leaned close and looked over Quinn’s shoulder.
“Wanna bet what that is?” he said. Plumbing access panels were a common place for drug addicts to conceal their stash. They didn’t seem to know that’s where narcs looked immediately after examining the inside of the toilet tank.
Quinn traced his fingertip through the film of powder, then touched his finger to his tongue, ran it across his gums beneath his lower front teeth.
“Coke,” he said. “High quality.”
Fedderman straightened up. “So the new Madeline is a user. She must have left her stash when she moved out, then came back for it.”
“Maybe because she had help moving,” Quinn said.
“And vacated the place in a hurry. When she got feeling needy, she had to come back for her stash. Got careless, somehow punctured a Baggie or dropped some of the product while she was snorting.”
“In a hurry and shaky,” Quinn said, picturing it.
“Or maybe we’ve got it wrong,” Fedderman said. “Maybe she came back to hide something behind the panel.”
Quinn didn’t think that was likely, but it was possible. Most of these old access panels stayed just as they were for years.
While he was kneeling, he took a closer look at the wooden access panel. It was fastened to the wall by large screws at each corner. There was no paint in the slots, and the screws looked loose. A few flakes of paint lay on the floor beneath them. Obviously somebody had been at the panel recently.
“Go see if you can borrow a screwdriver from the painters, Feds.”
“On my way.”
When Fedderman had left the bedroom, Quinn gathered his strength and stood up on his noisy, wobbly knees. The leg that had taken a bullet didn’t feel any more unsteady than the other leg. Time had healed. He felt light-headed for a moment. Feeling my age. Nothing good about that.
“Regular or Phillips?” Fedderman called from the living room.
“Bring both,” Quinn called back.
He didn’t feel like kneeling again to reexamine the screws.
The new Madeline hadn’t hidden anything behind the access panel in the back c
loset wall. When Quinn removed the plywood panel he found only the bathtub plumbing, and some more white powder on the floor. The spaces between the floorboards were wider there, and quite a bit of the powder had fallen down into them.
It was easy to see what had happened. There was a bent nail sticking out of the right side of the access opening. It was sharply pointed and had traces of white powder on it. Quinn pointed it out to Fedderman.
“She must have snagged the plastic pouch her coke was in and spilled some of it.”
“You can see where she tried to scoop it up and put it back in the bag. A lot of it went down into the floor.”
“Better than up her nose,” Quinn said.
Quinn held the panel flat against the wall and began replacing the screws.
When he straightened up and backed awkwardly out of the closet, he said, “We know she’s a user. And since she lost a lot of her stash here, she’ll probably need more soon.”
“Narcotics is liable to pick her up.”
“We don’t want that,” Quinn said.
“So we gotta make sure she doesn’t get nailed on a drug charge.” Fedderman shook his head. “Some police work. The new Madeline is a pain in the ass.”
“If we think she is,” Quinn said, “imagine what a pain in the ass she must be to E-Bliss. It can’t have been part of their plan to supply one of their new identities to a cocaine addict.”
“Maybe they don’t know she’s a user.”
“Maybe not yet,” Quinn said.
“But we know it,” Fedderman said. “Now we gotta figure out some way to use what we know.”
“Or avoid getting hurt by it,” Quinn said, closing the closet door.
They returned the painters’ screwdrivers, pointed out where they’d missed a spot, and left the apartment.
52
Her skin was itching on the inside. Maria Sanchez, the new Madeline, was having difficulty sitting still. If Jorge could see her now he’d be disgusted. He had been so disdainful of people in the business who got hooked on the product. She wondered what his reaction would have been if he’d known she’d become a user, then a cokehead. And she knew that was what she’d become—a cokehead. Knew it now, this minute, more than ever.
She felt trapped in the apartment E-Bliss.org had moved her into after they’d hustled her out of the one the old Madeline had occupied. Once they’d decided she should move, they’d watched over her every step, so there’d be no mistakes, nothing traceable left behind. She hadn’t even been alone long enough to sneak her stash out from behind the bathroom plumbing access panel on the back wall of her bedroom closet. Which meant she’d have to return.
And she did return to get what was hers, before anyone else had a chance to move in.
In a rush, already shaking because she’d waited too long, she snagged the plastic Baggie on a nail and ripped it open as she withdrew it from behind the plywood panel.
Shit!
At least half the high-quality cocaine spilled from the bag. Some of it she managed to scoop up, but the rest was a loss. It had sifted down in the cracks between the floorboards.
Like my crappy life.
Gonna be lots of wired cockroaches.
A giggle burst from her at the thought. Then the image intruded and she decided it wasn’t funny. Wasn’t funny at all.
She replaced the panel and got out of there fast, certain that no one had noticed her, and returned to her new apartment.
The cocaine had carried Maria for a while, and then it was gone and the waiting had begun. She’d seen it enough times with other cokeheads and knew how it was going to feel.
It started sooner than she’d expected, and it worsened fast.
She sat with her legs drawn up in a corner of the threadbare sofa. She’d been trembling, and now she was hot. Perspiring. The temperature was always off one way or another in this goddamned rat hole. This wasn’t the kind of environment she was used to. Palmer Stone had promised to move her yet again, into an apartment where the water didn’t run brown. It couldn’t happen too soon for Maria.
She stood up and began to pace, had to move, had to keep moving. Something she’d read somewhere returned to her:
“All the trouble in the world is caused by people who can’t sit still when they find themselves alone in a room.”
Wasn’t that the truth? And most of the trouble they caused was for themselves.
The part of her stash Maria had saved had gone so fast it had surprised her. And disturbed her. She hadn’t realized how much stuff she was using, and with increasing frequency, increasing need. She hadn’t suspected how deep into the trick bag she’d fallen.
Stone had warned her to be cautious, especially for the first six months. Six months! He had no idea what he was asking. She was going absolutely, undeniably insane.
She began to scratch her arms, her neck, leaving tracks from her gnawed fingernails. Maria knew she’d soon become a quaking mess if she didn’t make a connection and get a fix. She’d seen people like that, users colliding with reality. How pathetic she’d thought they were. How weak and contemptible. Maria wasn’t sure she’d changed her opinion of them now that she was one of them. She felt weak and contemptible.
She had to take the chance soon, or it would be too late. Once the nausea began—and it soon would—she’d be such a wreck nobody would trust her enough to sell to her. It would be impossible to score any kind of drug, and if she did happen to connect with a dealer, her desperation would be so obvious she’d be robbed of everything she had. The pathetic thing was that she knew she’d turn it over willingly, even eagerly, for the smallest sample of whatever would help her. She couldn’t let it reach that point, where she’d do anything for salvation for an hour.
Maria decided the smart thing, the cautious thing, would be to act before it became too late. If she explained it to Palmer Stone, she was sure he’d understand. If only he’d take the time to listen and think about it.
She sat back down, got back up, paced some more.
Without recalling how she got there, she found herself in the kitchen. She opened the freezer door of the refrigerator and got out the bottle of vodka she kept there. It was only half empty. It wasn’t what she needed, but it would help. For a while, anyway.
She removed the cap from the bottle and let some of the cold vodka slide down her throat. The alcohol content kept the vodka from quite freezing, increasing its viscosity without lessening its effect. It would help her to stave off the need and agony.
Buying time. That’s what she was doing, buying time and passing time and going mad.
The time she was buying was worth less by the minute.
She picked up the remote and switched on the TV. The news was on, some hick sheriff’s deputy or something from someplace down South being interviewed by a woman in a tight sweater and bad hairdo. The volume was too low to hear, but the crawl across the bottom of the screen said the alleged Torso Killer, Tom Coulter, had been spotted and almost caught in Louisiana.
Maria laughed. It sounded slightly maniacal even to her. She switched off the TV and tossed the remote over on the couch.
Crazy world! Crazy!
She walked from room to room, carrying the bottle, tracking the same path of her despair along worn carpet and sagging wood floor.
Maybe Stone wouldn’t understand. Or care. He was a lot of talk, Palmer Stone. A lot of bullshit.
She knew Stone’s type all too well. She couldn’t count on him, and she didn’t have to. The only person she could count on in this insane and unfair world was herself. She had to make a connection somehow, and soon.
Soon, God, soon!
She wanted to sit down but couldn’t. Something in her wouldn’t allow it.
All the trouble in the world…
They were in the office on West Seventy-ninth Street. The window air conditioner was noisy and fickle, being ornery. Right now it was too warm in the office. Pearl, in an uncharacteristic burst of domesticity, had gotten them
all coffee and delivered the cups to the desks on round cork coasters she’d found somewhere. The coasters featured ads for some kind of ale Quinn had never heard of. In the warmth created by the malfunctioning air conditioner, neither Quinn nor Fedderman really wanted the steaming coffee, but they took sips from time to time so Pearl wouldn’t get mad.
“The new Madeline must have E-Bliss spooked,” Quinn said. “They had the initial problem when the real Madeline Scott somehow escaped when they tried to kill her. Then the new Madeline must have picked up on something from when Pearl spotted her in the elevator, so they moved her out of the building. Thanks to Pearl—” he glanced toward where she was perched on the front edge of her desk—“we know where she’s living now.”
“And we know she needs coke,” Fedderman said.
“We’ll keep a watch on her,” Quinn said. “Except for Pearl, whom she’s already seen. When the time comes, the new Madeline will make a hell of a witness for the prosecution.”
“We’ve got leverage on her,” Fedderman said. “Major drug rap. She’ll cut a deal and cooperate.”
“If they don’t kill her,” Pearl said.
She understood why she wouldn’t be included in the watch on the new Madeline. Not only would she be a familiar face, but she’d be too busy elsewhere playing Jewel and looking after Jill Clark. And she could still feel Greeve following her, even though there was no sign of him. He wasn’t nicknamed “The Ghost” for nothing. If he didn’t know about the new Madeline, there was no point in leading him to her.
“We’ll watch her partly to protect her,” Quinn said, “and partly to see where she goes. Apparently she’s still in contact with E-Bliss from time to time.”
“We looking at her as bait?” Pearl asked. She knew it would be a coup to nail Tony Lake, or Vlad, or whatever name he was using, or maybe even Palmer Stone, in the act of trying to kill the new Madeline. And they might feel she had to be killed if they found out she was into drugs and vulnerable. She had to be a danger to them.
