by Cleo Coyle
Like most men, Quinn was the Twenty Questions type. “Something doesn’t sit right with…the search you made of her apartment?” I prompted.
The detective nodded as he took a sip of wine. “And with the suicide.”
I could think of a dozen more questions, but it wasn’t my business to grill him. It was police business. And Valerie Lathem’s family’s business. And none of mine. So I dished the mesclun into the Spode Imperialware “Blue Italian” pattern salad bowls. (It wasn’t Madame’s best china, but it was my favorite. The homey blue scenes of Northern Italy set against the white earthenware reminded me of an especially carefree summer when I was Joy’s age.)
“Clare, do you recall ever seeing Ms. Lathem come into the Blend with a companion?”
“Companion?”
“Friend or lover? Male or female?”
For a moment, I tried to recall her visits—anything unique about them, but it was so difficult to even remember her face. “It’s difficult…we serve hundreds of people a day. I try to get to know the regulars…but when we get busy…well, you’ve seen how crazy it can get…”
Quinn nodded.
“I can only recall her coming during the morning rushes. Alone.”
We ate in silence for a full minute.
“Did she leave a note?” I asked, too curious not to. “You know, a suicide note. Explaining why…”
“No note. No nothing,” said Quinn. “No drugs, no alcohol, no record of mental instability, or strained relationships. Everybody loved her. That’s what doesn’t sit right. There are usually some signs of problems. Issues. But my search and interviews have turned up a young woman who had everything to live for.”
“Was it possible she didn’t kill herself? That she just…I don’t know, slipped off the platform?”
Quinn shook his head. “The motorman said she flew right out in front of him. Flew. She didn’t drop down partially. She projected forward…and yet…”
“What?”
“She’d bought a bag of groceries at the Green Market. Who the hell buys groceries ten minutes before they off themselves?”
“You think she could have been pushed?”
Quinn’s thumb and forefinger caressed the stem of Madame’s Waterford crystal wine glass. “No witnesses. The platform’s security camera was mounted right above the woman’s head—so we’ve got no usable pictures. And the motorman claims he didn’t see anyone—but with the way that station slightly curves, and the place on the platform where the victim had been waiting, the pusher could have remained invisible behind a staircase.”
“So you think there was a…‘pusher.’”
“Can’t prove it.”
I nodded, having been down this road with Quinn before. From past experience, I’d learned that New York City detectives didn’t just investigate shootings, stabbings, and stranglings, but any suspicious death or accident that appeared might result in death.
According to Quinn, his department was routinely swamped and his superiors wanted what he called a “high case clearance” rate. They had no patience with Quinn’s marking time on cases that wouldn’t make an Assistant D.A.’s pulse race.
Quinn explained to me that the transit police statements to the press had played the death as a suicide in the public’s eye. So any other theory Quinn might wish to introduce would now be met with a great deal of political resistance within his own department—especially a theory with little evidentiary support. Even his partner on the case wanted them to close it out as a suicide.
After we finished our salads, I moved our bowls to the sideboard, ducked into the kitchen to retrieve the main dish, then set the platter of Chicken Francese down on the table between us.
“It smells delicious,” he said.
I served it up, and he began to eat.
“Save room,” I told him. “I’ve got a killer desert.”
Quinn closed his eyes, like he did every day when he took that first sip of my latte—but this time his mouth was chewing instead of sipping.
“Clare,” he finally said, “this is amazing.”
“It’s a crime how easy Chicken Francese is to make,” I told him between bites, “so if I were you, I wouldn’t be too impressed.”
“I don’t know,” he said, opening his eyes. “If I were you, I’d be careful with your confessions to crimes around me.”
I smiled. “And why is that?”
He took another sip of wine, a long one, and I’d swear that frosty blue gaze of his was drinking me in, too. “I’ve got cuffs, babe. And I know how to use ’em.”
I think I managed not to drop my fork—my jaw, I couldn’t account for. “I can’t believe you said that.”
Quinn’s dark blonde eyebrows rose, and he gave me one of those looks landscape surveyors reserve for choice pieces. He started at the top of my wavy, shoulder-length, Italian-roast brown hair, running down my heart-shaped face and lavender V-neck sweater, pausing just long enough on my C-cups to make me break a sweat.
Then he raised an eyebrow, tilted his head a bit, made a little sighing sound, and turned his attention back to his meal.
Taciturn bastard.
It wasn’t the first time we’d flirted, and I assumed it wouldn’t be the last. But I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere. Unlike my impulsive, outspoken, adventurous—and ultimately shameless—ex-husband, I could never consent to an extra-marital affair. And I sincerely doubted Quinn could, either.
On my part, I was raised a strict Roman Catholic. Even though I had lapsed in many ways, the sense of right and wrong (and guilt) had long ago been sewn into the lining of my clothing by the immigrant grandmother who raised me.
Still, unlike the St. Joseph medal affixed to the dashboard of my car, I wasn’t made of plastic. Testosterone wasn’t going to stop turning me on, and neither was Detective Michael Ryan Francis Quinn.
I’m sure I would have seemed far more sophisticated and mysterious if I had just sat there all enigmatic and silent like him. But I wasn’t a twenty-year veteran of poker-faced interrogations, and I suddenly couldn’t stop myself from babbling the entire contents of one of my old “In the Kitchen with Clare” columns from my Jersey days.
“You know, a lot people get frustrated trying to find the recipe for Chicken Francese in Italian cookbooks,” I yammered, “but they’re looking in all the wrong places. I mean, the recipe has antecedents, mostly in Italian-language Neapolitan cookbooks, but it’s really a New York dish. Francese, of course, means ‘in the French manner,’ but what you’ve actually got here is a basic chicken cutlet pounded out and dipped in flour and egg and more flour, then fried in olive oil, then dressed with fresh lemon juice. And since it’s best made in single portions, it seemed the perfect dish tonight for just the two of us…”
Just the two of us? Oh god. That came out all wrong!
“What I mean is, I’m sure your wife could make it for you—or for more people. All she’d have to do is under-cook the first batch, that way she can keep it warm in the oven without drying out the chicken while she’s cooking the additional batches. You see?”
“Clare.” Quinn put down his fork, and looked straight into my eyes. “There’s a personal reason I came here tonight.”
“Personal?”
“I wanted some advice…marital advice.”
FOUR
GETTING in was easy.
This being a new building, few of the tenants would know each other by face—given the typical all-hours comings and goings of Manhattan life—and even fewer would know each other by name.
The Genius simply waited.
Within minutes, a well-dressed man and woman came out the door, arguing about directions to a nightclub. The Genius stood just outside the door, pretending to fumble with a wallet—and, presumably, the pass card. As the couple stepped out, the man politely held the door open.
And, just like that, the Genius was in.
The cheap chrome light fixtures that illuminated the building’s exterior were tediou
sly present in its interior, as well, throughout the featureless space that formed the small lobby and down the short hall leading to the elevators.
The Genius pushed the UP button and waited.
“Just another slut,” whispered the Genius. “Like all of them…”
The Genius had followed the woman to the restaurant. Watched her dine with her new e-date. An expensive meal. A second bottle of wine. Finally, dessert. The woman had placed her manicured hand on her date’s, lifted it off the table, and brought it down underneath.
Surprise had registered on the man’s features as she’d made him feel what was there beneath her little black dress—and what wasn’t.
To the other diners, nothing had looked amiss. But the Genius had known what was happening beneath that tablecloth, and what would come next. A hastily requested check, the flagging of a cab. Fumbling in the back seat on the ride back to her building—and then the quick and feral mating.
An invitation had followed, of course, but the man had declined. His departure in a hired car had been expected…a signal for the Genius to act.
The mechanical bing of the elevator sounded, and the doors opened on the fifteenth floor.
With gloved hands, the Genius pulled the note from a pocket, opened it, and glanced at the first few lines.
Inga,
I saw you at the restaurant with him.
It drove me wild.
Meet me by your car right now, bring this note with you.
You can exchange it for a special surprise….
After folding the note once more, the Genius slipped it beneath the front door of Inga’s condo, knocked twice, then quickly strode to the stairwell.
When she read it, she’d come. The Genius knew this. For him, the Slut would do anything.
“MARITAL advice?” I asked, repeating Quinn’s words more out of shock than premature deafness.
Next to me at the dinner table, Quinn shifted uneasily in his Chippendale chair. Elbows went off the table then on again, and suddenly he was acting as though he’d grown too big for the small dining room.
Okay, this was serious. Quinn had never before acted this awkward around me. The man was cooler than arctic ice—and his tall, broad-shouldered form usually moved with the intense ease and confidence of an Alaskan wolf.
I tried to guess what was coming, but didn’t dare. Over the last few months, we mostly spoke about his work, or New York trivia, or the coffeehouse. Occasionally, he’d bring up his children—Molly, a six-year-old girl, and Jeremy, an eight-year-old boy—both of whom he always talked about in glowing terms. His wife he seldom mentioned, and whenever I’d open the topic of his spouse, he’d close it fast, usually with a negative quip along the lines of (on a good day) “they say marriage is a challenge, but I’m fairly sure ascending Everest would have been less effort,” and (on a bad day) “let’s just say my wife is an entrée that seemed promising on the menu but came to the table cold.”
“Maybe that didn’t come out right,” said Quinn, rubbing the back of his neck. “What I’m trying to say is…or rather ask is…when did you know it was time to…give up?”
“Whoa…” This was a little more than I’d expected to deal with tonight. I took a deep breath, reached for my wine glass, and considered it a notable accomplishment to have stopped myself from chugalugging the entire bottle of Pinot.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m putting you on the spot—”
“No, no. It’s fine…I was about to tell you, ‘I know what you’re going through,’ but the truth is, I don’t. Have you ever heard John Bradshaw talk about how every happy family is happy in the same way—but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own unique way?”
“No.”
“Well, he’s the dysfunctional family expert—and I believe that idea applies to marriage, too.”
“I’m not sure I follow…”
“Every couple’s marriage plays out very similar chords, but it’s own unique discords. You see?”
Quinn shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
“Well…take my own marriage. Matteo and I hadn’t stopped loving each other. We just needed to stop hurting each other. It might be the same for you—or it might be something else entirely. That’s why I’m not sure if my experience is even valid. Do you want to tell me more about your own marriage?”
“No,” he said flatly. “Not really.”
“Oh.” O-kay, I told myself. “So how about those Jets?” I said with enough forced perkiness to sweeten a Mafia wedding cake.
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “You follow pro football?”
“Not since Terry Bradshaw was a Steelers quarterback,” I said. (I’d followed football back then primarily because dear old Dad ran a bookie operation in the rear of my grandmother’s grocery back in western Pennsylvania.) “But if you don’t want to talk about your marriage problems, now that you’ve told me you have them…” I shrugged. “It’s pro teams, the weather…or I could give you the culinary history of penne alla vodka. What do you think?”
Quinn sighed and smiled. He actually smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “Shutting down is a knee-jerk reaction of mine, in case you haven’t noticed…”
In case I haven’t noticed? I stared at the man. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t want to be rude, Clare. Especially to you.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay. We really don’t have to talk about it if you’ve changed your mind. It’s your business.”
“I’m just not good at this.”
“At…what…exactly?”
Quinn began fidgeting again, this time like a teenage boy, playing with this silverware, then awkwardly scratching his square, freshly shaved jaw. “At asking for personal advice…”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“Do you?”
“When Matteo was cheating on me…” I began. Then I stopped, stared, and took another sip of wine—a long one.
All of a sudden, I felt a little more forgiving of Quinn’s reluctance to talk. When you spend most of your adult waking hours trying to look dependable, responsible, and together, the last thing you want to do is admit to anyone, let alone yourself, that your personal life had once gone totally to shit.
I put down the wine glass. “When I found out he was sleeping around,” I continued, “I was so ashamed. I couldn’t tell anyone. For a long time, I just pretended it wasn’t happening. At first, I blamed the work, all the traveling that went with his job…and then I blamed the cocaine. I tried to tell myself he wasn’t really himself…he wasn’t really responsible. The thing is…I loved him so much, and I knew he loved me. And there was Joy to consider.”
“Yeah, that’s my main concern…Molly and Jeremy.”
“I know.”
“So…” said Quinn slowly. “What made you finally decide to…?”
“To give up?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Well…” I began. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t just love Matt, you know? I was in love with him. So much in love, I even thought for a little while that I should try to make it work the way he wanted. An open marriage—at least for him because I could never cheat and live with myself…but then, a little at a time, I shut myself down emotionally. And the more I shut down, the more he turned away, until finally I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore.”
“Was there any one thing that happened or did you just…?” Quinn shrugged.
“One morning I was preparing an urn of our Breakfast Blend, and I just broke down. It sounds silly, but I was grinding this beautiful freshly roasted batch, and it just hit me that my marriage was doing to me what that grinder was doing to those beans. On the outside I held it together, but on the inside, I was being ground up into unrecognizable pieces.” I shrugged. “That’s when I realized the truth.”
“You wanted a divorce?”
“No…that it was impossible for me to fit myself in a filter, pour steaming water over myself, and serve myself in cups to custom
ers.”
Quinn stared at me for a second.
“It’s a joke,” I said.
We both burst out laughing.
It was good to hear him laugh.
Quinn exhaled, and the tension he’d carried since he’d arrived seemed to leave his entire body. (And here I had thought he’d been uptight because of his caseload.)
Then his eyes met mine, and he stopped laughing.
“She’s had affairs for years, Clare.” His voice was eerily cold. Unemotional. Dead. “With men. And, lately, with a woman. She’s shredded our marriage vows into worthless rags. Lied to me more times than I can count.”
I took a deep breath. “Then the real question is whether you’ve come to the point where you can live without her.”
With his free hand, Quinn reached for the wine glass again, but only to finger the stem. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine now. They focused on the fine Waterford crystal, its facets reflecting the flickering candlelight.
I waited for him to continue—because I thought we had all evening, and I had plenty of time to hear more about his marriage, about any attempts he might have made at marriage counseling, and generally to witness this rare occasion of his finally opening up. But then Quinn’s cell rang. The second he heard the voice on the other end, that glacier curtain came down. Work, of course. Something had come up and they needed to call him in.
“Are you going to a crime scene?” I asked after he flipped closed his cell and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“Yeah.”
“Tucker’s managing downstairs tonight,” I told him. “Stop in and ask for a tray of lattes to go. On the house.”
He thanked me, and I walked him to my duplex’s door. Then, on the landing above the service staircase, he stopped.
“Mike? Did you need something else?”
He just stood there, looking down, as if considering his answer. “Thanks,” he said, then without another word, he was gone.
Hiding in the crowd of tenants, the Genius watched the tall, broad-shouldered detective in the dark brown coat case the crime scene.
“Sorry, Mike. Sorry to pull you in.”
