by John Lutz
Pearl was the first one through the door.
16
Michelle Roper had informed Quinn that Nora Noon had a sister somewhere in New Jersey. It hadn’t taken long to find her, not very far away in Teaneck. Fedderman waited at the morgue the next morning for the sister, Penny Noon, who was driving in to the city to identify the body.
The victim’s sister turned out to be a half sister, an attractive woman with choppy blond hair with dark streaks in it that looked deliberate. There wasn’t much of a family resemblance to her murdered sister, maybe because the victim was obviously much the younger of the two. Penny had a fuller face, calm gray eyes with the beginnings of crow’s-feet, and full lips with pink gloss. She did have the same deeply cleft chin as the victim. Her demeanor was tense but controlled, her strong features seemingly placid.
After the introductions, Penny, Fedderman, and a guy named Clarkson, from Renz’s office, stood and waited for Nora Noon’s postmortem photograph to appear on a monitor mounted at eye level on the wall. Clarkson wasn’t yet forty and dressed in a sharp gray suit, starched white shirt, and gold-clasped tie, making Fedderman by comparison look . . . like Fedderman.
There were chairs angled around the viewing room, but no one was sitting down. Penny had refused the offer of a chair, and the two men felt obligated to stand with her. She was slightly behind Renz’s man and standing on Fedderman’s right, about a foot away from him. Fedderman recalled the victim’s bulging eyes and horror-stricken expression. He knew what might happen and made himself ready to catch a falling body.
But Nora Noon’s head-shot photo was surprisingly without the horror of yesterday in that stifling apartment. Her eyes were closed and her facial muscles worked into a neutral expression. The photo was cropped so it showed none of the burn marks on her neck and farther down on her body. None of the stripped flesh.
“Her,” Penny Noon said from somewhere deep in her throat. And in a steadier voice: “That’s Nora.”
Then she emitted a soft sound halfway between a sigh and a sob, and her body sagged against Fedderman.
He caught her and helped her—carried her, actually—to one of the padded black chairs and lowered her gently into it.
She came around suddenly, as if someone had waved smelling salts under her nose. She looked into Fedderman’s eyes, causing something in him to turn over and over, and appeared profoundly embarrassed.
“It’s all right,” he heard himself say. He watched his arm move independent of thought and his hand pat the back of hers.
He realized he was kneeling down in front of the chair like an idiot about to propose marriage. His knee was sore from supporting his weight on the hard tile floor. For some reason he was afraid to look again into her eyes, as if a part of him knew that something profound might happen. Again.
Listening to his aching knee creak, Fedderman made himself stand and turn at the same time. As he did so he glanced up, and was relieved to see a blank monitor screen rather than the dead woman’s photo.
“It’s all right,” he repeated. “This part’s over.”
“For Nora, everything’s over.” He thought she was going to start sobbing, but she bit back any show of emotion or loss of control. “It’s so goddamned unfair,” she said in a resigned voice.
“It is,” he agreed.
“I guess everyone says that.”
“Everyone’s right.”
She looked around slowly, as if gradually waking from a dark dream and finding herself in strange surroundings.
“God!” she said, shaking her head.
“He’s in the mix somewhere,” Fedderman said, knowing as he heard the words that it was an inane thing to say.
She gave him a closer look, curious, her eyes intent and traveling in brief glances, as if she was mapping his features. He could not look away.
“Are you a religious man?” she asked.
“I have been a few times,” Fedderman said, “when I was sufficiently scared.”
Her wide lips curved upward in a slight smile that stayed. Her hands were in her lap, turned palms up and trembling, as if she were waiting for her fortune to be told and dreading the prognosis.
“That applies to me, too,” she said.
Renz’s man had come over and was standing looking down at her. “You okay, ma’am?” he asked.
“Okay enough.”
He nodded, gave her a smile that meant nothing, and left the room, his mission as witness to the identification completed.
“There goes a piece of the bureaucracy,” Penny said.
“I’m a piece of the bureaucracy, too.”
“You don’t seem a precise fit.”
Fedderman didn’t know what she meant by that remark, but he was sure he approved.
“I need something,” Penny said.
“A drink?”
“Something warm. Coffee, decaffeinated. I think I saw a vending machine when I entered the building.”
“You wouldn’t want to drink anything that came out of that,” Fedderman heard himself say. “I know a place where we could go.”
I must be out of my mind.
She looked at him for several seconds before nodding, as if confirming what he’d been thinking.
17
Despite the early hour, Quinn and Jerry Lido sat next to each other on bar stools at O’Keefe’s Oasis. They were the only ones in the place consuming alcohol. The three other drinkers, two men and a woman, were sipping coffee. Quinn had consumed only half of his mimosa—a mixture of champagne and orange juice—when he generously ordered another scotch and water for Jerry. It had been Quinn’s idea to come here.
“Better ease up on those,” the bartender said to Jerry, as he placed the drink on the bar.
“Not to worry, Jim,” Jerry answered with a grin. “I got my desecrated driver.”
Jim glanced disapprovingly at Quinn as he moved away down the bar. O’Keefe’s was near Jerry’s apartment, and Jerry was one of the regulars. Maybe they liked him here. Jerry wasn’t a bad guy when he wasn’t involved in selfflagellation.
Quinn got Jerry talking about the investigation and his computer expertise, and suggested they leave so Jerry could demonstrate something online. On the walk to Jerry’s apartment, they ducked into a liquor store and bought a bottle of J&B scotch, Jerry’s favorite. Quinn paid. He knew Jerry was great with his computer when he was sober. Drunk he was brilliant.
After about an hour, Quinn said good-bye and left Jerry’s apartment. Deep in an alcoholic and electronic trance, concentrating on his monitor and mouse and nothing else, Jerry barely noticed.
When Quinn entered the office, Pearl looked at him pretty much as Jim the bartender had in O’Keefe’s.
“You smell like booze,” she said.
“I’ve been—”
“I can guess what you’ve been doing. Drinking with Jerry Lido. Where is he?”
Quinn glanced around. “Where’s who?”
“Are you drunk, too?”
“Who’s too?”
“Too would be Jerry Lido, who I’m sure is soused despite the early hour.”
“No, I’m not soused. Nor am I smashed nor looped nor plastered. Jerry’s on the edge, I’d say.”
“You’re sure right about that.”
“He’s working now on his computer. Maybe he’ll come up with something.”
“Like sclerosis of the liver.”
“Don’t be so rough on him, Pearl.”
Pearl simply stared at Quinn. She made him feel drunk, though he was sure he wasn’t. She could do that.
He shrugged. “I’ll be working,” he said. “At my desk.”
“Don’t try to drive it,” Pearl said.
That afternoon Quinn was alone in the office when a short, stocky man wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt entered and glanced around with his head tilted back, as if orienting himself while making sure the air was safe to breathe. He walked directly to Quinn’s desk. Quinn figured he was in his fifties, a fit fifties.
His hair was buzz cut and his chin was thrust outward and upward. His bearing was that of a small person who’d grown up in a tough neighborhood. If his forearms were larger he would have made a great movie Popeye. He stood in front of Quinn’s desk and fixed a calm blue stare on him. Up close like that, Quinn could see the road map of fine wrinkles on his face and upped his estimate of the man’s age to over sixty.
“You’re Quinn,” the man said, in a tone that suggested insult.
Quinn thought it might be a good idea to start locking the street door and requiring people to ring to get in. “And you are?”
“A friend of Bill. You know what that means?”
Quinn nodded. It was the way members of Alcoholics Anonymous identified themselves to each other.
“Another friend of mine’s also a friend of Bill. Jerry Lido.”
“One of Bill’s best friends, I would imagine,” Quinn said, wondering now where this was going, and having some suspicions.
“I’m Jerry’s sponsor in AA, Quinn. The one he goes to for help if he’s having trouble, or if he’s fallen off the wagon.”
“Jerry’s wagon travels a bumpy road,” Quinn said.
“Over the last few years I’ve gotten fond of Jerry.”
“He could use all the friends he can get.”
“Not friends like you.”
Quinn leaned back and held a pencil at both ends in his huge hands with surprising delicacy. “What makes you say that?”
“I went to visit Jerry and he told me what was going on. I know what you’re doing. You know an alcoholic does or learns things when he’s drunk, and sometimes he can only remember them when he’s drunk again.”
“Sobriety’s a different world,” Quinn agreed.
“And you want Jerry to visit his other world so he might get in touch with certain memories.”
“And capabilities. He’s a genius on the computer when he’s drinking,” Quinn said honestly.
“You’re using Jerry for your own ends. Taking advantage of him.”
Has this guy been talking with Pearl?
“Jerry’s involvement in this investigation might save lives,” Quinn said. “He wants to help. In fact, he came here begging to help.”
“And you took him up on his offer.”
“He thinks he can find atonement,” Quinn said.
“He searched for that in a bottle and didn’t find it, and he’s not going to find it by drinking with you and then going online and doing things that could land him in jail.” The stocky little man appeared disgusted. “My guess is you don’t even really drink with him. You probably pour your liquor into a potted plant when he isn’t watching.”
“That only happens in movies,” Quinn said.
“Jerry’s my responsibility, and I’m here to ask you not to be his enabler just so he might ferret out some information that’ll help you.”
“You say I’m using Jerry. Yes, I am. That’s because I know it might be worth it. He knows it, too. That’s why he wants to help.”
“I think it’s simpler than that. I think you’re an obsessive bastard who’ll stop at nothing.”
“To find and stop a serial killer? Yeah, maybe I’m exactly that.”
“Well, I’m obsessive when it comes to saving Jerry from the bottle.”
“Then we’re at cross-purposes. Jerry’s a big boy. He wants to aid in this investigation, and we accept his offer.” Quinn stood up behind his desk. “I’m afraid that’s how it’s going to be, at least until we nail this killer.”
Seemingly without moving a muscle the little man seemed to grow several inches, though he was still looking up at Quinn. “I’m asking you man to man, politely as possible, to leave Jerry Lido alone.”
“I can’t do that. And it seems to me that whatever Jerry’s doing is up to him.”
The man swiped his bare muscular forearm across his lips, making a face, as if he’d taken a bite out of Quinn and didn’t like the aftertaste.
“I can’t say it’s been a pleasure meeting you,” he said, and spun and headed for the door.
“He can, you know,” Quinn said.
The man paused and looked back.
“Can what?”
“Jerry can find atonement in what he’s doing.”
“While killing himself with alcohol. Anyway, it’s saints that find atonement by dying. And Jerry’s no saint.”
“One more thing,” Quinn said, as the man was opening the door.
“What’s that?”
“Your name. You never told me your name.”
“My name is Joe Nethers, and don’t you forget it.”
18
It was 2:00 A.M. when the intercom buzzer grated in the brownstone. Quinn switched on the lamp by his bed, and then struggled into his pants that were folded over the back of a chair. The buzzer sounded again as he staggered toward the intercom in the next room. He leaned on the button.
“Whoozere?”
“It’s Jerry, Quinn. We gotta talk. I found—”
Quinn pushed the button that buzzed Lido in downstairs.
As Quinn moved toward the door, he heard Jerry taking the stairs up from the vestibule. Though Lido had sounded sober, there was something about his footfalls on the steps that suggested he wasn’t navigating steadily.
When Quinn, a sleepy, grouchy-looking man with bloodshot eyes and wild hair, opened the door, he found himself face-to-face with another sleepy-looking man with bloodshot eyes and wild hair, only Lido was ecstatic.
Imagining the scene, all Quinn could think just then was, Couple of booze hounds.
“I hit some databases and found out some shit,” Jerry said, pushing past Quinn and leaving a wake of alcohol fumes.
Son of a bitch smells embalmed.
“It’s two o’clock, Jerry.”
“You’ll love this, Quinn.” Jerry started to pace. Quinn wondered where he got all the damned energy. He’d had a couple of drinks with Lido at O’Keefe’s last night despite Joe Nethers’s implicit warning. Rather, Quinn had downed a couple of drinks. Jerry had guzzled half a dozen. So here was Quinn, exhausted and with a headache. And here was Jerry, ready to leap over the moon.
Quinn let himself fall back on the sofa, stretched out his legs, and crossed his bare ankles. “So what am I going to love?” he asked.
Jerry stopped suddenly and glanced around. “Where’s Pearl?”
“Home in bed.”
“I thought you two were—”
“Not exactly.”
“Simon Luttrell,” Lido said abruptly.
It actually took Quinn a few seconds to remember that was the name scrawled in blood on a mirror at the last murder scene. He realized he wasn’t all the way awake, and possibly the alcohol he’d consumed last night still had his brain addled.
“You found Luttrell?” he asked.
“In a way. He’s connected to Philip Wharkin. Just like Wharkin, he was a member of Socrates’s Cavern. Gold keys, both of them.”
“Gold keys?”
“Sure. You had to join to get into the place. Cost plenty, too. Members were brass, silver, and gold key holders. The golds paid the most to join. Their first drink was always free, and they could go anywhere in the club.”
Lido looked around again, as if still searching for Pearl.
“Listen, Quinn . . . you got . . . ?”
“Yeah, Jerry.” Quinn stood up from the sofa, trekked into the kitchen, and poured two fingers of scotch into a glass.
He returned to the living room and handed the glass to Jerry, then slumped back on the sofa. Jerry let himself down hard in a wing chair, accidentally sloshing some of the scotch on the carpet, and took a long sip. He seemed to calm down instantly, a trick of the mind.
“Luttrell was a Madison Avenue adman. Responsible for that dancing shirts commercial that used to be all over television. He joined Socrates’s Cavern in 1968, just when the club was getting going. He was a member until June of seventythree.”
Quinn couldn’t remembe
r any dancing shirts commercial. “What then?” he asked. “Luttrell let his membership expire?”
“He expired,” Lido said. “In Del Rico’s restaurant, used to be on Third Avenue. He choked on a piece of steak. I don’t think people knew the Heimlich maneuver back then, or he might have been saved.”
“No point in trying to talk to him, then,” Quinn said. He stretched his body out straighter on the sofa and laced his fingers behind his head. “The names on the mirrors, the letter S necklaces . . . our killer continues establishing a Socrates’s Cavern theme.”
Lido was staring at him like a starving puppy.
“That’s damned good work, Jerry. We’ve established a connection and we’ve got a definite theme. Names of former Socrates’s Cavern members. Now we have to figure out what that theme means.”
“Sick jerks like him always have a regular routine,” Lido said. “Compulsive bastards. You know that better’n anyone.”
“Maybe I do, Jerry.” Quinn watched Lido down the rest of his drink. It wouldn’t be easy to get a cab this time of night—morning. “How you gonna get home, Jerry? You should be in bed, if you’re gonna be worth anything tomorrow.”
“If you don’t mind,” Lido said, “you’re sitting on my bed.”
Quinn stood up and yawned. “I’ll get you a blanket from the closet.”
“Hot night,” Lido said. “I don’t need a blanket. I’ll just take off my shoes and catch some Z’s.”
Quinn hadn’t heard that in a long time, catch some Z’s.
“Okay, Jerry, the couch is all yours. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“So how ’bout a nightcap?”
Quinn thought about it. “Why not?”
He knew Joe Nethers would disapprove.
Pearl would disapprove.
Quinn should disapprove.
In the morning Quinn got up earlier than he should have. He showered, got dressed, then had toast and coffee standing up in the kitchen. He left Lido snoring on the sofa and walked the few blocks to the office to help clear his head.
Pearl was the only one there. Sal and Harold were out searching for Simon Luttrells with Fedderman. Quinn had decided to let them carry out the task for the sake of thoroughness. Renz would insist that every base be touched. And for all anyone knew, they might find the guilty, live Simon Luttrell, or at least a Simon Luttrell who might have some idea of why his name was used by the killer.
