John Lutz Bundle (121 page)

In the feeble light from his car’s outmoded headlights, retired NYPD homicide detective Frank Quinn didn’t see the damned thing. Not soon enough, anyway.

His old black Lincoln Town Car jounced and rattled over a pothole the size of a bomb crater, and he wondered if he’d chipped a tooth. He lifted what was left of his Cuban cigar from the ashtray and chomped down on it to use it as a mouthpiece so it might at least pad another such impact of upper and lower jaws.

He knew cigars were bad for him and had pretty much given them up, but the Cubans were too much of a temptation. Or maybe part of the appeal was that they were illegal, and he used to be a cop.

He smiled, knowing a cop was never something you used to be. He’d always figured small transgressions forestalled larger ones, so the cigars were okay.

Quinn cursed silently at traffic on Broadway as he jockeyed the big car north toward West Seventy-fifth Street and his apartment. The windows were up, and the air conditioner was humming away in its struggle with the hot summer evening. There was a slight persistent vibration of metal on metal—possibly a bearing in the blower fan motor going out. Quinn made a mental note to have it looked at. This would be a bad time of year for the car to lose its air-conditioning.

A traffic signal changed a block up, and a string of cars near the curb accelerated and made the sharp right turn onto the cross street. This created a break in the heavy traffic, and Quinn gratefully took advantage of all that barren pavement before him and ran the car up to about forty-five—a fast clip for most Manhattan streets.

Feeling pretty good, he puffed on his cigar and almost smiled. This was his poker night with five other retired or almost retired NYPD cops, and he’d won over a hundred dollars. It hadn’t been a high-stakes game, so he was far and away the big winner. Everybody but Quinn bitched when they stopped playing, as agreed upon, with the last hand dealt before ten o’clock sharp. Quinn always felt unreasonably triumphant after coming out ahead at poker, even though at the level of skill where he was playing luck had everything to do with the outcome. Still, his life had left him at a point where he took his victories where he could find them.

Light glinted brightly for a moment in the Lincoln’s left outside mirror. Headlights behind him. Despite the car’s brisk speed, the trailing traffic was catching up. Quinn squinted and checked the rearview mirror, but didn’t see much. The thick cigar smoke was doing something to the rear window, fogging it up so he couldn’t see out.

Is it doing that to my lungs?

He
could
see well enough to know the car behind was too damned close.

Tailgaters always ticked him off. He ran the Lincoln up over fifty.

Almost immediately the big car’s black leather interior was bathed in alternating flashes of red, making it damned difficult to see anything outside.

Irritated, Quinn braked down to about ten miles per hour and peered through the windshield to find a space where he could veer in and stop at the curb.

There didn’t seem to be a space.

Hell with it,
he thought, and was about to double-park when a cab pulled out into traffic ahead of him, vacating a space. Quinn steered in close to the curb and saw that there was a fire hydrant there. That was the only reason there was a parking space in this part of town, and it was illegal. He braked to a halt anyway.

If there’s a fire, I’ll move.

The reflected flashing lights grew brighter, the headlights blinding, as the police car wedged in at an angle behind him. He let the Lincoln roll forward a few feet, giving the driver behind him as much room as possible.

Quinn knew better than to get out of the car. He sat still, his hands high on the steering wheel where they could be seen, and watched in the rearview mirror. In the whirligig haze of reflected light behind him, he saw doors open on both sides of the police car. Darkly silhouetted figures climbed out and advanced on the Lincoln, seeming to move jerkily in the alternating light show.

This shouldn’t take long. Quinn might even know one or both of the uniforms. And the cops might know him. He could easily talk his way out of a ticket. Quinn was much respected in the NYPD. He even occasionally heard the word “legend.” He prepared himself to exchange some friendly words and be on his way.

In the mirror he saw one of the silhouetted cops turn back toward the police car. Quinn figured the uniform was going to run a check on the Lincoln’s plates.

Odd, Quinn thought. They could have both waited in the car while the plates were run. It was also odd that the cop on the driver’s side had returned to the police car. It would make more sense for that cop to approach the Lincoln and talk to Quinn through the lowered window.

The one on the right side of the Lincoln, who should have been doing the license check, kept coming, then passed briefly from view at the edge of the mirror.

Quinn felt a prickly sensation on the back of his neck. Something was wrong here.

Brightness slid to the side, out of the mirrors, and the radio car that had pulled Quinn over
whooshed
past him and continued down the street, its roof bar lights no longer flashing.

The passenger-side door of the Lincoln swung open, and the cop who’d approached on that side slid into the seat.

He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Instead he had on an unbuttoned light raincoat, though it wasn’t raining, and beneath it a suit and tie. A big man, in his late forties, overweight and with dark bags beneath his eyes. His jowls and the flesh beneath his chin sagged, making him look like nothing so much as a pensive bloodhound.

Quinn recognized him immediately, but the prickly sensation didn’t go away.

The man who’d slid out of the night and into his car was New York City Police Commissioner Harley Renz.

Renz smiled, not doing a thing for the bloodhound look, and glanced around. “Smells like hell in here.”

Quinn knew Renz was right. The cigar smoke odor had seeped into the upholstery and every cranny of the car. Even Quinn sometimes found it offensive, and he was used to it.

“You can get out as easy as you got in,” he said. He and Renz had always gotten along, but not in the friendliest manner, each knowing the other perhaps too well.

“You smoking one of those illegal Cuban cigars you like so much?”

“Venezuelan,” Quinn said.

“If you insist.” Renz settled back in his plush seat, still looking over at Quinn. “You got an extra?”

“No,” Quinn said. “You can finish this one.”

“It’ll finish you first.” Renz upped the amperage on his smile. His effort at charm. Still a bloodhound. His eyes had gotten droopier since Quinn had last seen him, slanting downward more at the outer corners as if weights were attached to the sagging flesh. He held his insincere smile as he stared at Quinn. “How’d you do?”

“Do?”

“At the poker game.”

“Won.”

“Ah. Really, all that means is you quit soon enough not to lose.”

“That why you stopped me? You riding in one of the traffic cars so you can collect graft from poker winners?”

“Seeing as I’ve become police commissioner, you should speak more respectfully to me.”

Quinn didn’t bother answering. He was wondering why Harley Renz would be interested enough in his poker night to follow him when he left the game.

“So what’s this about?” Quinn asked. “You want in?”

“I know some of those guys you’re playing cards with, Quinn. They cheat.”

“Your kind of game.”

“Even so…”

Quinn waited, tired of word games. He actually did have a sliver of respect for Renz, even though Renz represented authority and bureaucracy. Renz had at one time been a tough and effective homicide detective, and now and then it showed. And both men knew Renz was commissioner because of Quinn’s work on the Torso murders, for which Renz had skillfully garnered most of the credit. Quinn didn’t care about that. In fact, it had been part of the arrangement. The enthusiastically devious and ambitious Renz had used his newfound fame to become the most popular police commissioner in the city’s history. A media darling of monstrous proportions, his high standing in the polls translated into leverage he didn’t hesitate to use.

“I want to tell you a story,” Renz said.

“About speeding?”

Renz waved a hand dismissively. “You were going way too fast, but we can forget about that.”

Quinn pressed a button, and the window on his side of the Lincoln glided down. Sultry night air mingled with exhaust fumes tumbled into the car. He took a final pull on the cigar and tossed the glowing butt out into the street, watching it bounce and spark like a miniature fireworks display.

“Littering,” Renz said. “Illicit cigars, gambling, speeding, and now this. Jesus, Quinn! You’re a one-man crime wave.”

“It gives me something to do in retirement.” Quinn sighed and brushed cigar ash off his shirt. “It’s still hot out there.”

“Hotter than you know.”

Quinn left the window down to let in plenty of heat so maybe Renz would leave sooner and the car would air out. He leaned forward so he could reach the ignition key and killed the motor.

“This story of yours,” Quinn said. “Go ahead and tell it. And try not to be so cryptic.”

The car was uncomfortably hot within minutes. Quinn suffered gladly, knowing it would hasten Renz’s departure. He had a hunch what kind of story he was about to hear, and where it would lead. Quinn was uneasy about that last part, where it would lead.

“A month ago,” Renz began, “a hedge fund manager named George Manders was shot to death in a crowded SoHo club.”

“Never heard of him,” Quinn said. Maybe he could hurry Renz along.

“That’s okay, you’re not a suspect.” Renz made a face and wrinkled up his nose. It was probably a reaction to the cigar smoke smell in the car, somehow made stronger by the humid night air. Maybe Renz had a bloodhound nose as well as the looks of the breed. “At the time of the shooting,” Renz continued, “Manders was dancing with a woman he didn’t know. At least according to her. They’d just met ten minutes ago, and he’d asked her to dance. The dance floor was illuminated by those colored strobe lights that make everything look fast and herky-jerky, and the music was so loud nobody heard the shot from a small-caliber gun.”

“How small?” Quinn asked.

“Twenty-five caliber.”

It wasn’t an
un
common size bullet, but more rare than a .22 caliber when it came to small handguns.

Renz said, “The way the light was flickering, and the sound of the shot being drowned out by all that noise that passes for music, nobody realized at first that Manders had been shot. When he went down, they thought maybe it was some kinda tricky dance step and he was gonna pop right back up. Then witnesses said they saw someone bend over him—they thought to talk to him, maybe make sure he was okay—and the guy reached in and removed something from Manders’s suit coat pocket and then shag-assed outta the club.”

“This is the same guy that shot him?” Quinn asked, wanting to keep the facts straight.

“Far as we know,” Renz said. “Nobody actually saw a gun. Hardly anyone even noticed there was something wrong. The music went on for another minute or so after Manders went down, and people kept dancing.”

“Can anyone identify this guy who ran from the club?”

Renz shook his head no. “It all happened too fast, under conditions where it’d take a while for people to react. Half of them were juiced up on one substance or another anyway. So we got no positive ID in the offing. And nobody knows what was removed from the victim’s pocket. His wallet, stuffed with cash, was intact, as was his Rolex watch and gold ring.”

“Wedding ring?”

“No. Manders was divorced five years ago. He was living alone, like you.”

“What kinda club was it?” Quinn asked, ignoring the barb.

“Straight clientele, upper to upper-upper class, looking for action.”

“So that’s what Manders was doing,” Quinn said “and he got a different kind of action than he was looking for.”

“Could be.”

“And maybe whoever bent over him wasn’t the shooter but really
was
somebody wanting to help him, and when he realized Manders was dead he ran out of there so he wouldn’t be involved.”

“So what was taken from the victim’s pocket?”

Quinn shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe the guy bending over him was feeling for a heartbeat. Coulda been a doctor stepping out on his wife and didn’t want any record that he was there.”

Renz had to grin. His canine teeth were longer than most people’s, and tinged yellow. “That’s pretty good, the heartbeat thing with the philandering cardiologist. Why you’re such an ace detective. Trouble is, there’s more to my story.”

It began to rain, hard. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Quinn worked the buttons and raised all the windows, making it even warmer in the car. The windows blurred immediately, isolating Quinn and Renz from the outside world. There was a musty smell now to go with the stale tobacco scent. Nothing moved the sultry air.

Renz didn’t seem at all discomfited. “Last week an insurance executive, Alan Weeks, was shot to death in Central Park, in front of witnesses too far away to see the killer’s face. They did see the killer lean over the victim and remove something from his pocket before disappearing into the woods.”

“Not his wallet?”

“Nope,” Renz said. “Not his expensive pocket watch, either. The bullet that killed Weeks was fired from a twenty-five-caliber handgun, but
not
the same gun that killed Manders. Nothing about the murders seems to connect Weeks and Manders, other than bullets in the head. And possibly whatever was removed from their pockets.”

Quinn drummed his fingertips for a while on the steering wheel, making a sound something like the rain pattering on the car roof.

“Maybe coincidence,” he said, not believing it. He’d been conditioned not to believe it. Coincidence and detective work were incompatible.

Renz flashed another canine smile in the wavering light making its way through the rain-washed windows. “Like it was coincidental we bumped into each other tonight.”

Quinn stopped with the fingers. “Fate?”

Renz shook his head no. “Design.” The grin stayed. “Another homicide like the first two,” he said, “and we’ve definitely got ourselves a serial killer and all the media hype that goes with it. I need you and your team ready to go in the event that happens. Usual terms.”

For particularly difficult and sensitive cases, the clever and immensely ambitious Renz called on Quinn and his team of former NYPD detectives, Pearl Kasner and Larry Fedderman, to act as his personal investigators. Their work-for-hire status provided them use of NYPD resources, but they suffered few of the department’s hindrances.

Quinn knew this wasn’t only because Renz wanted serious crimes solved on his watch. Quinn understood the bureaucracy and still held a grudge against it from when it had turned on him. He didn’t have to be told that an important part of his job would be covering Renz’s ass.

“You could call it a standby basis,” Renz said, “but we both know it won’t be standby very long.”

“That’s what my gut tells me.”

“Your gut tell you to take the job?”

“Tells me not to touch it.”

“How about your head?”

“My head says run from it fast as I can.”

“But you’re going to call Pearl and Fedderman? Be ready to go after this sicko?”

“Yes,” Quinn said.

Renz stared at him for a while, studying him.

“Your heart must be telling you what to do,” he said. He grinned hugely, all incisors and canine teeth gleaming in the night’s reflected light. “How sweet.”

“Get out of the car.”

“Can’t,” Renz said. “You mighta noticed the radio car I was riding in has driven away, and now it’s raining. I need a lift home.”

“You shoulda thought ahead.”

“If I hadn’t been thinking ahead, Quinn, I wouldn’t be here talking with you. I want us to be ready for the media shit storm.”

“You still live over on East Fifty-first?”

“Same place,” Renz said. “Newly decorated, though.”

“It’s kinda far from here,” Quinn said.

“That’s why I asked a friend.”

Quinn started the car’s big engine. Before pulling away from the curb, he drew a cigar from an inside pocket and fired it up with the Lincoln’s lighter. If Renz was riding with him, he was going to suffer. If the smoke didn’t get to Renz, it would only be because he was a cigar smoker himself and knew good tobacco when he smelled it.

“I thought you said you were smoking your last one,” Renz said.

“This is the last one,” Quinn said.

Renz stared ahead quietly, obviously pissed off. Made Quinn smile.

He would have offered Renz a cigar if they weren’t Cuban.