John Lutz Bundle (154 page)

The bedroom was bright with fragments of early morning sunlight when the man Mitzi Lewis knew as Rob Curlew observed her as she slept.

Standing nude, he leaned over her and listened closely to her breathing. She was still sleeping soundly.

Careful to make no noise, he gathered up his clothes and carried them into the bathroom. He ran no water and made little noise getting dressed.

He didn’t want to leave Mitzi, didn’t want to lose this one. But her surprise party last night had been a surprise for him, too. Now almost everyone she knew had seen him and would be able to supply police with descriptions, could identify him. Many of them had photographs of him with Mitzi.

He simply couldn’t take the chance. Sometimes the best of hunters came up empty.

When he was dressed, he found the blue carry-on that he’d promised Mitzi he’d open this morning, and walked softly back to her bed.

He stood very still and listened to her breathe, watched her sleep. She looked so innocent, so unknowing.

She would never know the pivotal moment in her life, the moment that had saved her life. Perhaps the great joke of her life. Being Mitzi, she might very well have looked at it that way.

He wanted to kiss her, but knew that might be a mistake. Instead he left the bedroom quietly, left her apartment, and disappeared into the city that was not yet all the way awake.

At 8:00
A.M.
, after a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and toast, Quinn phoned Renz and described his dawn phone call from the killer.

The rules were simple enough. At nine o’clock this morning the hunt would begin. It was limited to the island of Manhattan. Both men were to be armed only with their identical .25-caliber revolvers. Quinn was safe in his apartment until nine o’clock, but not afterward. From that point on, he was safe nowhere, nor was his opponent.

“He knows where you live, but you don’t know where he does,” Renz pointed out.

“That’s why I’m probably safe here,” Quinn said. “Our killer’s the sort who’d rather make it a sporting proposition. He wouldn’t consider it cricket to shoot me in my bed.”

“Cricket…” Renz repeated thoughtfully. “He use that word?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said.

“But you just used it,” Renz said. “Maybe because he did.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Maybe he watches the BBC.”

“There you go,” Renz said. “He also knows what you look like.”

“Only from newspaper photos, and they don’t do me justice.”

“He’s really not as cricket as he’d like you to think,” Renz said. “Let’s not forget he’s just another psycho asshole who makes his own rules.”

“There’s nothing in those rules about leaving my apartment
before
nine o’clock,” Quinn said. “That’s what I’ll be doing after I hang up on you.”

“Okay. I’ll issue the order again that no one is to interfere with you or the kil—your opponent.”

Both men were silent for a while, knowing this might well be their final conversation, and that there simply wasn’t any more to say other than everything, and that was impossible to put into words.

“Luck,” Renz said simply, and hung up.

It was when Quinn replaced the receiver that he remembered something. Maybe. It was possible the .25-Caliber Killer
had
used the word
cricket
in their phone conversation. He might have a touch of British accent.

Bloody hell!

Not that it changed anything if the killer did happen to be a Brit. He was soon going to find himself in a sticky wicket.

Quinn finished his coffee; then he hand washed and dried his breakfast dishes before leaving the apartment.

He figured a man who’d done the dishes in preparation for his next meal was unlikely to meet death until then. Surely if you planned for the future it was more likely there would be one.

Think alive, stay alive.

But he didn’t intend to spend the day simply trying to stay alive while keeping an eye out for the killer.

He had a destination.

Quinn left his apartment via the fire stairs, then he did a turn around the block to be reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed. It was possible, maybe likely, that his opponent had his apartment building already staked out though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.

He entered an office building whose lobby, lined with closed shops, ran through to the opposite block. Without pausing, he walked though it and out the opposite tinted glass doors, then doubled back outside, observing all the way. He was reasonably sure he wasn’t being followed.

What he wanted to do was lose himself in the city before nine o’clock.

The morning was warm and still, and with a slight overcast that would burn off by noon. Right now shadows were muted and the light seemed evenly distributed. Shooter’s weather. As he strode along the sidewalk, Quinn was aware of the weight of the Springbok revolver in one suit-coat pocket, his cell phone in the other.

Mustn’t get them confused,
he cautioned himself with a smile.

My God! Helen and Zoe are right. At least a part of me is enjoying this.

Though he didn’t think he was being followed, the tension was still there. His back muscles were tight, and his antennae were out for anything unusual, anything that might spell danger. He was moving through the city in a kind of hyperawareness. It was a strain that would eventually take its toll.

The trick, he soon realized, was to stay among people, but not so many that they provided cover to fire from and then escape into.

Stop thinking defensively. You be the one to use crowds for cover, to look for the killer and apprehend him, to take him down if necessary without killing anyone else.

Quinn was just beginning to realize how difficult that would be.

He didn’t want to keep pounding the pavement wearing himself out, and just in case he
was
at the moment being stalked, he didn’t want to become a still target, whatever the time.

On First Avenue he saw a bus preparing to stop for a knot of people standing in front of a bank. At the last second, he boarded and fed in his change. He found a seat away from the window, near the back of the bus, and settled in for his ride uptown.

The roar of the bus’s engine, the rhythm of accelerating and stopping, allowed him to relax. Manhattan was a big island. It wouldn’t be easy for hunter and prey to come together. The killer would be waiting and watching at points where his quarry might show—workplace, apartment, the near proximities of friends and associates, known haunts. That was part of the problem. Quinn knew practically nothing about his prey, and didn’t know how much his prey knew about him. He was beginning to catch on as to how this game was played. He would at some point have to actively hunt. Hunter could become prey in an instant.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock.

He was fair game.

Dr. Alfred Beeker’s blond assistant Beatrice was on duty behind her desk in the anteroom when Quinn arrived at the doctor’s Park Avenue office. She was the only one in the room. A mug of coffee and a half-eaten cinnamon roll sat on a white paper napkin on her desk. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.

She looked up at Quinn and appeared frightened. Had Beeker told her about Quinn? Was Beatrice herself part of the S&M lifestyle that Beeker embraced?

“Is Doctor Beeker in?” Quinn asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “the doctor’s with a patient.” Doing a nice job of pretending not to remember Quinn.

“In his office?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to look in on him.”

Now Beatrice looked alarmed. Beeker must have put a word in her ear about Quinn. She glanced back at the door, then at Quinn, weighing her chances of stopping him from barging in on Beeker and not liking them.

“I need to see him,” Quinn said.

“I told you, he’s—”

“You don’t understand,” Quinn said. “I only want to
see
him. I won’t even say hello, if you don’t want me to.”

She stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Quinn admired her spunk.

“I’m not going to go away until I see him,” Quinn said. “Which way would be less all-around trouble? If you called in and asked him to step out here for a moment, or if I barged in while he’s in the middle of a session with a patient?”

“What if I call the police?”

“You remember me, dear. The police?” He showed her his shield, though he was sure she already knew who he was.

“Why didn’t you say in the beginning this was police business?”

“I wanted to see how cooperative you’d be.”

“I’d say you just like to play games,” she said. Not angrily, though.

“You’ve got me there.”

She sat back down, plucked the receiver from her desk phone, and pushed a button. Then she turned her back on Quinn and talked softly enough that he couldn’t understand her.

A few seconds after she’d hung up, the large door on the wall behind the reception desk opened, and Beeker stepped into the anteroom. He glared at Quinn, and his face turned a mottled red. Plenty angry, Dr. Alfred Beeker. Again, though, Quinn noted the doctor was unafraid.

As he stood looking at Beeker, Quinn became acutely aware of the compact revolver in his pocket. In an odd way it wasn’t at all like the gun he usually carried holstered, his old police special revolver. That gun was used to maintain order, to protect people, or to use in self-defense. This gun was for a separate and distinct purpose—for stalking and killing another human being. Quinn couldn’t help imagining Beeker in his black leather outfit, standing and holding a whip, with Zoe…

“Make this fast,” Beeker said.

I’d love to.

Beatrice took a large bite of cinnamon roll. It released a surge of sweet scent in the office.

Quinn nodded to Beeker, smiled and nodded to Beatrice, then turned and walked out the door.

He’d learned what he wanted to know. The doctor was in.

And not outside in the city streets, stalking him.

Quinn soon learned the rhythm of the hunt.

He moved along the sidewalk at the speed of pedestrian traffic. The knack was in being careful to stay near other people, but at the same time avoid becoming part of a crowd that might shield the killer’s approach. He knew that a larger crowd tended only to mean more confused and conflicting witnesses. After shooting him, the killer might even become part of the swarm of onlookers.

It was no good to think of yourself as only the prey. Quinn knew that to survive he’d sometimes have to become the hunter. He crossed streets often, and every half hour or so doubled back. Sometimes he’d find a concealing doorway, or some other quiet corner from which he could observe. There he would wait to see who was walking in his wake. He had no idea what his pursuer looked like. What he wanted was to see the same man twice, to judge his bearing and attitude. He was pretty sure he was being followed, and that he’d be able to spot the killer. At that point Quinn would become the stalker. Quinn figured he had a chance here. He was good at spotting tails, and at shaking them. Why not at arresting them?

Or, if necessary, at killing one of them?

In truth he was almost positive that was what he’d have to do, that this was a serious game played to the death.

But the morning wore on, and whoever was following Quinn—
if
there was someone following him—remained anonymous and all the more dangerous.

It was almost eleven o’clock when Quinn decided he should have lunch. He’d stop at a diner, someplace he’d never been before, where it couldn’t be predicted he would go. The noon lunch crowd was still an hour away, so the restaurants shouldn’t be crowded yet. He could get a table or booth where he’d be facing the door, away from a window through which he might be seen, or even shot.

It all seemed so incongruous at that moment. So unreal. The morning, the street, the city seemed so normal. Was he really taking part in some madman’s deadly game?

He knew that kind of thinking could be like an opiate, dulling alertness. He was in a game, all right. A hunt. And he’d damned well better remember it.

About a hundred feet ahead, a knot of pedestrians waited at an intersection. People were standing on and just off the curb, impatient for the light to change so they could cross. Quinn thought about hurrying to join them, then became aware that his right shoelace had come untied and was flopping around. He was passing a low stone wall running parallel to the office building on his right, and he didn’t want to catch up to the people at the corner
too
fast. It was a good time to tie the shoelace.

He stopped, braced his foot up on the low wall, and quickly retied the brown lace.

When he straightened up to continue walking, he saw that the light at the intersection had just changed to walk. The knot of pedestrians had surged forward and dispersed. Most of them were almost halfway across the street. All of them were gone from the corner and the curb.

All but one.

He was a medium-height, well-dressed man in a dark blue suit, coat open, tie flapping in the breeze. He had neatly trimmed dark hair combed straight back, and looked fit and handsome.

Quinn remembered the blue suit, the head of thick black hair. The man had been part of the knot of people at the corner, waiting to cross the intersection

Only he hadn’t crossed. He’d turned around and was now walking toward Quinn.

None of this might have seemed real a few minutes ago, but it
was
real. And coming at him.
It was happening!

The man’s smooth, athletic stride didn’t slow or in any way change as he slipped a hand into his pocket. The movement hadn’t seemed fast, but it had been fast.

Faster than Quinn could reach his own pocket.

The man had stopped now and was standing in shooting position, his body turned sideways, his right arm extended and holding a small revolver pointed at Quinn. The dark eyes sighting over the barrel at Quinn were somber and intent and without fear.

Quinn was fumbling his own revolver out of his pocket, knowing even as he did so that it would be too late. He’d simply tied his shoe, briefly let down his guard, and he was dead.

He braced himself to dive to the side, but he was only going through the motions, giving himself a slim chance.

Before he could move he saw the man’s extended arm suddenly drop.

Quinn stared, confused.

He’s dancing!

That was Quinn’s first thought as the man shuffled his feet, snapping his head this way and that. Then he became aware of the noise, a roar of gunfire.

He looked in its direction and saw Pearl standing in the middle of the street with her feet spread wide, holding her big nine-millimeter Glock in both hands and blasting away.

Then came a sudden, vibrant silence.

Quinn looked away from Pearl, back in the direction she’d been shooting.

The man in the blue suit lay motionless on the sidewalk. There was blood spreading out from beneath him. A lot of blood.

Quinn knew Pearl had disobeyed Renz’s instructions. She must have been tailing Quinn, perhaps even tailing his pursuer, the man in the blue suit.

The .25-Caliber Killer.

Aware of his heavy breathing and the blood pulsing in his ears, Quinn stood and watched Pearl approach the downed man to make sure he was dead. After kneeling briefly beside the man, she stood up and walked toward Quinn. Her features were calm, unsmiling, the composed face of a woman at peace with the knowledge that she’d done a difficult job successfully.

Quinn felt beads of sweat running down his ribs beneath his shirt. Pearl had acted on her own and saved his life.

He couldn’t yet calculate the cost she’d have to pay, but he knew it was nothing to how much he owed her.