John Lutz Bundle (70 page)

“I often think of all that precious time lost between mother and son,” Myrna said to Quinn, “and my own boy Sherman out there somewhere hunted and frightened.”

Myrna had more of a southern accent today. It wasn’t so much on the edges, and it still dripped pure molasses. She’d been trying to hide it before, Pearl thought, trying to make herself seem as educated as her sons.

She was seated in a wooden chair at the small desk in her room at the Meredith, her body shifted sideways, one elbow on the desk. Her posture caused one of her shoulders to rise sexily so she looked like a femme fatale in an old movie. She was wearing a midnight blue silk robe that made her hair and eyes look darker. Her hair was brushed out so that it appeared longer, a hint of bangs on her broad, unlined forehead. The scent of soap hung in the air, as if she’d just shampooed and dried her hair.

Quinn had left Fedderman to do more legwork at the Cirillo murder scene and brought Pearl with him to the Meredith, thinking the woman’s touch might come in handy in convincing Myrna Kraft to act as bait for her son Sherman. Not that they’d use the word
bait.

“Did your dear son ever try to contact you during all those lost years?” Quinn asked.
Dear.
Pearl saw that Quinn was wearing his compassionate attitude, the one that evoked confidences and confessions, as if he were a priest with the power to heal. While it struck a phony note with Pearl, it might score with Myrna.

“Why, I’d have no way of knowing,” Myrna said. “But, yes, something in my heart tells me he tried. Yes, he
must
have tried. Whatever awful things happened to Sherman during that time in the swamp, they must surely have put him in deep shock, as they would any normal nine-year-old boy. I read it was months before he even uttered a word.”

“I read that word was
Mother
,” Pearl said.

There was no change of expression in the hard, handsome planes of Myrna’s face, but something primal moved behind those dark eyes.

“I never read or heard that,” she said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me that a lost boy’s first words would be of the mother he loved.”

“It’s because you love him that we came to you,” Quinn said. “And because he must love you.”

Pearl tried not to look at him as he doled out his unctuous Irish charm. Why didn’t these people see through such bullshit? But Pearl knew they seldom did.

Seldom, but sometimes. When Quinn encountered someone not so unlike himself.

“He must indeed,” Myrna said, “and in a sense I suspect I failed him. All I can say is I did it for Jeb. I was forced to make a mother’s terrible choice. I believed so fiercely that at least one of my sons must be saved, and I lived my new life according to that belief. Tell you true, in those days and beyond, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for that boy. It was like he was both my sons become one.”

“Do you still feel that way about Jeb?”

“I’d have to swear I do.”

“And now God’s given you a chance to help your other son,” Quinn said. He walked over and sat perched on the desk, so Myrna had to look up at him, into his sincere gaze. “I shouldn’t tell you this, and certainly I’m not referring to myself or Officer Kasner, but you’re correct in your fear that some nervous trigger finger might twitch and take Sherman’s life. The police are human, after all, and this killer has taunted them. Most of us act as professionals, but as in every profession, there are those who have their own agenda.”

“I do understand,” Myrna said. She hadn’t blinked in the force of Quinn’s charm attack.

Quinn persisted. “Hard as it might be for you to believe, you and Jeb aren’t the only ones who want to see Sherman taken into custody unharmed. He’s a sick man—to you a boy still—and he desperately needs the proper treatment.”

Myrna gnawed on her lower lip for at least a minute. Then she sat back in her chair, stared down at her lap, then back up at Quinn. “Explain exactly what you’d expect of me.”

“Of course. We want you simply to remain in your room here as if you were an ordinary guest at the hotel. You won’t see us, but we’ll be there and we’ll have you under our protection at all times.” His smile was incongruously beatific on such a rough looking man. “We’ll be your guardian angels.”

“My angels haven’t always been on duty in the past, Detective Quinn.”

“We’re more professional and closer to the ground,” Quinn said. “I promise you’ll be safe.”

“Oh, I’m not so worried about myself. No woman fears her true son. But you must know how smart Sherman is. Won’t he be suspicious of such a plan, especially if I stay here holed up in my room?”

“If he knows where you are and loves you enough,” Quinn said, “he’ll try to reach out for you.”

“Or if he hates me enough,” Myrna said. “That’s what you really think.” For a second it seemed she might actually cry. “Oh, how you must see me…”

Quinn gently patted her shoulder. “I don’t think, dear, that your own true son would hate you after all these years. And you won’t be strictly confined to this room or even this hotel. You should go out, just as anyone might who’s visiting New York. Shop, sightsee, walk about, take a cab. You’ll be safe out there. Your angels, invisible to you or anyone else who might be looking, will be with you every step.”

“You mentioned shopping,” Myrna said. “Will I have a shopping allowance?”

That brought Quinn up short, and he almost stood up from where he was perched on the desk.
What kind of woman is this? What kind of wheels turn in her mind? Her own son might be stalking her to kill her, and she has her sights set on sales and merchandise.

“She should do a lot of shopping if her movements are going to appear normal,” Pearl said, pitching in. To Myrna: “You’re a woman in New York. Even under the circumstances, it would make sense that you’d shop.”

If you were a homicidal psychopath with your own sick reality.

Quinn settled back down and gave Myrna the old sweet smile. “Of course you’ll be given money to shop. At taxpayer expense. That’s only fair, because in the end you’re doing this for the taxpayer as well as for Sherman, for other people as well as yourself.”

“Something else I want’s a gun,” Myrna said.

“We’ll be protecting you, dear.”

“Oh, it isn’t for self-protection. It’s to protect Sherman.”

“But you’d use it if you had to in order to protect yourself,” Pearl said.

Myrna gave her a cold glance that made Pearl wish she hadn’t spoken. She and Myrna understood each other too well for comfort. Monster slayer and monster—was there that much difference once the battle was joined and blood was spilled?

“I’ll see that you have a small handgun to keep beneath your pillow,” Quinn said.

“I spent my girlhood and much of my womanhood in or near the swamp, Detective Quinn. I’d be most comfortable with a shotgun, as I owned one as a youngster.”

“A shotgun…”

Myrna smiled at him in a way that seemed to hypnotize him. “If you think this whole thing is a bad idea—”

“No, no, dear. You can have a shotgun. I’ll bring one next time I see you.”

“Thank you so much. I’ll feel a lot safer for Sherman and for me.”

“I don’t think it will come to gunfire,” Quinn said. “You have my solemn word I’ll do everything possible to see that no harm comes to you or to your boy.”

“If I do agree, what’s the next step?”

“We’ll see that your presence in the city is leaked to the media, to make sure Sherman knows you’re here. The danger to you would begin late tonight or tomorrow morning, with broadcast news and the appearance of the newspapers.”

“The danger to Sherman, you mean.”

“To both of you,” Quinn said. “We know we’re asking a lot of you.”

“However much it is, I do agree. I’ll do as you suggest.”

Quinn smiled widely and patted her shoulder again, this time slightly harder and more reassuringly. “That’s the best thing, honestly.”

“We’re very good at what we do,” Pearl said, “and we’ll see that you stay safe.”

“My uppermost thought is safety,” Myrna said, “but Lord knows, not for myself.”

Lauri knew she was going to sleep with Joe Hooker. She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d decided, and it hadn’t been sudden. And she knew it was the result of his subtle but persistent plan of seduction. In small but intimate ways he was moving their still young relationship in that direction; in the quiet way he regarded her, the amusing double entendres, the casual but suggestive touching of her arm, her shoulder, her neck. In a way, that was what fascinated her, watching an older, experienced seducer work, being the object of his efforts and moved inch by inch by him. She knew it was happening, it was deliberate, yet she let herself be moved,
she wanted it,
even knowing it was like drifting farther and farther into a strong current that would inevitably claim her completely. This guy wasn’t Wormy, who was usually so wrapped up in his music he didn’t seem to know she was around unless he wanted sex.

Sex, music, sex, with little time left over for companionship and tenderness.

It didn’t have to be that way. That was what all of Joe’s actions, all of his thoughtfulness and smiles, and his slight but unrelenting pressure, were telling her. It didn’t have to be the way it was with Wormy.

Not that she wasn’t still fond of Wormy. But she was an adult and could have a relationship with more than one man. (Was Wormy really a man?) Wormy was takeout food, cheap weed, and wine, and frantic trysts in his dump of an apartment he shared with two other members of the band who weren’t away often enough. Joe promised dinner at nice restaurants, leisurely walks in the park, Broadway plays, and…what was inevitable. Joe was a Mercedes. Wormy was…transportation.

Lauri feigned a headache and upset stomach after work and didn’t go with Wormy and the others to a club in the Village. Instead she walked around the corner from the Hungry U, where a cab was waiting, and inside the cab was Joe Hooker.

When she climbed in the back of the cab he pecked her on the cheek and briefly touched her arm.

“Hungry?” he asked.

She laughed. “I just got off work at a restaurant.”

He grinned in the darkness. “I know; I had to ask. If you’re not hungry, you must be thirsty. I know a little piano cabaret where we can have some drinks and talk about my favorite subject.”

Lauri didn’t have to ask what his favorite subject was. Should she tell him she might be carded?

“They know me there,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. Then he added, “So we can get a good table. Besides, I already gave the cabbie the address.”

She was wearing jeans and a white blouse with a small floral design. She’d changed from her food-server shoes to heels, though. “Am I dressed okay for it?”

“Beautiful women are always dressed for wherever they are.”

She laughed, trying to keep her tone low and sexy. Adult. “You know something, Joe Hooker? You’re dangerous.”

He glanced over at her as if caught off guard, then smiled. “Spice of life, danger.”

“Live fast, die young,” she said, not knowing what else to say and finding herself temporarily tongue-tied.

He appeared alarmed. “Good Lord, Lauri, I hope you don’t think I’m dangerous
that
way.”

Why did I have to tell him that? Hurt him? Why am I acting like such a fool?

She snuggled closer to him in the rocking, jouncing back of the cab as it took a potholed corner. “There’s dangerous, and then there’s nice dangerous,” she said, looking up at him. “You’re nice dangerous.”

He kissed her lightly on the lips.

They held hands.

“Is a photograph truly necessary?” Myrna asked, not very sincerely.

She actually seemed enthralled by the idea that her photo was going to be in the papers and on TV news; but at the same time, she was afraid. Pearl didn’t think Myrna was afraid of what she was about to do, of her son Sherman, or what might happen to him. It was more that she’d spent almost her entire life playing down her beauty and avoiding being noticed, and now here she was in New York, wearing the smart gray linen pants suit she’d bought at Bloomingdale’s and posing for a news photographer.

Well, Quinn had dropped mention that the man was a news photographer. He was actually an NYPD employee who photographed mostly crime scenes. Still, these photos would find their way into the news.

“You look wonderful, Mom,” Jeb said.

He’d moved from the Waverton into the Meredith, in a room on the second floor, to be nearer to his mother. It was Myrna who’d negotiated the deal. Apparently, to Myrna, an agreement merely meant the commencement of negotiations. While they were at the Meredith, Jeb’s expenses were also being picked up by the city.

Myrna continued to warm to the proceedings, seated in the small wooden desk chair, swiveling her body, striking exaggerated poses. The NYPD photographer, an acne-scarred, hard-bitten young man with an emaciated body and shaved head, glanced at Pearl and Quinn, then got into the spirit and shot from a slight crouch, giving Myrna a lot of meaningless patter so he could catch her “off guard.” Quinn had seen him at some of the crime scenes, glumly snapping his body shots, and thought his name was Klausman. Today you’d think the guy was shooting supermodels in Paris.

Quinn had seen and heard about enough. “I want one taken downstairs on the sidewalk,” he said. “Out in front of the hotel.”

“A candid shot,” said Klausman. “We can pretend we’ve caught her by surprise as she’s entering the lobby.” This sure beat photographing corpses. It was fun working with a live woman who moved around and smiled when he said
say cheese
.

Out on the sidewalk, a few people walking past slowed down and stared, wondering what was going on, thinking Myrna might be some kind of celebrity. Myrna seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“My hair all right?” she asked, barely touching it.

“Perfect,” Pearl assured her, not mentioning the strand sticking almost straight up like a horn.

“You got some sticking straight up,” Klausman said, dancing forward and deftly smoothing back the hair the breeze had mussed.

Myrna glared at Pearl.

“Except for that one strand,” Pearl said.

“I can pretend I just got out of a cab,” Myrna said.

“Sure,” Quinn said to her and to Klausman.
Why not?

Myrna flagged down a cab and worked her poses, momentarily confusing the cabbie and showing a lot of leg.

That seemed to disturb Jeb. “Better not overdo it, Mom.”

She ignored him.

“Say ‘Kate Moss,’” Klausman told her, evoking a wide grin.

“Lord Almighty,” Pearl said under her breath.

“I want one of her going into the lobby,” Quinn said to Klausman, watching the irate cabbie drive away, “but I don’t want the name of the hotel to be in the shot.”

“Why’s that?” Jeb asked.

“We don’t want to be sued.”

In truth they’d decided not to make finding his mother too easy for Sherman Kraft. They didn’t want him to become suspicious. It was better to leave it up to him to figure out which hotel was in the photograph.

There were two low marble steps leading to a weather-proof carpeted area beneath the marquee. Myrna took them like a young girl.

“Gotcha! Good! Perfect!” Klausman kept saying, as Myrna struck one pose after another, moving only slightly for each shot, like a figure on a film skipping frames. “
You should
be a model. Gotcha! Okay, that’s it. Nope, gotcha one more time—that’ll be the best one, most natural. Really,
you should
be a—there, one more—model.”

“It did cross my mind when I was much younger,” Myrna said.

Jeb silently turned away.

He’s embarrassed,
Pearl thought.
She’s embarrassed him.

Myrna didn’t seem to notice. “How long will it take before they’re developed?” she asked.

Klausman was surprised. “No time at all. They’re digital.” He went over to stand near her. “Here. You can review them.”

Quinn let her
Ooh!
and
Aah!
over the camera’s tiny digital display for a few minutes, then decided it was time to retake charge of this operation from Klausman.

“Take those back and make sure Renz gets them,” he said to the photographer. “Ask him to call me so I know he has them.” He turned his attention to Myrna. “Let’s get back up to the room, and I’ll give you final instructions.”

Myrna nodded. “I like that third one,” she said to Klausman.

But Klausman had caught something in Quinn’s tone and was already hurrying to his double-parked car. The E-mailed photos should be in the hands of Mary Mulanphy and Cindy Sellers within the hour.

No one spoke as they rode up in the elevator. Jeb went with them, passing the floor where his room was located.

Quinn wondered what Jeb thought of the police using his mother for bait. Did he know what Quinn knew, that a psychosexual killer like Sherman probably wouldn’t be able to resist not simply the type of woman who was his usual victim, but the archetype. Mom herself. Every serial killer’s dream. A Freudian, or police profiler, might say “wet dream.”

Something like this had never happened before in Quinn’s career, and it would surely never happen again.

The elevator door slid open and they all strode down the carpeted hall toward Myrna’s room. The hall was comfortable but noticeably warmer than the lobby.

Quinn fell back a few steps, watching mother and son. These two, Jeb and Myrna, were tricky. They were both intelligent and used to playing a double game. And they both came from a hard place.

Nothing they said could be trusted to mean or suggest anything. They might be smarter than the police and certainly were more desperate. They were not what they seemed and could misdirect or lull you.

They came to room 620 and Myrna used her key card dexterously to unlock the door on the first swipe.

Quinn rested a restraining hand on her shoulder and moved ahead of her to enter first while Pearl held the door open.

Nobody joked or made a crack about being overcautious.

As soon as they closed the room’s door behind them, Myrna went to the window and gazed down at the street, as if to watch Klausman the police photographer drive away.

She absently raised a hand to make sure her hair wasn’t too mussed.

“We should have had him take one of all of us together.”