Darker Than Night

13

Quinn sat in the sun on a bench just inside the Eighty-sixth Street entrance to Central Park and watched them approach.

Fedderman looked the same, only a little heavier, the coat of his rumpled brown suit flapping, his tie askew, the same shambling gait. He had less hair to be mussed by the summer breeze, and he seemed out of breath, as if he was trying to keep up with the quick, rhythmic strides of the small woman next to him.

Pearl Kasner seemed to generate energy even from this distance. She was economical, deliberate and decisive in her movements to the point that there seemed something robotic in her resolute walk. She was a study in contrasts of light and dark, a mass of black hair framing a pale face from which dark eyes glared, lips too red, a gray skirt and a black blazer despite the warm morning. It was as if a small child had been given only black and white crayons and told to draw a woman, and here she was, with a compact completeness about her and a vividness almost unreal.

Quinn stood up from the bench, feeling the sun warm on his shoulders. “Hello, Feds.”

Fedderman smiled. “Quinn! Back in harness where you belong!”

The two men shook hands, then hugged. Fedderman slapped Quinn on the back five or six times before they separated.

“Make the most of this chance, buddy!” he said.

“Count on it,” Quinn told him.

“I’m here,” Pearl said.

Quinn looked at her. “So you are. Sorry if we ignored you. Fedderman and I are old—”

“I know,” Pearl said, “you go back a long way. You’ve watched each other’s backs, broken bread together, flirted with the same waitresses, fought the same fights. Fedderman filled me in.”

Fedderman grinned at Quinn. “This is Pearl. She’s a fighter.”

Quinn stepped back and regarded Pearl. Despite her sarcasm, she was smiling with large, perfect white teeth. “I’ve heard that about you, Pearl. A fighter. Also that you have talent as a detective.”

“And I’ve heard about you, Lieutenant.”

“Just Quinn will do. Officially, I’m only doing work-for-hire for the NYPD.” Quinn buttoned his sport coat to hide ketchup he’d already dribbled on his new tie. “So, everybody’s heard about everybody else, except maybe for some things I might tell you about Fedderman. And we all know why we’re meeting here.”

“Because your apartment’s a shit hole,” Pearl said.

Fedderman shook his head. “Pearl, dammit!”

“Mine’s a shit hole, too,” Pearl said. “Tiny, hot as hell, and thirsty for paint.”

“Roaches?”

“They won’t tolerate the place.”

Quinn grinned at her. She was still smiling, a dare in eyes black enough to have gotten her burned as a witch four hundred years ago. Probably, Egan would like to burn her now. There was something in her favor. What kind of pain is driving you?

“Am I the boss?” he asked her. “Or are we gonna have a contest?”

“It’d only be a waste of time,” Pearl said.

Quinn decided not to ask her what she meant. “You two go ahead and sit down,” he said. “I’ve been sitting awhile.”

When they were on the bench, Fedderman slouched with his legs apart. Pearl sat stiffly, with her notepad in her lap, looking as if she were about to take dictation.

Quinn told them what he’d learned from the Elzner murder file, and what he speculated.

Pearl made a few notes and listened intently. He got the impression her eyes might leave scars on him.

“The jam bothered me, too,” she said when he was finished. “An almost full jar in the refrigerator, and they bought two more identical jars when they went grocery shopping.”

“Which means they didn’t know how much jam they had,” Fedderman said, “or they were gonna hole up in their apartment for a few weeks and live on strawberry jam, or someone else did the shopping for them. Someone who didn’t know what kinds of foods they were out of.”

“Or someone who thought they just couldn’t have enough gourmet jam,” Pearl said. “I lean toward your possibility number three, that somebody else bought the groceries.”

Fedderman leaned forward and scratched his left ankle beneath his sock. Quinn wondered if he still wore a small-caliber revolver holstered to his other ankle. He looked up at Quinn, still scratching. “So, we working on the assumption somebody killed both Elzners?”

“It’s the only assumption we’ve got, “Pearl said, “if you don’t want to finish your career doing crap assignments, I don’t want to be out of work, and Quinn doesn’t want to go back to being a—”

“Pariah,” Quinn finished for her.

She nodded. “Okay, pariah. I like that. It’s so Christian.”

“It isn’t biblical,” Fedderman said, “it’s ancient Greek.”

She stared at him. “That true?”

“I have no idea. You’re so naive, Pearl.”

“That I doubt,” Quinn said. He made a show of glancing at his watch. “So as of now, we’re on the job.”

“We don’t have anything new to work with,” Fedderman pointed out.

“Then we’ll work with what we have. Again. You two go back over the evidence and see if there’s anything I missed. Then we’ll talk to the Elzners’ neighbors again. Anyone in the adjoining buildings who might have seen anything. See if there wasn’t a dog that didn’t bark in the night, that kinda thing. You do the murder file again, Pearl. Fedderman and I will work on the witnesses.”

Pearl looked as if she might say something about being assigned to paperwork, but she held inside whatever words she wanted to speak. She knew Quinn was assessing her, testing her. Something told her it was one of the most important tests she’d ever have to pass.

“We’ll meet back here at six this evening. If it’s raining, the meet’ll be at the Lotus Diner on Amsterdam.”

“That place is a ptomaine palace,” Pearl said.

“I know,” Quinn said. “I chose it because I don’t think it’s gonna rain. Where’s your unmarked?”

“Parked over on Central Park West,” Fedderman said.

“Let’s go, then. Pearl can drop us off at the Elzners’ building, then take the car on to the precinct house and get busy with the murder file.”

Pearl and Fedderman stood up. Fedderman stretched, extending his back and flailing his arms, which still looked abnormally long even though he’d put on weight. Then he and Pearl walked in the warming sun toward Quinn. They all knew they were probably wasting their time, but nobody objected.

Quinn was pleased with the way their first meeting had gone. Beneath the bullshit and hopeless humor was the beginning of mutual understanding, maybe even respect.

Maybe the beginning of a team.