Mister X

10

Quinn was finishing his tuna melt and fries supper at the Lotus Diner when Thel, the waitress, approached him without her glass coffeepot.

"Your friend Pearl's on the phone," Thel said.

"Can you bring it to the table?"

"I can yank it outta the wall and bring it to you-then what you do with it is your business."

Thel took kidding okay, but she always shot back. She was a middle-aged, dumpy woman in a dead-end job. Her forehead was folded into a permanent frown, and the deep etching around her mouth wasn't laugh lines. Her teeth were yellowed and needed braces she'd never be able to afford. Being a smart-ass was what got her by in the world. It was what she had, and she worked it hard, sometimes making customers angry. The diner owner liked Thel, so she got by with her attitude act, especially after he'd learned that in some perverse way it actually attracted customers. And it didn't hurt that the owner was at least slightly afraid of Thel.

Quinn wasn't afraid of her. He pretended not to have heard her, dabbed at his lips with his white paper napkin, and then slid out of the booth. His cell was turned off so he could eat in peace. Pearl and Fedderman had known where to find him, but they wouldn't have bothered him unless the call was at least somewhat important.

He knew where the phone was mounted on the wall near the doorway to the kitchen, at the end of the counter. As he approached it he saw that the receiver was unhooked and lying on the floor. He gripped the cord and hand-over-hand pulled up the receiver like a fish he'd caught and held it to his ear.

"That you, Quinn?" Pearl's voice.

"Me," Quinn said. "Straight from my tuna melt and coffee. Tell me this is important?"

"As your sandwich, you mean?"

"I'm getting enough crap from Thel, so don't push it. What's going on?"

"Thel? You mean that woman hasn't been fired by now? With her attitude and that mouth?"

"You hang on-why not her? Why'd you call, Pearl?"

"Harley Renz phoned here. He wants you to get back at him at his office like yesterday or sooner."

"Get back at him?"

"To him. You know what I meant, Quinn."

Thel has infected us all. "Renz say what it is he wanted?"

"You, to call him." Pearl sighed her loud telephone sigh, as if dealing with a teenage obscene caller. "He is the police commissioner, Quinn. Maybe you should deign to return his call."

"You got a point," Quinn said, and hung up.

He depressed the old wall phone's cradle button, then let it bounce up before he punched out Harley Renz's direct line at 1 Police Plaza. This was no time to goof around with Pearl. Harley was police commissioner, so maybe he did have something important to say.

Or ask.

Or demand.

As he listened to the phone chirp on the other end of the connection, Quinn glanced over and saw that Thel had gone from where she'd been wiping down the counter and eavesdropping on his conversation. Now she was standing by his table, which she'd completely cleared, and was ignoring him while scribbling on her order pad, figuring his total.

And her tip.

The chirping in Quinn's right ear was replaced by Harley Renz's impatient growl.

"'Bout time you returned my call."

"What's this about, Harley?"

"Your investigation," Renz said. "I want you to stop it. Refund your fee. Tell your client it's over."

"Can't."

"Why is that?"

"Can't find my client."

"You mean she's lost? Like missing keys?"

"Like a missing client."

After a long silence, Renz said in a soft but strained voice. "Just stop your investigation, Quinn. As of now, this phone call. I don't care if you never find your client. Never, never, never. Do I make myself clear?"

"Never," Quinn said, and hung up.

Mary Bakehouse had gotten over most of the uneasiness about the time she'd come home and found her computer on. She simply must have left it on that morning and not realized it. There was no point in looking for things to make herself afraid.

On the surface, her situation was getting better. A couple of job interviews had left her with the impression the human resource directors might actually call her. And the tobacco smoke smell was finally out of her apartment. Or was she simply getting used to it?

She couldn't be sure sometimes that after being away for a while and entering the apartment, she didn't for just a second catch a whiff of the awful scent. Mary hated smoking. Her favorite teacher in primary school, a heavy smoker, had died of lung cancer when Mary was ten. It had left quite an impression on her, as well as a loathing for the tobacco industry and smoking in general. Maybe that was all she was smelling, her hate.

The city itself seemed harder for her now, more dangerous. She hadn't felt that way until she'd been accosted last week by a homeless man who'd politely asked for any loose change she might have. Mary hadn't had any change, but the man wouldn't take no for an answer. His attitude quickly changed, and he'd grabbed the sleeve of her raincoat and yanked her back toward him when she tried to walk away.

She couldn't forget the look in his faded blue eyes. There was raw hatred there, and when he began raving incomprehensibly about her "selfishness," spraying her face with spittle, she felt herself returning that hatred. How could she not?

That day the city became in her mind a more menacing place. Dark doorways suggested danger. As did heavy traffic, street vendors of questionable goods, panhandlers, men who stared vaguely but knowingly at her in the subway train as it raced rocking and squealing toward its destination.

In the subway, it was one man in particular. She saw him almost every time she rode, as if they were on the same timetable, though Mary had no particular schedule. She supposed he might be one of the homeless who virtually lived belowground in the subway system. He was unshaven, and his clothes were threadbare. He wore a gray baseball hat with its bill pulled low, so that he observed her from shadow and with half-eyes that never blinked. Once-quite deliberately, she was sure-he slowly licked his lips and then smiled at her. It was a message she loathed and feared. He seemed to feed on her fear, as if he were drawing it across the swaying subway car to his inner evil self. He was hungry for her fear.

She'd tried not to work herself into a dither. After all, wearing beard stubble was the current style among male movie and TV stars, and some new clothes were doctored to look faded and threadbare. Even unwashed. This was an era when celebrities looked like bums.

But this man smelled like one of the dispossessed. A rank odor of stale perspiration and urine emanated from him. The stench of the desperate and dangerous.

Mary almost collapsed with relief when the man remained seated and unmoving and didn't get off at her stop.

Thank God! Let him pick on some other woman now. Let some other woman feel her carefully nurtured armor drop to her feet with her heart.

After the unsteadiness of the subway car, the concrete platform felt firm and safe beneath her feet.

She glanced back and saw that the man was watching her through the train's smeared and scratched window as she joined the crowd moving along the platform toward the steps to the street. She'd tried to show no reaction, but she knew she had, and he'd seen it.

That was what infuriated her, that they could do this to her and enjoy her fear.

Mary was a strong woman-she knew she was. Yet lately she'd been afraid almost all the time, even unconsciously. Sitting in warm sunlight she'd become aware that she had her shoulders hunched and feel chilled, and she'd realize it was because of her fear.

In the beginning she was certain she'd never return to South Dakota except to visit, but now she wasn't so sure. There was nothing to be afraid of in South Dakota. No buildings crowded together and blocking the light; no teeming sea of uninterested faces; no daily news accounts of unspeakable horrors; no brick corners she was afraid to turn.

That was what, if anything, might drive her from the city. Her fear.

She would never have believed it of herself.