Mister X

17

New York, the present

"We need to get together off the record," Harley Renz had said to Quinn over the phone. That was why Quinn was in Bryant Park, on Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, next to the library.

Bryant was a pleasant green oasis surrounded by concrete in a busy part of town. Quinn sat on a bench not far from where a group of people were playing some kind of game where players tossed heavy balls underhanded and palm down, so reverse English would cut down the distance they rolled when they came to earth. Every once in a while about half the players would jump up and down and hug each other, but Quinn couldn't see that much had been accomplished.

Harley had entered the park from Sixth Avenue and was trudging steadily in Quinn's direction. His general sagginess made him appear a lot heavier than he was. Maybe because of his face, which was jowly and sad-eyed, with a fleshy mouth usually arced down at the corners. Gravity was not his friend. The expensive blue suit he had on might have helped if he'd bothered to button its coat. Now and then the breeze off the avenue whipped the coat sideways and revealed the thin leather strap of a shoulder holster.

He spotted Quinn and veered slightly to set his course more directly toward the bench, swinging his arms in his peculiar restricted way, as if he were carrying a heavy bucket in each hand.

When he was about ten feet from Quinn, he showed his bloodhound smile. Sunlight sparked off one of his canine teeth. "I thought you'd be smoking one of your Cuban cigars, Quinn."

"Isn't it illegal to smoke in a public park?"

"Damned if I know," Renz said. He pulled a cellophane-wrapped cigar from his shirt pocket, unwrapped it, and stuffed the torn cellophane back into his pocket.

"Not to mention that Cuban cigars are illegal."

"Not to mention." Renz bit the end off the cigar and spat it off to the side, then fired up the cigar with a silver lighter. The tobacco burned unevenly and made a soft sizzling sound, the way cheap cigars often did.

"Somebody have a baby?" Quinn asked.

Renz exhaled and held the cigar off to the side, as if even he was put off by its odor. "If you'd tell me your source for the Cubans, I wouldn't have to smoke these dog turds." He sucked on the cigar again, rolled the smoke around in his mouth and then slowly released it. "'Course, I don't know now if I can still trust you."

"You never could," Quinn said.

"But I thought so for some things, which is why I'm disappointed in you." Renz clamped the cigar in his teeth and from a side pocket of his suit coat drew out a folded, crinkly City Beat and handed it to Quinn.

Quinn had seen the paper's morning edition but pretended he hadn't. TWIN SEEKS KILLER OF OTHER SELF, proclaimed the headline. Quinn scanned the story of the resurrection of the Carver investigation and vengeance delayed. It was spirited prose.

He handed the paper back to Renz. "Cindy Sellers. Where does she get that stuff?"

Renz stared at him as if they were playing poker and Quinn might buckle under pressure and display a tell. "Somebody's talking, is where she's getting it."

"Maybe," Quinn said, unperturbed. "Or maybe she's making it up."

"Whatever her source, Sellers has decided to be a pain in the ass."

"First Amendment," Quinn said.

"Yeah, yeah." Renz wadded the City Beat into a tight ball and arced it gracefully into a nearby trash receptacle. He sat down heavily on the opposite end of the bench, causing it to rock slightly on uneven ground. "Whatever her source, she's gonna continue writing this crap," he said.

"That's like her. She can't be trusted."

Renz looked over at the people tossing the balls and giving them backward spin. "What the hell are they doing over there? Bocce ball? Is it goddamned bocce ball?"

"I don't know," Quinn said. "It's something else in life that puzzles me."

"But you're the sort who figures things out. For instance, you must know that with Sellers writing and blabbing about the Carver investigation all over town, the rest of the media wolves are gonna be hunting in packs. My assistant tells me our phones are already lit up with calls from the papers and television news. I had to make sure I wasn't followed here by media schmucks."

Quinn nodded. "Yeah, Sellers has changed things. Heated them up."

Renz puffed on his cigar, then glanced at the glowing tip with satisfaction. "That's why I'm reactivating you and your team. Or, to be more specific, the NYPD is hiring Quinn and Associates Investigations to help work on the reactivated Carver case."

Quinn was surprised, but he shouldn't have been. Renz could always be counted on to come up with some kind of bold countermove. Usually one that furthered his career. "So the popular and daring police commissioner goes outside the NYPD again for the public good and safety."

"You forgot imaginative," Renz said.

"Imagine that."

"Our arrangement has proved successful in the past. And when you weren't on the Carver case, we weren't able to close it. This time around, I'm hitching my wagon to a winner." Again, Renz's doglike smile. "I'll get some NYPD shields to you so you and your team can come and go at crime scenes unmolested, maybe wrangle some free doughnuts."

"Is there a possibility of discussing whether I agree to this?" Quinn asked.

"Not really, considering Cindy Sellers has shot our previous agreement all to hell. It isn't worth much now that the media seem to be getting shovelfuls of information on this case. Matter of days before our more vocal members of the public-some of them political office holders-will be demanding that the case actually gets solved."

"You've gone from trying to scare me off this case to hiring me to continue my investigation," Quinn pointed out.

"That's called being outmaneuvered."

Quinn had nothing to say to that. After all, the investigation was not only going to continue, but at an accelerated rate. So who'd been outmaneuvered?

"You'll be initiating the NYPD investigation and consolidating it with what you have so far," Renz said. "I'm assigning a detective team to work with you. You'll be lead detective, of course. And you'll report to me."

"Do I have a choice?" Quinn asked again.

"Stop asking me that. It's annoying. You don't want a choice. You got what you wanted." Renz watched the people playing with the wooden balls for a while. "There was a lot of spin on that ball you tossed me the other day," he said.

"Conversational ball, you mean?"

"Whatever."

They both sat quietly observing the people playing the mysterious game with the balls.

"I think they're trying to knock their opponents' balls out of a circle," Quinn said.

"The thing to remember," Renz said around the smoldering cigar wedged in his jaw, "is that, like in most games, they take turns."

Quinn had been warned. It didn't much concern him.

Renz nodded knowingly and smiled his jowly smile, then stood up from the bench and sauntered toward Sixth Avenue.

Quinn sat watching him walk away. He knew that when it was Renz's turn, the ambitious police commissioner would make the most of it. And he wasn't above playing out of turn.

It must be liberating to be so blithely corrupt.

As soon as Renz had disappeared, Quinn lit a Cuban cigar.