Mister X

20

Pearl stopped and stood on the curb, waiting for a traffic light to flash the walk signal. Her gaze fell on a glowing sign in a window across the street: HITS AND MRS. She'd been walking past the place forever and noticed now for the first time that it was a lounge. Its wide front window was dark because of narrow-slatted blinds behind it. The only thing displayed in the window was the glowing red sign.

She was more thirsty than hungry, and she'd had enough lack of progress for one day. Hits and Mrs. looked respectable enough, maybe because it was next to Love Blooms, a florist specializing in weddings. Pearl wondered if she was the only one who saw a connection between the two businesses. Might they be in cahoots?

After the meeting with Vitali and Mishkin, featuring Quinn's stoicism and Fedderman's usual bullshit, she decided she owed herself a drink. She changed direction and crossed the intersection at a ninety-degree angle to her previous course, not quite beating the light.

A car horn blared at her, and voices shouted something indecipherable. Pearl didn't bother to look, but raised her middle finger in the general direction of the racket.

Inside, Hits and Mrs. was softly lighted, with the long bar on the right and booths on the left and in back. Indirect lighting glowed from sconces that vaguely resembled seashells. There were fox-hunting scenes on the paneled walls, and the stools and booths were upholstered in dark green leather or vinyl. About half the booths were occupied, as were three of the bar stools. It seemed all in all a sheltering boozy place where people went after dinner or the theater, or simply to unwind. Everyone looked reasonably like an upright citizen.

Pearl sat on a stool about halfway down the bar, and a too-handsome red-vested bartender with the air of an out-of-work actor sauntered down and took her order for a draft Heineken, every move a pose. Pearl thought, Guys like you are all over this city, their numbers exceeded only by cockroaches.

When her draft beer arrived, she took a long drink from the frosty mug and immediately felt better.

Resting the mug on a cork coaster, she looked the place over in the back bar mirror and decided she liked it. There was nothing pretentious about it except maybe the fox-hunting scenes, and there was a weighty, restful silence and no canned music. No TVs mounted everywhere showing endless tapes of sporting events.

The other three drinkers at the bar were on Pearl's right, two men and a woman, each separated by at least one bar stool. All three noticed her glance taking them in and seemed not to care. The woman actually smiled slightly and nodded to her.

When Pearl averted her gaze and was lifting her mug for another sip of beer, she saw that there was another drinker at the bar. She hadn't noticed him before because he was on her left, near the bar's end, and was seated where there was a dim spot in the lighting.

He was a slender man with thick white hair neatly parted and combed to the side. Pearl was intrigued by the way he was dressed-neatly pressed gray slacks, tailored blue blazer with gold buttons, a white shirt with cuffs that flashed gold cufflinks. Among his accessories were a gold ring and wristwatch, and what appeared to be a red ascot. The guy looked more like money and leisure than anyone she'd ever seen. Everything but a yachting cap.

He got down off his stool and walked toward her, moving in the graceful, deliberate manner of someone who'd had social dancing lessons at some snooty prep school.

Great! Just what I need. Some Casanova asshole trying to hit on me when all I want is a peaceful place to drink.

When he got closer she saw with some relief that he wasn't wearing an ascot; it was simply a generously cut, mostly red paisley tie fastened in what might be a big Windsor knot. He was older than she'd at first thought, maybe sixty, with regular features and a tanned face just beginning to weather in a way that would only make him appear more distinguished. Pearl mentally projected and decided that in a few years he'd look incredibly worldly and handsome. He had angular pale blue eyes that seemed amused. She stared straight ahead, watching him in the back bar mirror, and waited for the pickup line.

"This is it," he said.

"It?"

She continued looking at him in the mirror, watching him studying her. The two-dimensional reflected scene in the smoky mirror reminded her of how the city had looked in the lowering dusk.

"The pickup line," he said.

"It didn't work."

He smiled, very handsomely. "You haven't given it a chance to sink in."

Time to discourage this guy, right now.

"I'm a cop," she said.

"Great."

"Vice," she said.

He slid onto the stool next to her. "Fine. I could use some advice."

At first she didn't understand; then she had to discipline herself not to smile. "That's 'vice.'"

"Ah! As in human foible."

"As in if you don't stop bothering me I'm going to arrest you for haranguing a police officer."

"You mean I've committed a haranguing offense."

"I mean you're about to get your ass hauled off to the punitentiary."

"That's very good," he said, brightening. "And fast. Brains and beauty."

"But not necessarily in that ardor."

"Wonderful!"

My God, I'm playing this idiot's game.

But there was something about him. Something suggesting that the smooth banter was on a surface of deeper water and he was…trustworthy? Perhaps he was being amiable only for the sake of amiability, without a hidden agenda.

Pearl was no fool. She had to wonder. Had she encountered an admirable genuineness or a real talent for deceit? She couldn't help herself. Couldn't contain a smile that broke through her somber demeanor and gave her away.

Even she had to admit it was a "yes, I am interested" smile.

It's because he came at me playing a game.

Pearl, always analyzing. A game player herself.

Had he somehow known that?

"I'm Yancy Taggart," he said, offering his hand.

She gave up, looked into the blue eyes directly, and shook the strong, dry hand. "Pearl."

He didn't ask for her last name, but within ten minutes she gave it to him.

Chatting with this guy turned out to be so easy. It was as if they both had scripts and magically knew all their lines. The prep school where he'd had his dance lessons had sanded off all his rough edges. There was no awkwardness about Yancy Taggart, and no one could for long feel awkward in his presence.

They sat for a while at the bar and then carried their drinks over to one of the booths where they wouldn't be overheard. Taggart was clearly a practiced charmer, but Pearl figured she'd had enough experience with his type that she could handle him. Still, she was amazed by his poise and smooth patter, and how he so casually pried personal information from her. If he wasn't the world's greatest salesman, he was a con man.

"You know I'm a cop," Pearl said, over yet another frosty mug, "but you haven't told me what you do."

"So take a guess."

"You're a salesman."

"In a way."

"I know what way," Pearl said with a grin.

"I'm a lobbyist," he said. "For the National Wind Power Coalition. I've been assigned to convince people of wealth and influence to commit funds to an effort to convert New York City to wind power."

"You mean windmills on skyscraper roofs?"

He smiled. "Not exactly. They'd be cowled units computerized always to face the wind. And they could be incorporated into existing architecture to protrude from the walls of buildings and take advantage of the winds that often blow along the avenues. The generated power could be made to supplement the grid and-" He broke off his explanation. "Whoa. You don't really want to hear the technical details of the concept."

"Will it really work?"

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"But you're lobbying for them."

"I'm a professional lobbyist. It's my job to convince people."

She grinned. "Sort of like a defense attorney who knows his client is guilty."

"Exactly. Only I don't know for sure that wind power isn't the answer. Nobody really knows the answer. I just pretend to."

"That's terrible!"

"Only if the wind power project won't work. And I don't know that it won't."

"The point is, you don't know that it will."

"That's a difficult one to get around," Yancy admitted. "That's why the coalition hired a professional lobbyist."

"That isn't ethical, Yancy."

"I'll grant you that. But being a lobbyist, I lobby. I have a sliding code of ethics."

She laughed. "Jesus! Those aren't ethics at all. They're just-"

Pearl was interrupted by the first four notes of the old Dragnet series.

"My phone," she explained, digging her cell from her purse, thinking there must be a pun in there someplace, a cop with a cell phone.

She saw that the caller was Quinn.

When she answered, he said, "Pearl, we've got a dead woman in the five-hundred block of West Eighteenth Street. You better get down here."

"Chrissie?" she asked.

"No. But it looks like the Carver might be active again."

Oh, God! "On my way."

"Coming from your apartment?"

"Sure am," she replied, keeping her personal life personal.

"Vitali can have a radio car sent for you."

"It'll be faster if I take a cab," Pearl said, with a glance at Yancy Taggart.

She broke the connection before Quinn could reply.

"Crime beckons?" Yancy asked.

Pearl was already sliding out of the booth. "Yeah. Sorry, I've gotta go."

"You look upset. Not bad news, I hope."

"Not for me," Pearl said. And she realized she meant it. Though she had compassion for this latest Carver victim-if it turned out Quinn was right-a part of her was also glad this had happened. It meant the investigation had gotten off the dime. The game was on.

"So you really are a police detective."

"I really am."

"Shall we meet here tomorrow evening about this time?"

"We shall," Pearl said.

Maybe he did have a yacht to go with his sliding ethics. Sometimes that was where sliding ethics led, right to a yacht.

"Bring your handcuffs," she heard Yancy call behind her, as she was moving toward the door.

That was how it began.