Mister X

30

The entire team, including Vitali and Mishkin, were in the office. They were sipping coffee, passing around Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts, and talking over the appearance-then disappearance-of the shadow woman in Mary Bakehouse's old apartment building yesterday.

"I can't quarrel with your tactics," Quinn said, "one of you giving chase on foot on the stairs, and the other taking the elevator down to the lobby, so you have her trapped in a squeeze."

"Couple of things might explain why the tactic didn't work," Fedderman said. He was half sitting on his desk, trying not to dribble more coffee on his tie as he dipped a doughnut. The journey from cup to mouth was perilous, and he wasn't having much luck. "The elevator was too slow, and it's possible our shadow woman is young and spry, or Sal has lost a step in his advancing age."

"Screw you," Vitali said in his gravel-pan voice.

Quinn raised a hand for silence and motioned for Fedderman to continue.

Fedderman dribbled more coffee, just before hastily fitting the last bite of a soggy doughnut into his mouth. He chewed, gulped, and continued. "Another possibility is she ducked into one of the apartments on the way down and managed to stay hidden while the building was searched."

"Or became somebody else," Pearl said, bringing everyone up short. Doughnuts froze in midair.

"Whaddya mean?" Vitali asked. "She got into an apartment where nobody was home and posed as a tenant?"

"Might even be a tenant, for all we know," Pearl said.

Pearl thinking outside the universe. Quinn almost smiled.

"I see what she means," Mishkin said. He was seated in Fedderman's chair. "Since we don't have the slightest idea who this woman is, she might be anybody. Very illuminating angle, Pearl."

"It's like she reads minds sometimes," Fedderman said.

"The shadow woman, or Pearl?" Mishkin asked, looking slightly confused.

"Don't pay any attention to him," Pearl said. "You haven't been around Fedderman long enough to realize he's full of shit."

"You have been around Sal a long time, though," Quinn said to Mishkin. "You think he mighta been slow enough coming down those stairs that the shadow woman made it out of the building before either Sal or you reached the lobby?"

Mishkin looked at Sal, obviously torn. Sal had some gray in his hair now, and he'd developed a slight stomach paunch. The truth demanded that Mishkin dis his partner.

"Yeah, that could be," he said. Then: "Sorry, Sal."

"Maybe it was the brownies," Vitali said.

"Brownies?" Pearl asked.

Vitali shrugged. "Never mind."

"Brownies and doughnuts, Sal. You're not gonna be any faster on stairs next year."

"Give him a break," Fedderman told Pearl. "You don't fit so well anymore into your-"

"Enough, Feds," Quinn said.

Pearl was glowering at Fedderman. "I'll show you a whole new way to eat that doughnut."

"Let's wrap this up," Quinn said. He knew the uneasy truce between Pearl and Fedderman, while conducive to progress, could sometimes become genuinely hostile. The trick was to prevent spark from becoming fire-or explosion. "Anybody got any theories on the shadow woman's identity?"

"You mean if we had to guess?" Mishkin asked.

"Sure," Quinn said. "Who knows? Maybe we'll all guess the same person."

"My guess is Chrissie," Fedderman said. "She hasn't played straight with us yet."

"The woman in Bakehouse's building coulda been Chrissie," Vitali said.

"My guess is Cindy Sellers," Pearl said.

"Or somebody we haven't met yet," Mishkin said. "Like a relative of one of the other victims. Or maybe she's Tiffany's ghost."

Pearl looked curiously at Quinn. "So what's your guess?"

"I'm not in the guessing business," Quinn said. "This isn't some kind of party game."

"You're in the double-crossing pain-in-the-ass business," Pearl said.

Vitali said, "What if we'd all guessed the same woman?"

"Then we'd try to figure out why," Quinn said. "And maybe we'd have something."

"Like Tiffany's ghost," Pearl said.

She jumped at the first four notes of the immortal Dragnet theme. They were coming from her purse where it rested on the corner of her desk. She scooped up the purse and fished the phone out, peered at it to see who was calling.

Somebody at Golden Sunset Assisted Living.

Her mother. Just what she needed while she was in a murder investigation brainstorming session.

"Jesus!" Pearl said.

"Better pick up then," Fedderman said.

Pearl made the connection, put the phone to her ear, and said hello, all the time moving toward the door.

"Pearl?"

Her mother, all right.

"Reception's better outside," she said to the dead-eyed stares she was getting.

"Did you say something, Pearl?" her mother asked.

Fedderman grinned. The others simply looked at her. Pearl went out the door.

Outside in the morning heat, she said, "I'm pretty busy, Mom."

"It's never busy here in nursing home hell, Pearl."

Her mother insisted on referring to Golden Sunset Assisted Living as a nursing home. Pearl had become tired of contradicting her. Absently wandering along the sidewalk toward Amsterdam, it occurred to her that cell phone reception outside the office really was noticeably better.

"Pearl?"

"I'm here, Mom, but I can't talk long. I'm interrogating a suspect. You're breaking up some anyway."

"Can't talk long? Is one of the criminal element more important to you than your own mother, dear?"

"You know better than that."

"But do you, dear?"

"Did you call for a-"

"Yes, for a reason. His name is Yancy Taggart."

Huh? How could her mother know anything about Yancy? Know Yancy even existed?

"I speak, as you know," her mother said, "of the fancy shmancy Yancy. The man, so called, you've been wasting your time with instead of spending it with a fine man like Doctor Milton Kahn, or even your mensch policeman Captain Quinn, who is-"

"He's not a captain any longer, Mom. He's not with the NYPD."

"Not exactly and precisely, but still-"

"How did you find out I was seeing Yancy?"

"Not from a little bird, dear. Mrs. Kahn, Milton's aunt here at the nursing home, as you know, has a sister who has a half sister who has a daughter who frequents a lounge where the Yancy lizard does his womanizing. She saw your photograph during one of her visits here at the nursing home and recognized you from when she saw you at another lounge with the Yancy lizard."

Pearl was furious. "It's nobody's business where I was or who I was with, especially not the business of this niece twice removed or whatever the hell she is."

"No, dear. Mrs. Kahn's sister's half sister's-"

"I don't give a damn, Mom!"

"Don't use abusive language, dear. Did it make you feel better? Did it?"

No, it didn't. "Yancy's not a lizard. He's a lobbyist!"

"Well, dear, if you would look in the dictionary-"

"If Mrs. Kahn would look in the dictionary, she'd find the definition of busybody!"

"But facts are facts, dear, whatever their source, and it seems to me that it's my motherly duty to at least make you aware that the Yancy lizard you're going out with sees other women."

"I see other men, Mom."

"But sequentially, dear. Sequentially. There are rumors about the Yancy lizard, some of them bordering on the perverse, if you understand my meaning, which, while only speculation at this juncture, might in all honesty turn out to be true, so you might take a step back and reconsider your relationship."

"By 'speculation' you mean guessing," Pearl said. "I'm not in the guessing business." Quinn's words. Quinn, damn you! She hated it when men got inside her mind, especially Quinn.

"I'm in no way accusing anyone of anything in any way improper, Pearl, but a mother knows things because a mother knows, and there is a motherly duty to make a daughter aware, and to-and I'll come right out and say it-warn a daughter when a ship, figuratively speaking, is about to smash apart on the rocks of romance in a sea so rough-"

Pearl broke the connection and turned off her cell phone.

Couldn't help it.

Pearl had walked faster and faster while talking and wandered far. When she returned to the office, Vitali and Mishkin were gone. Quinn and Fedderman were at their desks.

"Your mom doing okay?" Quinn asked.

Like you care!

"You look angry, Pearl," Fedderman said.

Pearl didn't bother to answer. She was angry, at her mother, at Mrs. Kahn, at Mrs. Kahn's…whatever she was. At Fedderman, at Quinn, at all men.

At all men!

What did she really know about Yancy?

She stalked over to the Mr. Coffee and poured herself a mug of the steaming brew, muttering to herself.

"Say what?" Fedderman asked, overhearing but not understanding.

"I said there's nothing wrong with lobbyists," Pearl said, adding powdered cream and stirring violently enough to slosh coffee over the cup's rim.

Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other, puzzled.

"We're all God's creatures," Fedderman said.

Pearl fixed him with a look, and he smiled slightly.

Saving his life.