Mister X

31

They'd had sex. Pearl stood at the window in Yancy's apartment that overlooked the park across the wide avenue. The bedroom was cool, but she could feel the sun's heat radiating from the windowpane. The sun was about to set, and the park was gilded. She watched foreshortened people walking on the sidewalks almost directly below, some of them couples. In the park, two kids on skateboards were terrorizing pedestrians on the winding path.

Pearl had the white linen sheet from the bed draped around her toga style. Behind her, Yancy still lay in bed. Something in the Times had caught his interest, and he was staring at it raptly, not paying much attention to Pearl at the moment. Nothing like the attention he'd paid her until ten minutes ago.

She turned away from the window and looked at Yancy and his nude, tanned body. He appeared younger than his supposed age, still lean and muscular. And God knew he had the endurance of a young man. Still, he displayed the experience of an older man. She smiled. Yancy was a man full of contradictions, but they made for quite a lover.

How could she trust a man like this?

You took the leap, now live with it. Stop being a cop all the time.

He folded down a flap of newspaper and glanced over at her. No reading glasses. Young eyes. Or maybe Lasik.

Pearl being observant, a cop.

What's he so avidly reading?

"You look inquisitive," he said. "Anybody ever tell you that you resemble a little terrier when you look inquisitive?"

As a matter of fact they had, but Pearl didn't see it as something Yancy had to know.

"I was just wondering what interested you so in the paper."

He laid the Times open over his lower body as if he were modest, which he wasn't. "This Carver character," he said. "A guy stops killing years ago then suddenly starts up again. Is that normal for serial killers?"

"Not much is normal with people who sequentially kill other people." Sequentially, dear. Sequentially. "Or with obsessive people who have more than one sex partner at a time."

He looked at her oddly. "We both agree on that, Pearl. But you're a cop, difficult as I find that to believe, and I thought you might have some insight into the criminal mind. Killers' minds."

"I'm not a cop anymore, Yancy. Private investigator."

"You don't look like a private dick, sweetheart. C'mon over here." He beckoned with his right hand, sunlight glinting off his gold ring.

"Think about wind power, Yancy."

"I'll take that for a yes."

She had to laugh, but she moved no closer to the bed.

"I couldn't help noticing something about you," she said.

"That would be my third testicle?"

"No, your hair."

"You mean the way it never seems to get messed up? It's trained that way. Took years. I've been combing it the same way since I was twelve and wanted to get in Amy Dingle's pants."

"I bet you were a terror at twelve."

"Amy Dingle would say so."

"But that's not what I meant about your hair. I noticed it's naturally black and you dye it white."

"Oh, sure. That's so I look older. Lobbyists who are gray eminences get taken a lot more seriously. Gotta play the role, Pearl."

"Live a lie, you mean?"

"No. Live a version, is all. But you could call it a lie. Play your lie well; that's where the honored roll."

"I don't think that's the exact quotation."

"It is if you're golfing, Pearl."

"Which I am not."

"It's an inexact world."

"Yancy, you are the most nimble liar I have ever met."

"You make me blush."

"Not so anyone would notice."

"Make me bulge, I mean."

"That I notice."

Still she moved no closer to the bed.

"Do you happen to know anybody named Kahn?" she asked.

"Sure, Dr. Milton Kahn."

That rocked her back a step. "Where do you know him from?"

"Met him yesterday. He sat down next to me at a bar and struck up a conversation. Introduced himself. Warned me about you."

Huh?

Peal felt anger rising in her like hot lava. "Warned you?"

"Said you had serious personality problems and you were trouble. Didn't go into detail. Winked at me. We had a tacit understanding, being men of the world."

"Didn't you ask him what he meant?"

"Didn't care what he meant. Still don't."

"Did you tell him that?"

"No."

"What did you do?"

"I considered punching him in the nose."

Pearl felt mildly excited by the prospect of men fighting over her, then was angry at herself. She wasn't some cuddly teddy bear carnival prize.

Still…

"Did you punch him?" she asked.

"No. I talked him into buying me a drink and tactfully sent him on his way. Teach him a lesson."

Pearl figured that wasn't exactly a duel fought for her honor. But it was something.

Yancy smiled at her. "You look lovely as a Roman concubine."

Pearl moved closer to the bed.

There went the toga.