Mister X

32

Mick would have a cow if he knew what she was doing.

Joyce House had started work at six that morning, and she was tired. She knew Loren was waiting for her across the street and around the corner. That way he wouldn't be visible from the diner.

Mick and his rules, she thought. The guy had his good points, but he was a diner dictator.

She yelled a good-bye to Sheila, who would take her shift for the dinner customers. They were always less numerous than the breakfast and lunch crowd. That would be true even this evening-corned beef and cabbage night.

Tired as she was, when Joyce crossed with the light and Loren stepped from the doorway of a men's clothing store, the sight of him charged her with energy.

They came together with a fierce hug. He kissed her forehead and then her lips.

She ran her fingers through his dark hair, then smiled and pushed away from him, turning her head. "Let's get farther away from the diner before any of that, Loren."

He laughed. "Why? You think someone followed you?"

"It's possible. Maybe your ex-wife hired detectives."

Still grinning, he kissed her again on her forehead. "She and I are beyond that point," he said.

"The point of no return?" She'd heard the phrase earlier that day on CNN and it had stuck in her mind. There was something haunting and scary about it. Perhaps because she knew she had passed it.

"Exactly," he said.

"If I were her, I'd fight to hold on to you."

He looked more serious, his blue eyes downcast. "There was a time she might have tried, but not now. And since I met you, there's been no doubt in my mind that my marriage is over."

Without either of them making a conscious decision, they began walking together along the crowded sidewalk.

"I've got a surprise for you," he said, and held something out in his right hand.

"Theater tickets!" she exclaimed.

"You mentioned you like the theater, so I thought I'd surprise you. We're on tomorrow night for Manhattan Nocturne."

She squeezed his arm. "That's supposed to be great!"

He patted her hand. "Orchestra seats, sixth row."

"You shouldn't have, Loren. They must have cost a fortune."

"You're the fortune," he told her.

She walked beside him in the hum and bustle of the city, thinking it was amazing how he always knew what to say to her. As if he could read her thoughts. He must feel as she did, that the more time they spent together, the more they belonged together, belonged to each other. Sixth-row orchestra Broadway tickets. They certainly hadn't been cheap. It pleased her immensely that he'd invested so much in her.

Loren was smiling inwardly, sensing the happiness and possessiveness emanating from Joyce. He knew things she didn't know, and he was enjoying that.

It was power.

It amused him that Joyce was contemplating tomorrow night, and her future beyond then. He knew she'd have no future beyond tomorrow night.

Manhattan Nocturne would be her last Broadway musical.

Vitali was at the wheel of the unmarked Ford he and Mishkin were returning to the vice squad. The two detectives would be sorry to see the car go. It was five years old, had a mismatched quarter panel painted with primer, and was one of the few unmarked city cars that didn't scream its police presence.

"We got one more thing to do today, Harold," Vitali reminded his partner, as he maneuvered the car around one of the city's long, jointed buses. Those things are too damned big for this city.

"You've got one more thing," Mishkin said. "Renz never wants to talk with me."

"What I tell him comes from both of us, Harold."

"Meaning if things go wrong, I'll drown in the same soup you do."

Vitali grinned. "That's pretty much it, crouton." He straightened out the car and left the bus behind. "Renz is supposed to have met with Quinn earlier this evening."

"So Renz might know more than we do."

"Not the kinds of things he wants to know."

"You ever feel like a spy or something, Sal? I mean, Quinn's a straight guy. I don't like ratting on anybody, but I especially don't like ratting on him."

"He knows we've got no choice," Vitali said. "It's like a game. He knows everything we tell Renz, anyway. So no, I don't feel like a spy. And you shouldn't, either. We're not actually ratting on Quinn. It's not like he's Valerie Plame or anything."

"Who's that, Sal?"

"No one, Harold. Ancient history."

"Oh, I know who you mean. Plum, isn't it? Wasn't her name Valerie Plum?"

Vitali drove for a while silently.

"Might have been, Harold," he said at last.

"When you get done talking to Renz," Mishkin said, "he's gonna talk to that little media scum, Cindy Sellers. Set her off writing some bullshit about the shadow woman."

"That's the deal, Harold. Round and round we go. Like rats in a cage."

"Hamsters, I think you mean," Mishkin said.

"Hamsters," Vitali agreed.

"I feel like a rat sometimes," Mishkin said.

"She seems to have disappeared," Fedderman said. He was standing up and putting on his suit coat, preparing to leave the office.

"Our shadow woman?" Quinn asked. He'd just come from meeting with Harley Renz in the Campbell Apartment bar in Grand Central Station, where they'd had some of the best martinis in the city and Quinn had brought the police commissioner up to date on the investigation.

"Our client," Fedderman said. "I wanted to pump her for some other names. Common acquaintances she and her twin might have had. Been trying to call her all day on her cell."

Quinn realized Chrissie had never let him know where she was staying. Her cell phone was the only way to contact her, and now it appeared she'd rabbited again.

But why?

"Her cell's turned off," Fedderman said.

Quinn nodded and went over and sat behind his desk. "We've got a client not to be trusted, Feds."

"Yeah. Whaddya think her game is?"

"A different one from the one we're playing."

"Like chess and checkers."

"We need to make sure we're chess," Quinn said.

"Anything else going for today?" Fedderman asked.

"No. Go on home and get some rest. Or go see a movie or Broadway play."

Fedderman looked off to the left, as if calling on his memory. "I haven't seen a Broadway show since Cats."

"What'd you think?"

"One good song, but I can't remember it." Fedderman waved a good-bye, his shirt cuff flapping like a flag, and went out onto West Seventy-ninth Street.

Quinn watched him-tall, disjointed, with a head-bowed, lurching kind of walk-pass the window along with the steady stream of pedestrians trudging home from work. Fedderman always seemed to be pondering. Probably he always was.

Quinn settled back in his desk chair and got a Cuban cigar from the humidor in the bottom left drawer.

He fired up the cigar and sat for a while smoking, knowing that tomorrow morning Pearl would probably bitch about the lingering tobacco scent.

He pondered for quite a while himself, searching his memory, but he never was able to recall the one good song.