Night kills

43

Pearl followed the new Madeline toward Columbus Avenue. The clouds that had produced rain were in the distance now, and the sun shone brightly. The day was beginning to heat up to summer intensity, New York becoming a concrete kiln.

Keeping well back from the figure ahead in the white raincoat, Pearl dug her cell phone from her pocket as she walked. She felt rather than looked at the keypad as she punched out Quinn's number.

He answered after the third ring. "Yeah, Pearl?"

"I'm following the new Madeline along West Eighty-third Street, headed west toward Columbus."

"Say again."

"You heard me."

"How'd that come to be?" Quinn asked.

"Long story. Short version is I was on my way to her apartment to look around then check again with the neighbors. I saw her coming out of the building, and I'm on her."

"She see you?"

"Not since I started following her; we passed on the sidewalk before I turned around and began the tail."

"Since she's seen you once, she might make you," Quinn said. "We can't have that. I'll get Feds to take up the tail."

"She's wearing a long white raincoat made out of some kind of lightweight material. Got on white jogging shoes, fairly new looking."

"Hold on a minute."

Pearl continued walking, the cell phone still in her hand, keeping her gaze fixed on the figure in white half a block ahead. The new Madeline had slowed to a relaxed kind of saunter. Pearl, who usually walked fast, had to make herself slow to the pace. Still, with her eyes and her mind trained on the woman ahead, she tended to graze people coming from the other direction if they didn't veer away from her.

She bumped into a woman who said "Scuse you." Pearl didn't bother to answer. No time for smart-asses.

The white raincoat slowed, then broke away from the cluster of pedestrians it had been moving with along the sidewalk. The new Madeline entered a building with a white-trimmed green canopy shielding stalls of what looked like bunches of cut flowers.

Pearl crossed the street to get a better angle of vision, then drifted down the block about a hundred feet and stood near the doorway of an electronics shop. She saw that there was produce as well as flowers in the stalls across the street. The new Madeline had entered a deli. It was two doors up from the corner, and it didn't look as if there'd be a side door she might slip out of unseen.

Pearl realized she was sweating heavily, from the rising temperature and from the tension of tailing the new Madeline.

Some business. Not like guarding a bank that was last robbed sixteen years ago.

She raised her cell phone to her ear.

"She just went into a deli on West Eighty-third near Columbus," Pearl said.

"Stay on her," Quinn's voice said on the phone. "Feds is on the way. If she stays in the deli a while, maybe he can pick her up there."

Pearl moved back a few feet and leaned against a show window displaying various kinds of DVD players on sale. She began to breathe easier.

"Pearl?" Quinn's voice came over the phone.

"Yeah?"

"Stay on the phone."

"'Kay."

Within a few minutes, the figure in white emerged from the deli. The new Madeline fidgeted with an object held in both hands, then tossed something small into a trash receptacle and raised whatever she was holding to her mouth. It was obviously a container of some kind of drink.

After two sips, the new Madeline began to walk.

"She's moving," Pearl said. "Still west toward Columbus. Looks like she bought some sort of drink. She's sipping as she goes. Not walking nearly as fast." Watching the woman she was tailing take another drink, Pearl realized she was thirsty herself.

"Stay on her. Be careful."

"I've got both those things going," Pearl said.

"She must have been visiting her old apartment," Quinn said. "Maybe she forgot something."

"Whatever," Pearl said. "Let's hope she's going to where she lives now."

"She will sooner or later," Quinn said.

The new Madeline began to slow and gaze into shop windows as she sipped her drink. Pearl swallowed dryly and dropped farther back. She didn't want to be glimpsed as a reflection in a window.

"Uh-oh," Pearl said.

"What?" Quinn's voice.

"She just went into a jewelry shop. Doesn't look like the kind of place that'd have another exit, but maybe I should get closer."

"If you-"

"No. Wait. She's out. She's moving. I guess she just ducked in to check on the price of something that caught her eye."

"Just make sure what catches her eye isn't you," Quinn said.

Pearl kept the cell phone stuck to her ear, but neither she nor Quinn spoke for the next few minutes.

Then Quinn said, "Feds just called on the landline. He's got her. Get out of there and go back to being Jewel."

"'Kay." Pearl broke the connection and slid the phone back into her pocket. She didn't see Fedderman anywhere around and didn't expect to. She turned around and headed back the way she'd come.

Pearl knew that if the new Madeline stayed on the move for any length of time, an undercover cop would take Fedderman's place as her tail. Or they would tail her in twos. Whenever and wherever the new Madeline finally lighted, someone would be there to watch her.

Pearl decided to walk to a nearby subway stop, return to her apartment in Jill's building, and resume being Jewel, as Quinn had instructed.

So intent had she been on following the new Madeline, she hadn't noticed that she herself was being followed.

Ruth Malpass regretted drinking the second whiskey sour with the sandwiches they'd ordered. Vlad seemed unaffected by his drinks, but Ruth knew she was on the verge of slurring her words. She was sure she was thinking okay, and making sensible if somewhat flighty conversation, but she needed another fifteen minutes or so and some strong black coffee before she wanted to get up from her chair and try to walk steadily.

The rain seemed to be finished for the day. The sun brightened the street, but where Ruth and Vlad sat, at one of the metal tables beneath the restaurant's green awning, they were in shade. A set of steel wind chimes dangled about ten feet away, near where the awning met the brick wall. A slight summer breeze roused the chimes from time to time to gentle notes that sounded almost like the lazy strumming of a harp.

"You mentioned you were on your way home," Vlad said. "Do you live nearby?"

"No, I was going to take the subway. I came down here to shop at the stalls on Canal Street."

Victor knew where she was talking about, several blocks of stalls, mostly run by Chinese merchants, that sold knockoffs of famous brand names in clothing, jewelry, and other accessories. It was a teeming cauldron of commerce, where for ten dollars tourists could buy hundred-dollar items worth five.

"I was going to buy a knockoff designer purse there for my cousin in Michigan," Ruth said. "I never got there because of the rain."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Technically, I guess so. You're not a cop, are you?"

"No, but I try to stay on the right side of the law." Vlad flashed her a mischievous grin. "But I'm probably no more legal than you are. You still want to go to Canal Street?"

She smiled. "No. I think I'm out of the mood now." She came down hard on her consonants, enunciating quite clearly. Few people would guess she was on the verge of having drunk a little too much.

"Shame you came all that way for nothing."

"It isn't that far," Ruth said. "Besides, I like to ride the subway. And I wouldn't say it was for nothing. You're hardly that. If I'd happened to buy an umbrella before you showed up with yours, we wouldn't have met."

"Destiny in the rain."

"Sounds like a romantic novel."

"Maybe it is."

Ruth felt her heart race. "Might we have some coffee in the rain's aftermath?"

Now I'm talking like we're in a romantic novel.

Vlad grinned. "I appreciate the invitation, Ruth. But we won't have to ride the subway. I can drive us to your place."

Ruth tried to clear her mind. It was hard to keep ahead of this guy. "I didn't exactly mean…"

"Oh? Now you're disinviting me?" He was smiling earnestly. He reached across the table and touched her hand.

She shook her head. "Vlad-"

"I'm joking, of course. I wouldn't presume. But we can have some coffee, and then I'll drive you home so you won't have to take the subway."

"I didn't notice you had a car."

"It's parked up the street from where we met. I was running some errands, but nothing that can't wait. I'd rather drive you home anytime."

Before she could say anything more, he summoned the waiter and ordered two coffees.

"There, it's settled," he said when the waiter had gone.

Ruth didn't really want to argue with him. She debated with herself as to whether she should invite him in when they got to her apartment. The place was a mess, with dirty dishes in the sink and her bed unmade. Better to wait for some other time. Neaten up the place and make a good impression. But it would be nice to ride uptown and not battle the subway. It wasn't true that she enjoyed the subway. That had been only a convenient lie. She wondered if he'd told her any lies.

She valued honesty in a relationship, and this looked as if it might become a relationship. She hoped.

"Malpass," she said.

"Pardon?"

"That's my name. Ruth Malpass."

He raised his coffee cup in her direction. "My great pleasure, Ruth Malpass."

When they'd finished their coffees, Ruth was confident she could walk a straight line. In fact, she felt confident about everything right now.

Perhaps sensing some unsteadiness, Vlad took her arm as they left the restaurant. She didn't in the slightest resist. During the ten-minute walk to where his car was parked, she laughed at something he said and squeezed his arm, letting him know they'd reached the point in their brief relationship where casual touching was okay. Step by step. Something about him. He'd been around. She was sure he knew the ritual, and where it would lead.

He hadn't mentioned his car was a newer model black Chrysler with darkly tinted windows. Beaded raindrops glistened in the sun like fine crystal on its waxed roof and long hood.

"Very impressive wheels," she said.

"It's a company car."

She decided not to ask him what kind of company, what he did for a living, or where he worked. She'd find out eventually.

He unlocked the car with his key fob and held open the passenger-side door for Ruth. When she was seated, he closed the heavy door and hurried around the front of the car to get in on the driver's side.

He was already seated behind the steering wheel fastening his seat belt when Ruth heard a soft sound behind her, glanced over her shoulder, and gasped.

Because of the tinted windows, and her attention fixed on Vlad striding around the front of the car, she hadn't noticed the black-haired woman sitting on the wide backseat. She had a severe hairdo and penetrating dark eyes. She was grinning.

Vlad laughed and patted Ruth's knee.

"Sorry to startle you," he said. "I should have said something. This is my sister, Ivana. We have to drop her someplace; then we'll be on our way."