Serial

18

It was 2:00 A. M. when the intercom buzzer grated in the brownstone. Quinn switched on the lamp by his bed, and then struggled into his pants that were folded over the back of a chair. The buzzer sounded again as he staggered toward the intercom in the next room. He leaned on the button.

“Whoozere?”

“It’s Jerry, Quinn. We gotta talk. I found-”

Quinn pushed the button that buzzed Lido in downstairs.

As Quinn moved toward the door, he heard Jerry taking the stairs up from the vestibule. Though Lido had sounded sober, there was something about his footfalls on the steps that suggested he wasn’t navigating steadily.

When Quinn, a sleepy, grouchy-looking man with bloodshot eyes and wild hair, opened the door, he found himself face-to-face with another sleepy-looking man with bloodshot eyes and wild hair, only Lido was ecstatic.

Imagining the scene, all Quinn could think just then was, Couple of booze hounds.

“I hit some databases and found out some shit,” Jerry said, pushing past Quinn and leaving a wake of alcohol fumes.

Son of a bitch smells embalmed.

“It’s two o’clock, Jerry.”

“You’ll love this, Quinn.” Jerry started to pace. Quinn wondered where he got all the damned energy. He’d had a couple of drinks with Lido at O’Keefe’s last night despite Joe Nethers’s implicit warning. Rather, Quinn had downed a couple of drinks. Jerry had guzzled half a dozen. So here was Quinn, exhausted and with a headache. And here was Jerry, ready to leap over the moon.

Quinn let himself fall back on the sofa, stretched out his legs, and crossed his bare ankles. “So what am I going to love?” he asked.

Jerry stopped suddenly and glanced around. “Where’s Pearl?”

“Home in bed.”

“I thought you two were-”

“Not exactly.”

“Simon Luttrell,” Lido said abruptly.

It actually took Quinn a few seconds to remember that was the name scrawled in blood on a mirror at the last murder scene. He realized he wasn’t all the way awake, and possibly the alcohol he’d consumed last night still had his brain addled.

“You found Luttrell?” he asked.

“In a way. He’s connected to Philip Wharkin. Just like Wharkin, he was a member of Socrates’s Cavern. Gold keys, both of them.”

“Gold keys?”

“Sure. You had to join to get into the place. Cost plenty, too. Members were brass, silver, and gold key holders. The golds paid the most to join. Their first drink was always free, and they could go anywhere in the club.”

Lido looked around again, as if still searching for Pearl.

“Listen, Quinn… you got…?”

“Yeah, Jerry.” Quinn stood up from the sofa, trekked into the kitchen, and poured two fingers of scotch into a glass.

He returned to the living room and handed the glass to Jerry, then slumped back on the sofa. Jerry let himself down hard in a wing chair, accidentally sloshing some of the scotch on the carpet, and took a long sip. He seemed to calm down instantly, a trick of the mind.

“Luttrell was a Madison Avenue adman. Responsible for that dancing shirts commercial that used to be all over television. He joined Socrates’s Cavern in 1968, just when the club was getting going. He was a member until June of seventythree.”

Quinn couldn’t remember any dancing shirts commercial. “What then?” he asked. “Luttrell let his membership expire?”

“He expired,” Lido said. “In Del Rico’s restaurant, used to be on Third Avenue. He choked on a piece of steak. I don’t think people knew the Heimlich maneuver back then, or he might have been saved.”

“No point in trying to talk to him, then,” Quinn said. He stretched his body out straighter on the sofa and laced his fingers behind his head. “The names on the mirrors, the letter S necklaces.. . our killer continues establishing a Socrates’s Cavern theme.”

Lido was staring at him like a starving puppy.

“That’s damned good work, Jerry. We’ve established a connection and we’ve got a definite theme. Names of former Socrates’s Cavern members. Now we have to figure out what that theme means.”

“Sick jerks like him always have a regular routine,” Lido said. “Compulsive bastards. You know that better’n anyone.”

“Maybe I do, Jerry.” Quinn watched Lido down the rest of his drink. It wouldn’t be easy to get a cab this time of night-morning. “How you gonna get home, Jerry? You should be in bed, if you’re gonna be worth anything tomorrow.”

“If you don’t mind,” Lido said, “you’re sitting on my bed.”

Quinn stood up and yawned. “I’ll get you a blanket from the closet.”

“Hot night,” Lido said. “I don’t need a blanket. I’ll just take off my shoes and catch some Z’s.”

Quinn hadn’t heard that in a long time, catch some Z’s.

“Okay, Jerry, the couch is all yours. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“So how ’bout a nightcap?”

Quinn thought about it. “Why not?”

He knew Joe Nethers would disapprove.

Pearl would disapprove.

Quinn should disapprove.

In the morning Quinn got up earlier than he should have. He showered, got dressed, then had toast and coffee standing up in the kitchen. He left Lido snoring on the sofa and walked the few blocks to the office to help clear his head.

Pearl was the only one there. Sal and Harold were out searching for Simon Luttrells with Fedderman. Quinn had decided to let them carry out the task for the sake of thoroughness. Renz would insist that every base be touched. And for all anyone knew, they might find the guilty, live Simon Luttrell, or at least a Simon Luttrell who might have some idea of why his name was used by the killer.

“Coffee’s made,” Pearl said. She was sitting at her desk, booting up her computer.

Quinn walked over and poured himself a mug of coffee, then added cream. He came back and perched on the edge of Pearl’s desk, looking down at her.

“Don’t put that down and leave a ring on something,” she said, nodding toward the steaming mug in his hand.

“Jerry Lido paid me a visit during the night,” he said, and described what had happened, what Jerry had learned.

When he was finished, Pearl leaned back in her chair, thinking.

“So our killer continues to establish a Socrates’s Cavern theme,” Quinn said, “maybe for no reason other than to throw us off the scent.”

“Has he succeeded?”

“Sure. We have to interview, or at least check into, any Simon Luttrells in the New York area. And that’s while we’re still looking for Philip Wharkin.”

“He’s forcing us to waste our time,” Pearl said.

“Maybe.”

“You think it’s a double game-making it look too obvious so we abandon that avenue of investigation?”

Quinn shrugged his bulky shoulders. “Been done before.”

“Yeah, but not often. And serial killers are creatures of compulsion. They don’t like straying from their ritual, even in order to lay down false clues.”

“That’s what Helen says.”

“What any profiler would say.”

“But what if we’re not dealing with a serial killer? Not a creature of compulsion at all.”

“Somebody with a logical motive?” Pearl swiveled her chair so she was looking up at Quinn directly.

“Or a different rationalized sick motive not linked to compulsion.”

“It would have to be a strong motive,” Pearl said, “considering the way those women were tortured before he released them to death.”

“Maybe that’s what he wants us to think.”

“A terrible thing to do to human beings, simply to mislead the police. Not many ordinary men would have the stomach, no matter how devoted they were to their cause.”

“The evil that men do…” Quinn said.

Pearl gave Quinn an alarmed look. “You going religious on me now, Quinn?”

“That’s Shakespeare, I believe.” Quinn the avid theatergoer.

“Shakespeare was big on men doing evil.”

Quinn smiled. “What I’m saying is that we can’t rule anything out or in at this point.”

Pearl swiveled back to face her desk and got busy again on her computer. “Where’s Jerry Lido now?”

“Sleeping it off on my couch.”

He didn’t rub it in to Pearl that Lido, while under the influence, had come up with a useful gem of knowledge.

With Pearl, you didn’t rub things in.

“Just in case,” she said, “I’m gonna see if I can run down this Luttrell guy. Make sure of what Jerry found. Narrow it down by eliminating everyone without a heartbeat.”

“That’ll make things easier for Sal and Harold,” Quinn said. It wasn’t a bad idea to double-check. After all, Lido had been drinking.

He watched Pearl work for a few seconds before he walked away, thinking she was probably an inch away from climbing all over him for getting Lido drunk again. Thinking how much he loved her and wondering why.

Wondering if there was a cure.