Serial

43

New York, the present

Fedderman and Penny Noon were eating pasta at Vito’s Restauranti in Lower Manhattan. The food was a lot better than the neighborhood.

“The angel-hair pasta’s terrific,” Penny said, winding another bite around the tines of her fork, “but I wouldn’t risk coming here alone for it.”

“Mean streets,” Fedderman said. He had on the new suit and looked better than merely respectable.

Penny paused in her winding and raised her eyebrows. “You’ve read Chandler?”

“And Hammett,” Fedderman said. “We detectives like detective fiction. It gives us a break from the real thing.”

“The novels aren’t realistic?”

“Sometimes, but not usually,” Fedderman said. “Down in Florida, when I was sitting fishing and not catching anything, I read a lot.”

“Just detective fiction?”

“Mostly. Connelly, Grafton, Parker, Paretsky, Mosley…”

“Those are fine writers.”

“I left out a lot who are just as good. There’s this guy in St. Louis…”

“Something about you,” Penny said. “When we met I knew somehow you had a literary bent.”

Fedderman took a sip of the cheap house red. He’d never considered himself the literary sort. He realized Penny was doing something for him, lifting him in ways he hadn’t suspected possible.

“Sometimes your boss, Quinn, seems like a character out of a book,” Penny said.

“A good book?”

“The best. There’s something about him. He can make you trust him. And he’s handsome in a big homely way. Like a thug only with a brain. It’s easy to see that people respect him. And sometimes fear him.”

“It can be the same thing,” Fedderman said.

“Have you ever seen Quinn angry?”

“Sure have. And sometimes he’s angry and you don’t know it. That’s what’s scary. He’s tough in ways that are more than physical.”

“You obviously respect him.”

“I know him. He’s a good man. We’ve been friends for a long time. Rode together in a radio car back in another era.”

“Has police work changed that much?”

“Society has. Police work changed along with it.”

Penny was going to ask what Fedderman meant by that when his cell phone buzzed.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling apologetically as he dug the phone from a pocket and checked caller ID. He delayed making the connection. “It’s Quinn.”

“Of course. He sensed we were discussing him.”

Fedderman pressed TALK. If the call was one he didn’t want Penny to overhear, he was ready to remove his napkin from his lap and stand up from the table.

But it was Quinn who did most of the talking, and the call promised to be brief: “We’ve got another Skinner victim, Feds. Woman named Judith Blaney.” He gave Fedderman Blaney’s address.”

“On my way.”

After breaking the connection and slipping the phone back in his pocket, Fedderman said, “That’s something that hasn’t changed about police work. We get a call, day or night, and we have to respond.” He reached across the table with his right hand and stroked the back of Penny’s hand, so delicate and smooth. “I’m sorry.”

“We both are,” she said. “But I understand.”

Fedderman noticed that his right shirt cuff was unbuttoned. He raised his arm to fasten it, at the same time waggling a finger to summon their waiter.

“I’ll put you in a cab, then I’ll have to drive cross-town,” he told Penny. He’d driven them to the restaurant in the unmarked and had it parked outside near a fire hydrant.

The waiter arrived with the check and surveyed their half-eaten food. “Wanna box?” he asked.

Fedderman, who’d planned on spending the evening with Penny in her apartment and wanted to punch someone, felt like telling him yes, he did want to box, but instead declined.

Penny accepted the waiter’s offer, but she had in mind angel-hair pasta rather than pugilism.