Mister X Read Free Page B

“however a client’s motivated, if it’s legal and ethical, we’ll gladly accept payment.”
    “One out of two would be okay,” Pearl said.
    She was ignored.
    “You mentioned our client had won some sorta jackpot,” Fedderman said to Quinn.
    “Slot machine thing. She hit a kind of tri-state trifecta and got temporarily rich. This is how she feels compelled to spend her money.”
    “That mysterious twins business,” Pearl said. She’d also been taking notes. She tapped her pencil’s eraser on a front tooth in tiny bounces. “I remember the Carver murders, how they confounded the hell out of everyone. You looked through this stuff already, Quinn. Do you think we’ve really got a chance of finding the killer?”
    “A chance, sure.”
    “It’d help if we could get the murder books outta the NYPD cold-case files,” Fedderman said.
    “Right now,” Quinn said, “I don’t think the NYPD would be very cooperative. Understandably, they don’t want us stirring up something they failed to solve.”
    “Maybe you could talk to Renz,” Pearl said.
    Harley Renz was the city’s popular police commissioner, and a longtime acquaintance of them all. He was an unashamed, ambitious, and corrupt bureaucratic climber. “Renz would have the most to lose if we came along after five years and solved a serial killer case,” Quinn said. “In Harley’s eyes, that’d be making the NYPD look like dopes.”
    “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Fedderman said. “So what would he lose?”
    “Political capital. To Renz, that’s like losing his own blood. In fact, it is his blood.” Quinn laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back in his chair. Maybe too far back. Pearl was watching him, waiting to see if this time he’d topple backward. Maybe hoping. “We need to have something solid before we go to Renz,” Quinn said. “And some way for him to gain by us solving the case.”
    “Meanwhile,” Pearl said, “we do our jobs, and never mind if our efforts are hopeless.”
    “I’ll miss the free drinks and food at Sammy’s,” Fedderman said. “But to tell you the truth, I was getting tired of playing the alcoholic businessman. And Pearl was putting on weight.”
    “I’ll come over there and put some weight on your goddamned head,” Pearl said.
    Quinn thought about settling them down so they could all get to work familiarizing themselves with the five-year-old murder investigation; then he decided against it. He knew Pearl, and she wasn’t yet at the point where she would physically attack Fedderman. And experience had taught Fedderman how to tread around Pearl just out of range while sticking her with his barbs. So let them agitate each other, Quinn thought.
    It was how they worked best.

4
    It had been a grueling series of hot and dusty bus rides from Bennett, South Dakota, to New York City. You could measure the distance in more than miles. Mary Bakehouse didn’t want to make the return trip. Ever.
    She’d spent the weekend moving in to her new apartment in the East Village. Mary had enough money that she could afford the place for a while. In the meantime she’d be job hunting.
    The apartment was the third-floor east unit of a six-story building. The previous tenant had been a smoker, and the scent of stale tobacco smoke made itself known at unexpected times, when closet doors were opened or summer breezes worked their way in through the window and played across the floor. The window was stuck only two inches open and wouldn’t budge, so usually the living room was stale and stuffy. Mary would buy some kind of aerosol air freshener when she got a chance. Or maybe one of those things you plugged into an electrical socket and it hissed every fifteen minutes or so and deodorized the air. Something was needed. She didn’t like tobacco smoke and could smell it for what seemed like blocks. She had a nose like a beagle, a boyfriend had told her once, not quite grasping what he’d said. She hadn’t gone