Urge to Kill Read Free

where he could veer in and stop at the curb.
    There didn’t seem to be a space.
    Hell with it,
he thought, and was about to double-park when a cab pulled out into traffic ahead of him, vacating a space. Quinn steered in close to the curb and saw that there was a fire hydrant there. That was the only reason there was a parking space in this part of town, and it was illegal. He braked to a halt anyway.
    If there’s a fire, I’ll move.
    The reflected flashing lights grew brighter, the headlights blinding, as the police car wedged in at an angle behind him. He let the Lincoln roll forward a few feet, giving the driver behind him as much room as possible.
    Quinn knew better than to get out of the car. He sat still, his hands high on the steering wheel where they could be seen, and watched in the rearview mirror. In the whirligig haze of reflected light behind him, he saw doors open on both sides of the police car. Darkly silhouetted figures climbed out and advanced on the Lincoln, seeming to move jerkily in the alternating light show.
    This shouldn’t take long. Quinn might even know one or both of the uniforms. And the cops might know him. He could easily talk his way out of a ticket. Quinn was much respected in the NYPD. He even occasionally heard the word “legend.” He prepared himself to exchange some friendly words and be on his way.
    In the mirror he saw one of the silhouetted cops turn back toward the police car. Quinn figured the uniform was going to run a check on the Lincoln’s plates.
    Odd, Quinn thought. They could have both waited in the car while the plates were run. It was also odd that the cop on the driver’s side had returned to the police car. It would make more sense for that cop to approach the Lincoln and talk to Quinn through the lowered window.
    The one on the right side of the Lincoln, who should have been doing the license check, kept coming, then passed briefly from view at the edge of the mirror.
    Quinn felt a prickly sensation on the back of his neck. Something was wrong here.
    Brightness slid to the side, out of the mirrors, and the radio car that had pulled Quinn over
whooshed
past him and continued down the street, its roof bar lights no longer flashing.
    The passenger-side door of the Lincoln swung open, and the cop who’d approached on that side slid into the seat.
    He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Instead he had on an unbuttoned light raincoat, though it wasn’t raining, and beneath it a suit and tie. A big man, in his late forties, overweight and with dark bags beneath his eyes. His jowls and the flesh beneath his chin sagged, making him look like nothing so much as a pensive bloodhound.
    Quinn recognized him immediately, but the prickly sensation didn’t go away.
    The man who’d slid out of the night and into his car was New York City Police Commissioner Harley Renz.
     
     
    Renz smiled, not doing a thing for the bloodhound look, and glanced around. “Smells like hell in here.”
    Quinn knew Renz was right. The cigar smoke odor had seeped into the upholstery and every cranny of the car. Even Quinn sometimes found it offensive, and he was used to it.
    “You can get out as easy as you got in,” he said. He and Renz had always gotten along, but not in the friendliest manner, each knowing the other perhaps too well.
    “You smoking one of those illegal Cuban cigars you like so much?”
    “Venezuelan,” Quinn said.
    “If you insist.” Renz settled back in his plush seat, still looking over at Quinn. “You got an extra?”
    “No,” Quinn said. “You can finish this one.”
    “It’ll finish you first.” Renz upped the amperage on his smile. His effort at charm. Still a bloodhound. His eyes had gotten droopier since Quinn had last seen him, slanting downward more at the outer corners as if weights were attached to the sagging flesh. He held his insincere smile as he stared at Quinn. “How’d you do?”
    “Do?”
    “At the poker game.”
    “Won.”
    “Ah. Really, all that