John Lutz Bundle (118 page)

Stone was there.

Quinn and Fedderman knew it almost as soon as they entered the building. They saw him first as a lower leg in richly tailored dress slacks and polished wing tips, for only a second as he rounded the corner and began climbing the stairs.

Neither Quinn nor Fedderman said anything as they quietly gave chase. They didn’t want Stone to know they were there. Ideally, they’d come up behind him before he realized he wasn’t alone and take him down alive. They needed him in court, as a defendant and as a witness.

As Stone began climbing the last flight of stairs to Jill’s floor, he prepared to enter her apartment by drawing a small pearl-handled gun from his suit coat pocket.

As he did so, Quinn made the slightest noise on the creaking stairs.

Stone turned in surprise. It was as if the dead man back in the office had risen up and they’d startled him.

Quinn didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t. There was distance to cover.

He charged.

The wind rushed out of Stone as Quinn leveled a shoulder into his midsection. At the same time, Quinn’s left hand found Stone’s right, forcing the pearl-handled gun to point at the ceiling.

As the two men slid toward the floor, Quinn squeezed hard with his powerful left hand. Flesh and blood vessels compacted against bone as Stone’s right wrist was crushed. The gun dropped like a child’s surrendered toy and clattered onto the floor.

Stone wasn’t the sort to put up a fight.

He sat down winded on the wooden steps, leaning forward and gripping his aching wrist. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. He brushed away the drool, working hard to control his breathing, then gave a sad smile and shook his head.

Fedderman read him his rights, then leaned close to him so their faces were only inches apart. He studied Stone. “The dead guy sitting at your desk—”

“Isn’t me,” Stone finished for him. “Obviously.”

“Your double,” Quinn said. “Who thought he was going to move into your life and be well paid for it. Instead he was used to fake your suicide.”

“Things had reached an impasse,” Stone said. “Because of you, I might add.”

“You’re the one who shot the poor bastard,” Quinn said, not posing it as a question. Just making conversation here. The idea was to get Stone to admit it in his own words.

Quinn held his silence. He waited, waited….

“I killed him,” Stone said. “I’m not averse to doing the wet work when I must.” He managed to shrug. “Business is business.”

Quinn whistled out a long breath in relief.

It was over. He and Fedderman exchanged a look. Quinn thought Fedderman might have smiled.

With Stone alive and an admitted killer, and with Jill’s testimony, the case against E-Bliss.org was solid. And when they found the new Madeline Scott, she’d have little choice but to reveal her true identity and testify for the prosecution.

“I think,” Stone said, “I won’t say anything more until my attorney is present.”

Which struck Quinn as odd, considering Stone had just confessed and confirmed that they had the right man.

Very odd.

He cuffed Stone’s uninjured wrist to the banister.

Pearl had reluctantly taken Quinn’s earlier advice and returned to Jewel’s apartment. She wasn’t sure where Jill was. Weaver might have taken her someplace safer.

After cleaning up as best she could, combing her hair without looking closely at the two-inch-square bandage on her right cheek near her eye, she decided to go downstairs and check on Jill, make sure she wasn’t still in her apartment.

As she turned from the bathroom mirror, the light penetrating through the narrow window was like a lance in her right eye. She put on the black eye patch the paramedic had given her and then did assess her appearance carefully in the mirror.

She decided she looked like a pirate after a run-in with the Royal Navy.

Aargh!
she almost said softly. Then she decided nothing was funny and looked away from the pathetic face in the mirror.

She went downstairs and knocked on the door to Jill’s apartment.

The light behind the peephole in the door changed and she knew Jill—or someone—was there. Jill, probably, too shaken to immediately open the door to anyone’s knock. After what had happened to her, Jill might not trust anyone for months.

“Me,” Pearl called. “Jewel.” The alias had become a secret password.

The light behind the peephole remained constant.

The man peering through the peephole sized up the woman at the door. She was small, didn’t look like much of a threat, and seemed to have been in some kind of accident. She was wearing an eye patch and a glob of white bandage on her face.

If he waited her out, she might simply go away. He’d already searched the apartment, looked in all its hiding places, and knew Jill Clark wasn’t home. She must have been placed somewhere else for her protection. This woman—Jewel, she’d said her name was—obviously knew Jill. Maybe she’d know where Jill was. She seemed to be alone.

He decided to make the woman tell him what he needed to know, then kill her. If he could somehow get to Jill, everything might still go as planned.

The cops hadn’t left that long ago. There might still be some around. He’d have to move fast and noiselessly.

He holstered the gun he was holding and drew a knife.

The door suddenly opened and a dark-haired man with fierce brown eyes clutched Pearl’s arm painfully and yanked her inside the apartment. She hadn’t had time to think, much less offer any resistance.

I don’t recognize him. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Who the hell is he?

Now what?

He was showing her a knife, slowly revolving the blade in the air. Obviously displaying it for effect.

He grinned meanly as he held up the long-bladed knife, figuring terror would melt the woman into something he could easily handle. It had always amused him that women reacted that way when they saw a knife that might be used on them. Perhaps it was a natural fear of penetration. Something sexual. Whatever, it made them inert and helpless.

Pearl kicked him in the knee.

The man roared with pain and slashed out at her with the knife. Pearl stepped inside the arc of the swing and punched him in the stomach. He grunted and shoved her backward, almost making her lose her balance. When he came at her she sidestepped his charge, barely avoiding the flashing blade. She was terrified that he might slash at her from the other direction, her blind side.

Damned patch!

But she was afraid to tear the patch off now, afraid of sudden brilliance and pain that might be worse than vision with one eye.

She remembered a tacky glass vase on the table near the sofa, swiveled her head so she could see it through her left eye. Fixed its image in her mind. When the man charged her again with the knife, she avoided the blade and dodged left, toward the table.

He whirled and came at her low, using the knife underhand this time. It would be harder to avoid his upward slashes, more difficult to see them coming from below eye level. Pearl felt for the cheap vase, a florist’s pressed-glass giveaway designed to hold one rose. She fumbled it, feeling it slide from her fingers.

Then she lowered her hand and caught the vase as it toppled. She got a good grip on it and slammed it into the man’s face.

It didn’t shatter. She swung it again and felt it make solid contact with the man’s head.

The force of the blow made her lose her grip on the vase. It bounced on the floor and passed from her range of vision.

She no longer had the vase as a weapon, but it had bought her precious seconds. She knew how to use them. She bolted for the door.

Had her fingers wrapped around the knob.

Was pulling the door open.

But she knew she wouldn’t be fast enough. She was trapped in one of those horrible slow-motion nightmares.

She was aware of the knife suddenly protruding from the door frame, near her face, where it had penetrated enameled wood after the man’s desperate throw, his attempt to cut her on the run.

At least he isn’t armed now.

Gunfire exploded behind her.

Oh, shit!

He’s got a gun, too! And he’s determined!

So was Pearl. She had the door open and was almost in the hall. If she could get around the corner, out of sight, she might make it to the stairs. Screw the elevator. No time.

She felt the familiar smoothness and grit of the hall’s tile floor under the sole of her left shoe.

Gonna make it!

A truck slammed into her back.

She knew she’d been shot. She stumbled forward, then seemed to strike an invisible wall and bounce off it. Her balance shifted, as if the floor tilted.

Pearl felt herself moving backward, back, back into the apartment on numbed legs. Exactly where she didn’t want to go.

The impact of the second bullet was greater than that of the first. It flung her against the door, slamming it shut and trapping her inside with her assailant. Everything around her began to whirl, making her dizzy.

She was looking up at the door. It was square in her one-eyed vision and moving farther and farther away, getting smaller.

Odd…Am I floating…?

She realized she was on the floor, her upper body on soft carpet, hardwood floor solid beneath her bare heels. Had the force of the shots knocked her out of her shoes? She’d seen it happen.

She looked again and found the door. It was standing wide open. There was more noise, banging sounds, but she could barely hear them, as if they were coming from far away.

Gunfire?

There was Quinn, crouched in the doorway in shooting stance, filling the doorway, blasting away with that antique revolver of his.

Quinn.

It was strange how calm she was now.

Quinn. Looking so serious. A serious man, Quinn. So simple and complex. A good man. Hard to find, hard to lose. She was going to miss him so….

She thought she might have smiled at him.

“You with me, Pearl?

Quinn’s voice. There was a horrible taste in Pearl’s mouth, and her lips were glued together with dried mucus.

Yuk!

“Pearl?”

She didn’t want to open her eyes, but she did.

There was Quinn, standing over her, looking serious.

It came back to her in a rush, the man in Jill’s apartment, the struggle, the gunfire.

Jesus, I’ve been shot!

“Don’t try to move, Pearl.”

She felt her lips rip apart. “Wha’ happened?”

“You were shot and spent five hours on the operating table. You’ve been unconscious for a while, and now you’re back.”

Mingled scents came to her: pine disinfectant, peppermint, fresh linen. She let her gaze roam, painfully and with one eye. Her vision was slightly blurred more than a few feet out, beyond a tray on which sat a green plastic glass and pitcher, a box of tissues. She was in a hospital bed.

“Unconscious? A while?”

“Three days,” Quinn said.

Three days! Serious. Maybe critical.

“That qualify as a coma?”

“Sure,” Quinn said.

“I’m gonna live?”

“Yeah, if from now on you do everything I say.”

“Quinn…”

“I’m sorry. You’re gonna be okay, Pearl. You’re in Roosevelt Hospital. You were shot twice. One bullet broke your collarbone. Another entered your back near the shoulder blade and deflected downward and lodged near your liver. They’ve both been removed. You’re gonna be fine.”

“So I really will live?”

“You will.” His smile came and went like a ghost. “You’ve got a lot of physical therapy ahead of you.”

Pearl tried to move but found she was too weak. “My back, nothing hurts. Everything’s numb.”

“It’s the drugs. It’ll hurt later, Pearl.”

“Good old Quinn, giving it to me straight.”

“Few enough people will, in this screwed-up world.”

“Don’t I know it? When can I get out of here?”

“Maybe in two or three more days. They’re gonna evaluate you again.”

“Jill okay?”

“Fine.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Feds and I caught up with Palmer Stone on the stairs of Jill’s building, and he admitted faking his suicide, killing the man who had become his double and thought he was going to become Stone after the real Stone disappeared. We tried to get more out of him, but he went silent and asked for an attorney.”

“He decided to lawyer up
after
admitting to murder?”

“Yeah. That’s what struck Feds and me as wrong. We figured he had a reason, that he was maybe trying to delay us. And we could think of only one reason why he’d want to keep us in the stairwell as long as possible.”

“He didn’t want you to go to Jill’s apartment. He wanted you to think any danger to her was over.”

“Right. He knew what was going to happen up there, because he knew who was waiting. But you went to see Jill. You found Jorge Sanchez instead.”

The name didn’t mean anything to Pearl for several seconds. Maybe because of the drugs. Then it came to her.

“The infamous drug lord? But he was killed in Mexico City.”

“Not the real Sanchez. The man the Mexican police shot to death was one of Sanchez’s several doubles, who was tricked into leaving the hotel Sanchez and his wife were in. The police took him for the real Sanchez and killed him. Even Sanchez’s wife, Maria, thought Jorge was dead. She had to have been shocked to see him in the dark passageway when he stepped out of the shadows and killed Greeve.”

“Greeve had been shocked, too,” Pearl said. “He wasn’t killed by any prostitute. They just made it look that way. He was trying to pronounce Jorge’s name before he died.”

“Right. Jorge is in the hospital now, and talking. But he isn’t going to make it. He was planning to join his wife in New York after assuming the identity of an E-Bliss client himself. They were going to meet again as two other people and move out of town, away from the drug trade. And it might have worked out for them if Jorge could have killed Jill. She was the only one who could swear she saw both Madelines and could tie them in with E-Bliss. Jill was the link he had to destroy. But Jorge’s plans went about as sour as Palmer Stone’s.”

“So Maria Sanchez was the new Madeline.”

Quinn nodded.

“What about Tony Lake?”

“Victor Lamping?”

“Yeah.”

Quinn was surprised she’d forgotten; he’d told her all about Lamping while holding her and waiting for the medics in Jill’s living room. “He was dead before they got him to the hospital.”

Pearl let her head sink back into her pillow and thought about that. About handsome, smiling, lying Tony Lake. Everything about him a lie.

“Good,” she said.

Quinn said nothing.

“E-Bliss,” Pearl said. “What a nightmare.”

“Even more than you think,” Quinn said. “Stone and Victor’s sister, Gloria Lamping, whom Stone ratted out, are trying to outtalk each other, cutting deals that aren’t going to happen. That’s where I got much of my information. Gloria’s still recovering from being run down by a cab. She knew about the killings. Stone says she even committed some of them.”

“A woman doing that to another woman.” Pearl managed to shake her head slightly on the pillow. “A nightmare,” she said again.

“One that’s over,” Quinn said. “You’re awake now, Pearl.”

He touched her hand as gently as he’d ever touched her.

Quinn stayed with Pearl until almost midnight, then went home to his apartment and found Linda’s note.

She’d thought things through, the note said, and she realized she could never be a cop’s wife. She was also going to quit her job with the city. She felt there was no choice, after being exposed as an informant who’d chosen sides in an NYPD internal dispute. No one would trust her after that. And she didn’t deserve Quinn’s trust.

She’d signed her name under the word
good-bye.

Quinn felt like sobbing, then like breaking up the furniture, but he did neither. He thought about trying to phone Linda. But he didn’t do that, either. He knew she’d made her decision, and he wouldn’t be able to argue with the fatalistic logic in her note even if she did answer his call.

In truth, he was saddened but not surprised. He knew where she probably was now, someplace where they served booze. He cared but he understood that it was hopeless to try to help her. Some people you couldn’t save. Some people you couldn’t save from themselves.

Those were the ones who haunted you, because you could have tried harder even though you knew it was hopeless, because somehow or another, on the way out, they made others partners in their destruction. Even the people they loved. Maybe especially them.

He folded the note carefully, as if he might keep it.

Then he reconsidered, wadded it small and tight, and dropped it in the wastebasket.