Mister X (35 page)

True to her word, Lisa limped to the corner and waved a cab over to the curb. By that time, Pearl was sitting behind the steering wheel in the unmarked with the engine running.

Traffic was heavy, and from time to time Pearl lost sight of the cab. Once she thought she’d lost it completely. But she’d memorized its number, and after easing the car around vehicles stalled at a traffic signal, she was able to find the cab again. It was traffic-locked as she was.

The familiar silhouette of Lisa’s head and shoulders was still in the cab’s rear window. Lisa didn’t once turn around to check and see if she’d been followed. Pearl guessed the beleaguered woman figured nothing worse could happen to her and was all out of apprehension. That could happen sometimes. It was actually a kind of surrender.

The cab pulled to the curb on Columbus Avenue, and a few seconds later Lisa got out. She stood up gradually, as if her back hurt, and now she did glance up and down the street. Pearl had parked half a block away, but hadn’t yet climbed out of the car. Lisa’s gaze slid right past her.

Lisa began limping along Columbus. She posed no problem for Pearl, who locked the unmarked behind her and casually began to follow. There were enough people on the sidewalks that, even if Lisa glanced behind her again, it was doubtful she’d pick out Pearl, who was nimble and a bit of a chameleon.

At a side street at the end of a line of small shops, Lisa stopped. She opened the brown leather purse she was carrying and appeared to study a slip of paper, as if double-checking an address.

Then she turned the corner and began walking faster and with more purpose.

Pearl watched her ease her way up some concrete steps and enter a four-story stone and pink granite apartment building that looked as if it contained eight units.

Maybe sixteen small units
, Pearl suddenly thought. She’d better work her way closer if she was going to find out which apartment Lisa entered.

Trying to time it just right, she jogged down the street to the building and didn’t hesitate going up the steps. If the place had a security door and Lisa had to be buzzed up, Pearl might find herself face-to-face with her in the foyer. On the other hand, if Pearl waited, she might not be able to follow Lisa up the stairs, staying out of sight while she saw which apartment she entered.

Pearl drew a deep breath, pulled open the heavy wooden door, and stepped inside.

No security door. And no Lisa. Not in the foyer or on the stairs.

The building had an elevator. Pearl saw a tentative brass arrow climbing a set of faded numerals. It was at the two.

Immediately Pearl started up the wide wooden stairs, taking them two at a time. She hesitated on the second-floor landing, peeking around the corner to see if the elevator had stopped.

It hadn’t. The brass arrow on that floor was still climbing. If the arrow was accurate, the elevator was almost to the third floor.

Pearl took the steps three at a time, using the slickly worn banister to yank herself along.

She reached the third floor just in time to peer around the corner and see Lisa step from the elevator and walk away from her, down a dim hall with a linoleum floor patterned to look like gray tiles.

Pearl watched her knock on a door and get no reply.

She knocked again, waited a full minute, and then dipped into her purse and came up with what looked like a lock pick. As she bent over to use the pick, she reflexively turned the knob and pushed to make sure the door was locked.

It was unlocked.

Lisa replaced her lock pick in her purse and entered the apartment.

Pearl grinned.
Gotcha!

She walked quietly down the hall and noted the apartment number, 3-S, then returned to the stairwell.

What to do now? Her instructions were to follow Lisa, not to confront her. But what was Lisa doing there? It obviously wasn’t her apartment, or she would have had a key.

And she’d knocked and gotten no response. She was almost certainly the only one in the apartment.

So what was she doing in there? Waiting for a friend who lived there? Burglarizing the place?

The friend was more likely. But maybe Lisa wasn’t waiting.

Pearl decided the apartment was probably only a brief stop for Lisa. She might be on the move again soon. Maybe with different clothes. Maybe with a new identity.

The logical thing was to go back outside and wait for Lisa to emerge. See where she went next.

Before leaving the building, Pearl made sure there was no rear exit. Then she went outside and walked back to the corner, where she could stand and not be noticed, and where she could see the concrete steps to the building Lisa had entered.

Lisa was in a box. If she came down the steps to the sidewalk and turned toward Pearl, all Pearl had to do was duck into a doorway or otherwise make herself invisible until Lisa passed, then resume tailing her. If she came down the steps and turned the other way, there was plenty of time for Pearl to catch up with her before she disappeared down the street. Limping Lisa didn’t cover ground fast.

Pearl put on her knockoff Gucci sunglasses, crossed her arms, leaned against a
NO PARKING ON CORNER
sign, and waited.

Quinn and Fedderman pushed through a heavy plate-glass revolving door and entered the lobby of the Belington. The bustling hum and rush of the city suddenly became quiet.

The lobby was not only hushed but surprisingly cool and vast. An array of ornate brass bars was affixed to the long registration desk in a way that suggested tellers’ windows in an obsessively secure bank. The marble floor was patterned with fine cracks. The ceiling was vaulted, with a graceful design of arched wooden beams. Artificial green vines tumbled from large terra-cotta pots next to groupings of deeply upholstered furniture. On a table in front of a fan-shaped mirror were chipped and yellowed plaster busts of Artemis and Apollo, gazing away from each other like the arrogant book-ends they were.

“Looks like an ancient Greek ruin that’s been spruced up,” Fedderman said.

Ignoring a bellhop and curious desk clerk, they made their way to the elevators.

Vitali and Mishkin had met Keller at LaGuardia and driven him to the hotel. They’d ensconced him there according to Quinn’s instructions and explained the rules. Mishkin had later dropped by the office and left a room key card for Quinn. He’d assured him that Keller was being cooperative, and everything was set up at the hotel. Quinn, being Quinn, wanted to make sure of that. He also had plenty of questions for Keller. Such as: How long had he been in New York? Had he actually flown in to LaGuardia, or taken a cab there so he could pretend? And had Lisa Bolt been telling the truth about him beating her? Lisa was a smooth liar.

“He’s in two-twenty-one,” Quinn said, leaning on the glowing up button as if it were a doorbell and he might speed things along inside.

Speed wasn’t a feature of the Belington. Quinn and Fedderman got tired of waiting for an elevator and took the carpeted stairs to the second floor.

The halls in the old building were wide and long, lined with pale blue doors with raised panels. Quinn and Fedderman went to 221 and knocked.

When there was no response, Quinn knocked louder, keeping an eye on the door’s glass peephole for any change of light.

Nothing.

Quinn pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and extracted his key card.

It worked on the first swipe, and they pushed the door open.

Quinn went in first, eyes darting left and right, taking in the neatly made bed with the closed suitcase on it, the hanging bag in the otherwise bare closet. Unlike the hall doors, the closet door was a cheap hollow-core panel that slid on tracks. The Belington’s rooms didn’t match the lobby’s grandeur. They were small and plain and modestly furnished.

Both men stood motionless and listened. There was no sound of a shower or bath running. Fedderman went to the bathroom door, knocked twice, and then eased the door open. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his head. The bathroom was unoccupied.

Like the rest of the room.

“Keller agreed to stay in his room until we contacted him,” Quinn said, annoyed by yet another missing participant in his plans.

“He probably stayed about twenty seconds,” Fedderman said. He opened and closed the dresser drawers, all of them empty. “Didn’t even bother to unpack.”

“So many people disappearing at one time or another, we oughta turn the case over to Missing Persons,” Quinn said.

He walked to the connecting door leading to the adjacent room and opened it to make sure it was unlocked. That room was to be occupied by whoever would be listening to Keller’s bugged room, and would provide a staging area for the police if and when Chrissie did show up to take out her rage on dear Dad. Quinn let his glance roam over the room, identical to Keller’s, and then closed the door, leaving it unlocked. He wandered over to the bed and checked the luggage tag. It said the suitcase belonged to Edward Archer. Quinn was getting used to this, people with at least two identities.

“Maybe he went out for something to eat,” Fedderman said.

“The agreement was for him to use room service.”

“Ever notice how our agreements never seem to work out?”

“Hard not to,” Quinn said.

“The people we meet in our business, crooks and killers and such, they’re dishonest.”

“Can’t count on them.”

“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Edward Keller is a lying bastard.”

“I’m not surprised,” Quinn said. “But I am pissed off.”

Quinn returned to the suitcase on the bed and reached over to open it.

“Careful,” Fedderman said. “It might be a bomb.”

It wasn’t a bomb, but it was empty.

Pearl was getting tired of waiting.

The first fifteen minutes, nobody entered or exited the stone and pink granite building. Then a woman with what looked like a greyhound on a leash came down the concrete steps. Ten minutes later, a man in a blue Windbreaker and white golf cap exited and jogged down the steps, flipping away a cigarette and opening a dark umbrella as he descended. Pearl noticed for the first time that there was a fine mist. Her blouse was lightly spotted, and the back of its collar felt damp and tacky on her neck. She hunkered down and decided not to move to shelter unless it began raining harder.

Five minutes later an elderly lady pulling a two-wheeled folding grocery cart approached the apartment building. There were three brown paper sacks stuffed into the cart. She wrestled the contraption up the slippery wet steps and disappeared inside.

Pearl shot a look at her watch. Lisa Bolt had been in the apartment building for half an hour. It obviously wasn’t her apartment, but despite the business with the lock pick, maybe she was staying there. Or visiting someone who
was
staying there.

Like Chrissie Keller.

Pearl decided to go check. It seemed the thing to do, without an umbrella.

She encountered no one as she took the elevator to the third floor and made her way toward apartment 3-S.

When she was ten feet away, she noticed the door was open about an inch, as if someone had pulled it closed but not hard enough for the latch to engage.

Somebody leaving in a hurry?

It hadn’t been Lisa, Pearl was sure. There was no way she could have slipped past without being seen.

Except for the time I spent in the elevator.

Pearl hadn’t worn her blazer or shoulder holster, so she removed her Glock nine-millimeter from her purse and held the gun tight against her thigh. Then she pushed the door open, raising the gun at the same time, and went in fast, holding the Glock in front of her with both hands, hearing the door bounce off the wall behind her.

She crouched and swept the barrel of the gun this way and that.

But her dramatic entrance had played to no audience and brought no response. The apartment, what she could see of it,
seemed
unoccupied.

Only
seemed,
because there was someone else in here. She was sure of it. Be it gut feeling, stirred air, the additional fraction of a degree of body heat, subliminal sound…whatever, she knew she wasn’t alone.

Her throat was dry, and it was an effort to swallow as she decided to explore.

There was nowhere to hide in the living room. The furnishings were shabby, and there was dust on the matching tables at each end of the long green sofa. On a windowsill was a lineup of small potted plants, all of them wilted. An empty Diet Pepsi can lay on its side on one of the tables, and a copy of Oprah’s magazine lay open on the floor as if it had been tossed there. Somebody was a lousy housekeeper.

Still holding the gun at the ready, Pearl held her breath and negotiated the hall. It took her only a moment to glance in the tiny bathroom and assure herself that it was clear.

On to what must be the apartment’s only bedroom.

It also appeared unoccupied.

There was an odd burnt scent in the air, as if someone had been smoking here recently. Or cooking.

The bed was made but somewhat sloppily, and was too low for someone to hide under.

The closet. If she really wasn’t alone, he, she, it, would probably be in the closet. Hiding behind the clothes draped on hangers. Waiting.

Pearl steeled herself and yanked open the closet door.

No clothes at all. There were only a few wire hangers inside, an old coupon for pizza on the floor, nothing on the wooden shelf above. The faint scent of mothballs wafted from the closet.

Pearl shut the closet door, turned around, and saw the foot.

It was barely visible on the floor on the other side of the bed, as if someone had fallen out of bed and was lying there.

The foot was bare and had toes with chipped red enamel on the nails. There was a callus or blister on the side of the big toe.

Pearl eased over until she was against the wall and peered at the narrow space between wall and bed.

Lisa Bolt was crammed into that space, her left foot beyond the bed, her right leg jammed sideways with the knee crooked. She was wearing her jeans, but that was all.

Pearl squeezed in to where she could reach Lisa. She called her name several times to see if she was conscious.

“Okay, okay,” Lisa mumbled, though there was no movement and she didn’t open her eyes.

Pearl reached Lisa’s perspiring arms and began pulling on them. They kept slipping out of her grasp.

“Try, will you?” Pearl said, after one of her fingernails had been bent back. The finger continued to throb.

Begrudgingly, and after much flailing around, Lisa cooperated enough so that she was turned and on her knees. Pearl gripped her around the waist and got her standing upright, and Lisa collapsed onto the bed.

Pearl eased her around until Lisa was lying lengthwise with her head on the pillow. That was when she saw the pattern of cigarette burns on Lisa’s breasts and recognized the scorched smell she’d noticed in the bedroom. It hadn’t been from something cooking. Not exactly.

Someone had tortured Lisa by holding a lit cigarette to her bare flesh.

The realization in the hot bedroom with the smell of burned flesh made Pearl’s stomach turn, and for a moment she thought she might vomit. When she swallowed, she tasted bitterness at the back of her throat.

“Who did this to you?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said, and started to sob.

Pearl almost slapped her, and then thought better of it. “There’s no time for this sorry bullshit now,” she said. “Tell me what went on here. Tell me now, Lisa.”

Lisa struggled to control herself and went from sobbing to gasping to ragged breathing. She was calming down.

“Get a grip,” Pearl said.

“Yeah…I’m okay now.”

She might have thought she was about to be slapped, and that had done the trick.

“What are you doing here?” Pearl asked.

“I thought Chrissie might be here. This was a place where we met once, but she’s moved. Must have been scared.”

“Scared of us? The police?”

“Yeah. You, of course. Scared of her father, too. She must have seen in the news that he was in town.”

“Was it Keller who did that to you? With the cigarette?”

“Yeah. He left a while ago.”

The man in the blue Windbreaker, with the umbrella. Flicking his cigarette away as he went down the steps.

“Damn it!” Pearl said.

“You screw up?”

“Royally.”

“Welcome to the club,” Lisa said. “I knew Chrissie would be here or in another apartment where she’s been staying. She wasn’t here.” Her gaze roamed around the room, and her eyes widened slightly, as if fear had set in again. “Keller was suddenly behind me. The bastard had been hiding. I couldn’t put up any kind of resistance.” She sounded ashamed.

“You were surprised,” Pearl said. “And you probably should still have been in your hospital bed to begin with. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“He tied me up, took off my blouse, and started in on me with the cigarettes. He jammed a pillow over my face whenever I tried to scream. Punched me around, too. I think he broke something in me. I heard it crack. He demanded to know where Chrissie was. Said he’d kill me if I didn’t tell him, and that he’d find me and kill me if I lied to him.”

Lisa started to shiver, maybe going into shock. Pearl laid the other half of the old bedspread over her to warm her up. The shivering got worse.

“It’s okay,” Pearl said. “He’s gone.”

“Of course he’s gone. I gave him what he wanted, the address of the apartment where he could find Chrissie.” Lisa pointed feebly toward the door. “He left to find Chrissie. I told you he wanted her. I told you.”

“You told us,” Pearl said, feeling for her cell phone in her purse. She punched out 911 to get an ambulance in a hurry for Lisa.

“Now tell me the address you gave Keller,” she said, when EMS had an ambulance on the way.

Lisa lay with her eyes closed, as if reading from the insides of the lids, and told her.

Pearl called Quinn, filled him in on the situation, and relayed the West Side address. Then she called Vitali and clued him in, along with Mishkin. They were Midtown in their unmarked car. She asked Vitali to have a radio car sent to where she was with Lisa as soon as possible, and another to the address where Chrissie was supposed to be staying.

“They’re on the way,” Vitali said. “The uniforms will make sure Lisa gets back in the hospital. Maybe she’ll stay there a while this time.”

“She will,” Pearl said. “She’s got broken bones this time. Cigarette burns in bad places.” Over the phone she heard the unmarked’s siren kick in, parting the traffic in front of Vitali and Mishkin.

“What are you figuring on doing, Pearl?”

“Soon as the uniforms get here, I’m leaving for where you and Mishkin are going—Chrissie’s apartment. We need to get there before Keller.”

“You wouldn’t realize it over the phone, but right now Harold has our car doing ninety on Broadway. We only slow down when we have to get up on the sidewalk.”

“He’ll kill her,” Lisa said in a pain-weary voice behind Pearl. “That bastard, her father’s gonna kill her.”

Pearl said, “A couple of cops doing ninety think otherwise.”