There were photographs of Sherman at Princeton. Quinn placed the cursor on them and clicked them into enlargement.
Pearl gripped his shoulder and leaned in for a closer look.
She was reasonably sure she was looking at the young Jeb Jones.
Suddenly out of breath, she felt her knees gave out. She caught herself and sat down cross-legged on the floor beside Quinn's desk chair.
"Goddamnit, Quinn!"
He looked down at her and ran the backs of his knuckles gently over her cheek. "It's all right, Pearl."
"I really screwed up."
"When you left me, you mean?"
She snorted. He's making a joke, surely. Just like him. She began to cry. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
"Yeah," he said softly.
"Such a damned foul-up…"
"Not actually, Pearl. And the hell with it, you're human."
"Sometimes I wonder," she said, and bit her lip.
"Pearl…"
She sniffled, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and stood up. Quinn said nothing as she trudged to the half-bath, blew her nose, and splashed cold water on her face.
For a long time she stood leaning with both hands on the washbasin and watching the water swirl down the drain.
Feeling only slightly better, she returned to the office.
Quinn was still at his desk. The printer was whirring and clucking, doling out in glides and jerks the information on Sherman Kraft/Jeb Jones. Quinn was sitting back in his swivel chair, rotating slightly back and forth and watching the printer. When Pearl was near his desk, he looked up at her.
Con Ed was back from lunch or break or wherever they'd gone, and the jackhammer outside suddenly resumed its chattering, only louder. It sounded as if there might be two of them. Reinforcements had been called in to make Pearl feel even more miserable.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"We call Renz for a warrant and some backup, then we go pick up Sherman Kraft."
Pearl nodded. Sherman Kraft. Jeb Jones. This called for a hell of an adjustment in her thinking. In her feelings. She felt like lying back down on the floor, curling into a ball, and trying to process the entire ugly mess.
"You want to be there when we take him?" Quinn asked.
"I wouldn't miss it."
The jackhammers went at it full blast.
Pearl went to her desk and got her gun.
48
They were on their way to kill or capture Pearl's Jeb Jones. Fedderman had the unmarked so they took Quinn's Lincoln behemoth.
Driving fast and skillfully through midtown traffic, Quinn talked with Renz on his cell phone, setting up a rendezvous point near the Waverly Hotel. It had already been determined that Jeb was in his room, and most of that floor was quietly being evacuated. When the time came, SWAT team members would take the elevator to the floor above Jeb and station themselves in the stairwell. Then power to the elevators would be stopped, the stairwell below and fire escape would be blocked by uniformed cops and SWAT members, and Jeb Jones would be trapped.
When Quinn got off the phone and concentrated on weaving his way through stalled traffic, Pearl used her own phone to call her apartment and check for messages. Maybe there was one from Jeb.
My God, Jeb…
As she listened to her phone ring on the other end of the connection, Pearl wondered if she'd be able to stop Jeb if he bolted. If he decided to make a fight of it, or commit suicide by cop, would she be able to shoot him? The prospect made her intestines tie themselves in knots. The pain made her actually bend forward in her seat.
Pressing the cell phone to her ear, she listened to her message machine in her apartment click on. One message:
"Pearl?"
Her mother.
"Pearl, are you there? I've had a conversation with Mrs. Kahn, a nice lady, about her equally nice, not to mention handsome, nephew Milton, who comes here and visits with her often. At my suggestion Mrs. Kahn phoned him and he's extremely interested in meeting you, dear, so since tomorrow was his regular visiting day anyway, I got together with Mrs. Kahn and set up a lunch in the nursing home cafeteria for the four of us, so the two of you can get to know one another without any pressure. At what would be the proper time, Mrs. Kahn and I would agree that we had to go for mahjongg and you two would be alone so nature could do what nature's been doing best for thousands if not millions of years. That's tomorrow at noon, Pearl. It's pot roast day. Pot roast is the only dish they do well here, but they do it very well and with mushrooms, which are said by some to be an aphrodisiac. If you can't make it, be sure to call me. If I were you, dear, I would wear that navy dress of yours with the matching shoes. Definitely not the red, Pearl. As for accessories-"
Pearl's clamshell phone snapped closed with the force of powerful jaws.
Quinn didn't slow down, but he took his eyes off traffic for a second to glance over at her. "Trouble?"
"Not unless I let it become trouble."
Another curious glance. "Jones?"
"My mother."
Quinn nodded grimly and drove on.
Quinn flashed his shield for the uniform standing next to a radio car that was skewed sideways in the street and blocking traffic. The cop stepped back and waved for Quinn to drive around the car. This required putting a front wheel up on the curb, but Quinn didn't seem to mind. Pearl placed both hands on the dashboard to keep from getting bounced around.
He pulled the Lincoln in at the curb half a block up and just around the corner from the Waverton Hotel. The cross street was blocked, too, by a black Traffic Enforcement car. More than a dozen radio cars and two unmarked vans were parked at haphazard angles. Half a dozen SWAT guys were standing in a knot. About a dozen uniformed cops in bulky flak jackets were grouped near them. The SWAT people had dark, stubby automatic rifles. Some of the uniforms had shotguns. Quinn recognized Officer Vern Shults and his female partner, Nancy Weaver. Shults was nearing retirement and shouldn't have been there. He was armed only with his regulation nine. The intrepid and promiscuous Weaver was carrying a shotgun. She spotted Quinn and Pearl and waved to them. A small woman with a backpack was standing off to the side, talking into what looked like a recorder.
This was much more backup than Quinn had requested. They were here to arrest a killer, not start a war. What the hell was Renz-
There was Renz, standing near one of the vans alongside a tall, blonde woman Quinn recognized as a local cable TV news anchor. As he and Pearl walked toward them, a brightly lettered news van entered the blocked street and parked at the opposite curb.
"Good," Renz said, as Quinn and Pearl approached. "Now we can get to this."
"Because we're here, or the press?" Quinn asked.
Renz ignored the question and said something into the two-way clipped to his lapel. The anchorwoman, a blonde whose name Quinn remembered now was Mary Mulanphy, smiled faintly but knowingly.
"Who's the woman with the SWAT guys?" Quinn asked.
"Cindy Sellers of City Beat," Renz said. "We owe her. She gets the print scoop."
Quinn wondered if newspaper people themselves still used the word scoop.
There was activity among the backup cops. A couple of car engines started, and a radio car backed swiftly toward where the one-way street was blocked.
Fedderman appeared out of nowhere and said, "He's still in his room."
Renz tucked in his chin and spoke into his lapel again to relay that information on his two-way. A two-man crew with a shoulder-mounted camera emerged from the TV news van, moving slowly and gingerly under the burden of technology, like a team of almost-drunks walking with exaggerated precision. Staying more or less on course, they crossed the street to get closer. They stopped about twenty feet away, and Mary Mulanphy stood out in the middle of the street and began speaking into a cordless microphone, facing the camera. Quinn knew he and the cops around him were part of the shot's background.