He began walking, faster and faster, gripping the small white box in his right hand, digging his heels into the pavement with each step. He might be late for work now. He couldn’t afford to screw up and get fired, all because of some psycho bastard who cut out people’s tongues.
People’s tongues!
The papers and TV news speculated about the tongues being removed because the Skinner was a cannibal and might consider them a delicacy. Jock might be the only one who knew better.
Of course, some other parts of the victims could have been removed and the police weren’t telling the public. They did that sometimes, to weed out the screwballs that made false confessions. Maybe there was something to the cannibal angle. After dealing with the Skinner, Jock could easily believe it. Lord, right now he could believe almost anything!
Noticing a wire trash basket at the next corner, he veered toward it and dropped the small box in it as he strode past. There! Maybe it would wind up in the same landfill as the first tongue.
He regained some of his confidence by reminding himself that he knew more about the Skinner than the pathetic psychopath imagined. The next time they met, that might be worth mentioning. It might keep the nutcase from giving him somebody else’s tongue. Or maybe something more personal.
He reached his subway stop, and almost without slowing took the concrete steps down into dimness and dampness. Now and then he stole a glance behind him.
Maybe I should have wiped my prints from the box. Both boxes!
He wished he had a drink.
65
Vitali and Mishkin had been driving most of the day. Telephone checking could do only so much. They needed to drive to various retail and wholesale outlets and show people the drawing of the carpet-tucking knife, close cousin to the lower-class linoleum knife.
They had worked their way through Queens, then returned to the office and played with the phones some more to get some addresses, and had spent much of the afternoon in Brooklyn.
When they reported their wasted day to Quinn, he instructed them to widen their search to New Jersey. Which was where they were now, cruising along the highway in the Garden State toward a place called Underfoot Carpet Supplies, where maybe they sold carpet-tucking knives. Ordinary hardware stores sometimes had no idea what Vitali and Mishkin were talking about.
The car’s interior seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and Vitali was finding it more and more difficult to be cooped up and have to listen to Harold. Mishkin, in the way of people who could get under the skin of even a patient person like Vitali, seemed blissfully unaware that he was in the least bit irritating.
For the fifth time in five minutes, Mishkin mentioned to Vitali that he was hungry. Like a mirage summoned by desperation, five hundred feet or so ahead loomed a sign advertising Doughnut Heaven.
“I guess that’s where you go if you take your eye off the road to look at their sign,” Mishkin said.
“It’s where we’re going to get some doughnuts,” Vitali said, staring straight ahead and already starting to slow the car so he could pull into the doughnut shop lot.
Doughnut Heaven turned out to be not much more than a shack. It served only drive-through customers. There was a menu nailed to the wall near the serving window. It featured about a hundred kinds of doughnuts.
There were no other cars in line, which seemed ominous to Vitali.
“They make it almost impossible to make up your mind, Sal,” Mishkin said, as he studied the menu.
“Give me a dozen assorted. Whatever’s fresh,” Vitali said to the skinny kid in the serving window. He was wearing a chef’s cap that was cocked at an angle suggesting it might fall off any second. “And two coffees with cream,” Vitali added.
It didn’t take the kid long to exchange two foam cups and a greasy white bag for Vitali’s money. “I added some doughnut holes as a bonus,” he said with a snaggletoothed grin.
“Much obliged,” Vitali said.
“We got a special,” the kid explained.
As they pulled back out onto the highway, Mishkin added off-brand sweetener from one of the little green envelopes he always carried in one of his pockets. The cups didn’t have lids, and coffee was starting to slosh over their rims in the car’s plastic holders. Vitali took a careful sip and then replaced his cup quickly because the coffee was close to boiling temperature. He had burned his tongue. That didn’t lighten his mood.
“What we oughta do is check the Internet for places that sell carpet-tucking knives,” Mishkin said, opening the doughnut bag.
“I don’t know how much good that would do, Harold. I mean, carpet knives aren’t registered like guns.”
“But I bet a lot fewer of them are sold than guns,” Mishkin said. “Somebody might remember a fairly recent sale.”
“Somebody in Bangadel, India,” Vitali said, thinking how difficult it was to contact Internet-based companies on the phone. He saw that Mishkin already had powdered sugar on his bushy mustache.
“Where exactly is that?” Mishkin asked.
“India?” Give him a little of his own medicine, Vitali thought.
“C’mon, Sal, you know where I meant. Bangadel.”
“I don’t know, Harold. I made it up.”
“Hmm.”
They could hit this Underfoot Carpet place, Vitali thought, then maybe a few more, and head back to the city. Beside him, Mishkin stirred and the doughnut bag made rattling noises. This was the part of police work that drove Vitali nuts. He felt like pulling over and bolting from the car.
He saw a service station up ahead, glanced down at the dashboard, and found the car had less than a quarter tank of gas.
Even though they were hardly doing twenty miles an hour when Vitali steered off the highway and into the gas station, the tires squealed as if they were in a Grand Prix racer.
“You fill the tank, Harold. I’m going to walk over where I might be able to get a good signal and see if I can get in touch with Quinn.”
Vitali strolled about a hundred feet away, near a rack of used tires.
Quinn answered his cell phone on the second ring.
“We’re not getting anywhere driving around looking for places that sell those tucking knives,” Vitali told Quinn. “I think our time would be better spent just using the phone and the Internet. Calling carpet installers, seeing where they get them, if they even use them.”
“I’ve got Jerry Lido prowling the Internet,” Quinn said. “Pearl’s been working the phone.”
“Any luck?”
“Not so far. And some of the newer carpet-tucking knives look like straight razors, not the kind of blades that match the wounds.”
“It’s not a common item.”
“No,” Quinn said. “That’s why it might mean something when we find places that sell them and keep a record. It’s possible on the Internet, but not many are sold, and so far none in this area to anyone who could be a suspect.”
“Internet, phone, and legwork,” Vitali said. “Yeah, I guess that’s the way to work it. And I’m in no way gonna underestimate Lido and his computer. If the guy didn’t drink he’d be another Bill Gates.”
“Or still with the NYPD. If you get no results today by driving, we won’t waste any more time on it, Sal.”
“Makes sense. Anyplace we can drive to, it probably has a phone.”
“Yeah. And if the Skinner paid cash for the knife, it will probably be impossible to trace. And for all we know, he might’ve been in a hardware store looking for something else and simply bought the thing and there’s no record of it because it isn’t itemized, even if it was paid for with a credit or debit card.”
“That’s how I see it, too. But you never know; the information we need might be right on top and we’d kick ourselves if we found out later and hadn’t touched that particular base. We can hit it tomorrow using national directories and the phone, if you want. Widen what Pearl’s doing.”