Louie put his head down and ran harder.
33
Betty and Macy had left the diner and were about to cross the street to walk beneath the scaffolding where the Taggart Building was being transformed to its larger, more useful self. In the bright sunlight outside the diner, they absently paused to do some stretching and bending after sitting so long. They, like the other dancers, were well aware of the staring eyes of the hard hats across the street. They were prepared for the shouts, whistles, and occasional lewd suggestions. Sometimes smiles were exchanged across the street, but for the most part the construction workers were ignored. They might as well have been calling to the dancers from another dimension.
“If those guys would ever learn their manners—” Betty, who had just been referred to as “the bouncy blond beauty,” began. That was when what sounded like a lightning strike came from above. The shouting from across the street stopped, then became louder. Desperate.
Betty heard a woman scream nearby. There was a subtle change in light and shadow, in the movement of air. She felt Macy grip her shoulder and squeeze it hard enough to hurt.
As he ran toward Feldman, some part of Louie’s mind grasped what was happening around them. It wouldn’t be the first time a construction crane had fallen in Manhattan, but it might be the worst.
He was closing on Feldman when something like the dark shadow of a raven’s wing crossed the ground around them. Louie lowered his head and hunkered down as he ran, prepared to hit Feldman hard enough to carry them both out of harm’s way. Feldman was like a football player who’d forgotten to signal for a fair catch and was about to pay for it.
He turned away just before contact, and 260 pounds of Louie slammed into Feldman’s hip. Louie heard the deafening crash of the crane, felt the ground tilt beneath him so that for a few seconds he and Feldman were airborne.
Before he hit the ground again, Louie was sure his collarbone was broken from hitting Feldman. He knew, too, all in a split second, that he had more injury coming when the two of them landed and slid, with Feldman on top.
Louie thought they might both live, though, as long as more falling debris didn’t hit them.
He was thinking of Madge as consciousness left him.
Quinn said, “What the hell was that?”
Fedderman raised his eyebrows. “Earthquake?”
They were at Q&A, Quinn at his desk, waiting for Pearl to call and say where she wanted to meet for lunch, Fedderman in a chair over by the coffee brewer, going over case notes.
Quinn walked over and looked out a window at West 79th Street. He could hear sirens now, but they were from the south, and not close.
He went outside and stood on the concrete stoop, looking around. No sign of smoke. The sirens were slightly louder, and there were more of them.
Quinn went back inside and called Renz at One Police Plaza, and was told that Renz couldn’t be reached right now.
“Is he dead?” Quinn asked the duty sergeant.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then he can be reached. Is this Sergeant Ed Rutler?”
“It is. And who might I be talking to?”
“Captain Frank Quinn. How are you, Ed?”
“Still locomoting, Cap’n. Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“I’m smoking fewer cigars, Ed. I felt and heard a big boom, and now I hear sirens. What’s going on?”
“We’re still trying to figure it out. Could be a building collapse. The Taggart Building, that they been screwing around with for months. But it’s too early in the game to know.”
“Any dead or injured?”
“Not as many as you’d think, is what I hear. They’re saying one of those big construction cranes let go and fell about twenty floors, but it’s too early to confirm. I hope that’s what happened. Fewer killed and injured than there’d be in a building collapse.”
“Probably, Ed.” Then, “I got confirmation now in a TV news crawl. It’s the Taggart Building, all right. A big crane fell. It did bring down some of the building with it.”
“Jeez! Casualties?”
“Still counting, Ed. The building was unoccupied at the time, but there were some people killed or injured by the crane itself. And there were people in the vicinity of the building that were too close and got hit by falling debris. I’ve deduced a lot of that from early reports and what I could see on television They’re still fitting it all together. You know how it goes.”
Ed did.
Harley Renz called then and got patched through. Sergeant Rutler knew it wasn’t going to become a conference call and said his good-byes.
Renz listened while Quinn brought him up to speed with what he knew, mostly gleaned from what he’d seen on TV and what Sergeant Rutler had said.
Renz didn’t have anything solid to contribute, even though he’d been among the first to reach the site after the crane fell. Now he was running around, probably in full dress uniform, trying to leave a lasting impression that he was in charge.
A sigh came over the phone. “It isn’t pretty here, Quinn.”
“Does it look like a crime scene?”
“The way things are these days, I’d have to say yes.”
“Has the crane been examined?”
“Not yet. But it doesn’t seem there’s anything wrong with it. There was an operator in the crane when it fell. Or until just before. We’re still interrogating him. We’ll keep you informed, Quinn.”
“Do that, Harley. This is almost surely part of the Gremlin case.”
“Fire, an elevator, a crane, what’s this madman thinking?”
“They’re all different,” Quinn said. “In most ways, they’re just like the rest of us. That’s why they’re difficult to recognize.”
“That’s why we have you on the case, Quinn. You’re just like the rest of us, only different.”
“Those are important differences,” Quinn said.
Renz said, “That’s what all you guys say.”
34
The killer sat in his favorite armchair, with a view of nighttime Manhattan out the window that was slightly to his left. He liked to enjoy the spectacular view, shifting eyes and interest back and forth between that and big-screen TV news coverage of the crane collapse. He was in his stocking feet, legs extended and ankles crossed, sipping two fingers of single-malt scotch over ice. A dash of water to help bring out the flavor.
Using a variety of aliases and forged identities, he had, like a rat in a pack, joined the fringes of serious crime. He maneuvered, he thought brilliantly, befriending certain criminal types, ingratiating himself with them, and at a certain point letting them know he was . . . well, head rat.
He was impossible to apprehend, because he wasn’t greedy—at least not on the surface. He was financially secure from a year ago, when he’d spent a week of sex and pain with a crooked investment manager and his wife.
The killer knew enough to result in the man losing everything and going to prison. Probably his wife, keeper of the secret books, would also do time. But the killer had broken both of them, spiritually and physically, in the investment manager’s secluded cabin that was more like a full-fledged house.
The wife, Glenda, in her forties, was not particularly attractive, more of a greyhound than a cougar. She didn’t know it yet, but the divorce papers were about to be served when, during a drug-enhanced night, the killer taught the money manager, Hubby, how to induce and manage someone else’s pain.
Hubby was better at that than managing wealth. Under his tutelage, Glenda learned how soundproof the cabin was when she screamed and screamed and no one came to her rescue.
Within a few hours she was eager to turn over to her husband and the killer the secret set of books that she kept, complete with numbers and names, and sometimes photographs.