When Eddie was done with his filing, he went to his wallet and removed the half dozen or so business cards he’d collected during the day. After placing them in a drawer with others, he cleared the desktop and slowly began unwrapping the package. Kellie stood up from the chair she’d been sitting in and wandered over to look over his shoulder.
The package contained a small music box that looked like an antique. On its porcelain top was the painted figure of a beautiful woman in a white gown, seated on the lap of a prosperous-looking Edwardian gentleman with a long beard.
There was a small key taped to the bottom of the music box. Eddie found the edge of the cellophane tape and turned it back with his thumbnail. He sat with the key in one hand, the miniature music box in the other.
His wife Kellie hadn’t moved. She remained staring curiously at the music box. It looked genuinely old. And harmless enough. And valuable in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way.
“That filigree around the edges looks like real gold,” she said.
“Maybe it is,” Eddie said.
“Wind it,” she said. “See if it still works.”
Eddie didn’t need much encouragement. He was the curious sort.
Kellie watched as he inserted the tarnished key in its slot in the side of the box, then gave it a few tentative turns. The box ticked and whirred, and then began playing some song she didn’t recognize. The kind of simple, chime-like notes shared by most of the music boxes ever made. It was faint. Couldn’t be heard unless you held it close to your ear. Even then, Eddie couldn’t place the tune.
Tired of standing, Kellie took a sip of Heineken and went over and sat down on the sofa.
Eddie looked over at her and shook his head. She watched silently as he held the music box even closer to his ear, so he could try to identify the haunting and familiar tune.
It remained faint and unidentifiable.
The tune was nothing she’d associate with what happened next. The small block of Semtex concealed in the music box, and ignited by a watch battery, sent its spark to the detonator. Eddie was holding the box close to his ear so he could hear the tune when it exploded.
It wasn’t a large or loud enough explosion to destroy everything in the room. Still, it was more than efficient, and narrowly targeted. Half of Eddie’s head was blown away, and landed halfway across the room, in Kellie’s lap.
She stood up immediately, brushing the thing onto the floor. There was no sound other than a high-pitched, constant scream, and she seemed to be moving in slow motion as she made her way to the secretary where Eddie was slumped dead and bloody. At least the ruined side of his face was turned away. Thank God for that.
She moved her right hand carefully around Eddie, not looking at him, and opened one of the secretary desk’s small drawers.
With a trembling hand she delicately reached into the drawer and withdrew Quinn’s card that he’d pressed into her hand before leaving.
She wondered if the screaming in her head would ever stop.
64
They were in the Q&A office—Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, Lido, Helen, Sal, and Harold—engaging in what had come to be known to them as a confab of the fab. Nobody knew where the terminology had come from, but everyone assumed it had started with Harold. No one regarded such a description as totally self-effacing humor. It smacked of the truth.
“He’s going to kill again,” Helen the profiler said. “And soon.”
Quinn said, “We need to use our resources.”
“You mean Jerry and his tech genius?” Helen asked.
Jerry Lido looked at her, wondering if she was being sarcastic. He decided he didn’t give a shit.
“That might be part of it,” Quinn said. “We need to get that refined photo of the Gremlin out to every site on the Internet where it’ll be Facebooked, tweeted, and retweeted.”
“And LinkedIn,” Harold added.
Lido, slouched on a chair near the coffee brewer, said, “Sounds as if you don’t need me.”
“Just sounds that way,” Quinn said. “When I hear the word blog I think Hound of the Baskervilles. And I don’t know a sound bite from a mosquito bite.”
“So what resource are we talking about?” Helen asked. She knew about Quinn and his resources. They scared her, though she realized that sometimes she loved the thrill they provided. “Is this resource of yours legal?”
Quinn gave her the kind of smile that should itself be declared illegal. Said, “More or less.”
Great! “I am in the NYPD.”
“So are we all, temporarily.” He regarded her as if she might be growing another head. “You want out, Helen?”
“Depends on what this resource is and what you want to do with it.”
“The news media,” he said. “Specifically, Minnie Miner.”
“Marvelous!” Sal growled. “Why her?”
“She’s got moxie,” Pearl said.
“The Marvelous Minnie Miner Media Moxie plan,” Harold said.
Sal glared at him with disgust.
“Putting planning in progress,” Harold said, still in the grip of alliteration.
“There’s someone else involved,” Quinn said. “Somebody we’ve trusted before.”
“How did those times turn out?” Fedderman asked.
Quinn said, “She seems always to wind up in hospitals.”
Helen looked at him sharply. “Likes sex, heals fast?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Nancy Weaver?”
“Jackpot.”
“Every time she heals up and gets out of the hospital, she goes back to the Vice Squad,” Helen said. “She belongs in the Vice Squad. Maybe on the other side.”
“She enjoys getting the snot beat out of her,” Fedderman said.
No one disagreed. When it came to Weaver, they simply didn’t know what to think.
Helen looked around. Said to Quinn, “Everybody you’re involving in this is the sort of person who would skydive without a parachute.”
“That’s how I got here,” Nancy Weaver said.
No one had heard the street door open, but there she was, in four-inch heels and a businesslike pants suit that was a size too small for her and looked completely unbusinesslike.
She displayed no injuries.
Helen, in the complete silence, watched Weaver move all her parts as she crossed the room and sat down in one of the desk chairs. Her pose and posture were calculatingly prim. The effect looked nasty.
Helen crossed her arms and glanced around. All the maniacs were present.
All of us.
Except for the police commissioner.
Quinn smiled at her, reading her thoughts while she was reading his. “Renz doesn’t want to know.”
Helen knew he was right. Not that anything would prevent Renz from throwing them all under the train if it was to his advantage. As long as he held that strategic position he was fine with whatever they did.
“Okay,” Quinn said. “I’ll clue in Minnie Miner later.”
“What if she doesn’t want to play?” Helen asked. Knowing how foolish the question was even as she spoke.
“She’ll play,” Quinn said. “Here’s the plan.”
He felt the familiar thrill as he realized that at that moment no one in the room wanted to be anywhere else. Feel anything else.
Be anyone else.
Two hours later, after her show, Quinn made his pitch to Minnie Miner. As he spoke, he saw in her face what he’d seen in the faces of the others. In their eyes and in the slight forward lean of their bodies.
An acknowledgment and a readiness.
Wolves and gray wolves.
She said, “I’m in.”
When Quinn got home he found a message on his answering machine.