“Thanks so much,” the widow told him, glancing up with reddened and grateful cat’s eyes.
“Something like what happened to your husband,” Fedderman said, “reminds us that we’re all in this together.” There was a catch in his voice.
Pearl observed all this and felt a stab of pride. These guys are good. And I’m part of the team. Just then, the idea of standing around in her gray uniform, hour after hour, in a walnut and marbled quiet bank lobby wasn’t so appealing.
“He didn’t seem exactly afraid,” June muttered into the Kleenex between sniffles.
“Pardon me, dear?” Quinn sounded casual, even distracted, as if he might have misheard a remark about the weather.
“Not what I’d describe as afraid,” June said, more clearly.
Quinn nodded his understanding. “But he must have felt something at least somewhat out of the ordinary. At least sometimes, or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But—”
“What, then?” he asked gently.
“I don’t know…” She sobbed some more, dabbed at her nose and eyes some more.
“Did he seem uneasy?” Quinn asked.
“No, not exactly.”
“Anxious?” Fedderman suggested. “Did your husband seem anxious?”
The widow looked at him. “Well, yes…I suppose you could describe it that way. But ‘uneasy’ is more like it. Sometimes on a case he used to get like that.”
There was something here. They could all sense it. Sitting there in Joe Galin’s Barcalounger, Pearl was wondering how a guy like Galin would act if he were involved with another woman, having a hot affair. He might act suspiciously around his wife, even a guy his age, with his experience and the elbows and who knew what else he’d rubbed over the years. Retired narc in love. And secretly loving the danger. Missing the danger.
“Anxious how?” Fedderman asked.
“I didn’t say—“
“Elated?” Pearl asked.
The widow’s head snapped around. She’d known what Pearl was thinking, and had to admit she might be right.
“Elated,” she said in a hoarse whisper. She’d almost strangled on the word. Then she made a face as if she didn’t like its taste and was considering spitting it out. Instead, she swallowed.
Quinn moved closer and gently patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. You’re with friends.”
She gazed up at him with moist, surgically widened eyes. “If Joe was elated, it was about something he didn’t share with me.”
Pearl stared at her, feeling a strange pang of pity.
It isn’t okay yet to hate your husband. Not with him so recently passed from this world of the living and still a resident of the morgue. It isn’t allowed.
“Nervous,” June said. She’d found a word, a concept, she could handle. “Yes, I suppose that’s the best way to put it. The last week or so before his…his death, Joe seemed nervous. Not afraid, but nervous.”
“Anxious,” Fedderman said again.
She looked at him, defeated. “Anxious,” she conceded.
Feds had worn her down.
Pearl showed a thin smile when the widow wasn’t looking.
Elated.
Interesting.
12
Jerry Dunn remembered a time in London when he’d sat in his hotel room awaiting the arrival of a prostitute. It had felt something like this.
It wasn’t morning then, as it was now. And he’d been sitting on the bed then, not in a chair as now. The chair was armless and uncomfortable, before a low wooden desk on which was a phone and a gold-embossed leather folder stuffed with flyers explaining the amenities at the Mayerling Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The Mayerling was almost plush enough to be called luxurious, with a vast blue-carpeted lobby and marbled steps leading to a long registration desk. Arranged about the lobby were half a dozen conversation groupings of high-quality cracked leather chairs and heavily grained wooden tables. The main elevators were almost invisible in a decorative wall of polished oak and veined marble. Beyond an array of potted plants was a discreet entrance to a lounge. Jerry had noted that the lounge also had a street door, so that you could enter or leave it without passing through the lobby. That was an important fact that Jerry logged in his memory.
Jerry had a good memory. A good mind. And he was damned good at writing advertising copy. He knew he looked like an average kind of guy—mid-forties, dark hair just beginning to thin, pleasant features, nice smile. Always up, was Jerry, at least on the outside. If they were casting him for movies he’d never be the leading man. He’d get the roles Tony Randall used to get, or Gig Young. Clean-cut, handsome guys, but not quite leading men. That was how Jerry figured people saw him, not quite ready for stardom, ever.
He glanced at his gold Rolex watch. It was an imitation Rolex with a quartz movement inside a gold-plated case. It didn’t cost as much as a real Rolex, of course, but unless you examined it carefully it could pass for the real thing.
The real thing.
Is that was this is about? What I have to find out? Am I the real thing?
It was amazing. The heightening anticipation was almost the same as with the London prostitute. Heather had been her name. The name she’d used, anyway. She’d looked something like Sami, Jerry’s wife. That had put Jerry off at first, but only at first.
He gazed out at the morning sunlight blasting through between the tall buildings across the street and making his eyes ache. It was still early. Sami would be back from driving the kids to school. Or maybe not. She might have stopped off somewhere, to pick up some groceries, or maybe to have a coffee at Starbucks with her friend Joan. Sami of suburbia.
Jerry made a soft, snorting sound. He shouldn’t feel that way, he knew. He should like their life out in the burbs. He did like it. And where else were you going to raise kids? Not in this shitpot city. The things that happened here…
He laughed nervously. You should talk.
The room was cool enough, but he realized he was perspiring.
Damn that sun! They oughta tint those windows.
He stood up, walked over, and closed the heavy drapes just enough to block the direct light. Then he sat down again at the desk and thought about Sami, putting her in Starbucks, seated at a table sipping a mocha latte, a medium one, or whatever Starbucks was calling medium these days. Maybe leisurely leafing through a newspaper, browsing for sales.
She thought he was at an advertising convention in Los Angeles. The convenient thing was that there actually was an advertising convention in that city at the time of Jerry’s stay in New York, and his firm of Fleishman and Gilliam was represented. Mathers was there. The Beave would cover for him if Sami did happen to phone L.A. The Beave would tell Sami her husband was on a side trip with some reps, or off to some other place where he couldn’t be reached. Sure, he’d tell Jerry to call her when he saw him. Might not be right away, though, since the convention hotel was overbooked and Jerry was at another hotel a few blocks away.
Jerry smiled. The Beave would think of something, and would know how to elaborate on his lie so it would be believable. Most of the other people from the firm would do the same. The guys, anyway. They were used to covering for ol’ Jer’. They’d figure he was off on another of his sexual escapades and provide a good story for Sami, stay in tight with him. They knew Jerry might be called upon to do the same for them someday. Those advertising conventions were fuck-fests. Some of them, anyway.