Now Mitzi was one of those few. Seeing it had, in a way, been exhilarating. In another way, disturbing. Whatever it was, it had sure put the cap on comedy.
She picked up her pace and walked toward one of the park exits, unable to shake the image of the large dark bird suddenly appearing and deftly using its powerful wings to entrap the pigeon while it gained a grip and managed to lift off with its stunned prey. She couldn’t get over how it had all happened so abruptly, disturbing nothing around it, and then it was over. It was the way fate sometimes dealt with people.
She understood then what was making her uneasy. The strike of the falcon seemed so incongruous as to be prophetic. She had seen this rare and startling sight. Mustn’t that mean something? Hadn’t she somehow been chosen?
Don’t be so childish and self-absorbed. Everything that happens to you doesn’t have to be infused with hidden meaning and great gravity. God, fate, whoever, whatever doesn’t telegraph his, her, its moves. Prophecy before tragedy? Ask the pigeon.
The oversized leather boots she was wearing were starting to give her a blister. Mitzi concentrated on that. It was a real and imminent problem.
She walked more carefully on the hot pavement, scrunching up her toes and trying to keep the boots from rubbing, as she left the square and made her way toward her subway stop. On the subway she was still trying to put the incident with the pigeon out of her mind.
But she couldn’t.
She knew she’d probably dream about it tonight.
But she wouldn’t.
69
Pearl hadn’t slept more than an hour straight last night. This was insane. She was torturing herself. She knew it had to end, and only she could end it.
Finally she’d worked up the courage to read Dr. Eichmann’s pathology report.
She sat on the sofa with a knife she’d gotten from the kitchen to use as a letter opener. But when she inserted the narrow blade into the corner of the envelope, the flap popped open of its own accord. It had been barely sealed.
How dare they send a document like this in a way that allows anyone to read it!
Had someone read it?
In her anger Pearl imagined some ham-handed postal employee noticing the unsealed flap and checking to see if there might be money in the envelope. Then, disappointed, reading the results of her biopsy. Sharing the information with fellow employees, all of them making a big joke of it.
Calm down, idiot!
Postal employees were no more likely than cops to behave that way. And the envelope was sealed, only lightly. It didn’t appear to have been tampered with, and probably had found its way, like thousands—millions—of letters, to its proper recipient unread.
She withdrew the single white sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it. Held it in a trembling hand and read…
She couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes skipped from line to line, from checked box to checked box, always focusing on the word benign.
Breathing more easily than she had for weeks, she leaned back in the sofa cushions and looked at the ceiling, saying the word aloud: “Benign.”
She read the pathology report again. And again. Each time liberated her anew. It was actually true that the mole had been benign, had been…a beauty mark.
Yes, a beauty mark!
But something was impinging on her binge of relief, on her new freedom from impending fatal illness, and it didn’t take Pearl long to figure out what it was.
She felt herself getting angry. Those, those, those…she would never be able to forgive her mother, Mrs. Kahn, and most of all that bastard Milton Kahn, for deliberately frightening her about the mole.
About death.
She knew exactly what she would do. She’d make copies of this pathology report, with the word benign underlined wherever it appeared. She would mail copies to her mother, to Mrs. Kahn, and to Milton Kahn.
She would do it immediately.
Then, maybe, she’d feel better.
Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and made her jump. She pulled it out, flipped it open, and saw that Quinn was calling her.
“Pearl,” he said, when she’d made the connection and said hello, “Feds isn’t coming by for you this morning. He’s going to meet with Vitali and Mishkin alone. I’m on the way to pick you up. Should be there in about five minutes.”
“This a date?” she asked. Why am I always such a wise ass?
“Yeah. We’re gonna double with Renz and Helen the profiler.”
“I’m trying to imagine them as a romantic couple,” Pearl said.
“Don’t. Please. Just be ready.”
“Okay. I’ll be waiting out front.”
“You read the Times this morning?”
“No. I usually get one out of a machine.”
“Well, you can read mine on the way to see Renz.”
Pearl felt her pulse pick up. Her anger, the pathology report, were forgotten. “Something moving?”
“Something’s moving,” Quinn said, and ended the conversation.
Renz, in his overheated, tobacco-scented office, had today’s Times lying on his desk, flipped to the open letter from the .25-Caliber Killer to Quinn.
The reply to Quinn’s letter was short and to the point:
Captain Quinn:
What is happening now in this city isn’t hunting, isn’t dueling, isn’t sport. It is murder. We are both civilized men. We are both, in our own ways, hunters. As it was probably destined to do since the beginning, our contest has developed into a mutual hunt. In the stalking of truly dangerous game, hunter and prey become indistinguishable. You will soon receive a package from me. It contains a .25-caliber Springbok revolver. We both know what it means.
I wish you luck.
The .25-Caliber Killer
Renz passed copies of the page around so that everyone else in the office—Quinn, Pearl, Vitali, Mishkin, and Helen the profiler—could read it, whether for the first time or again.
Helen smiled and said, “It worked.”
Renz looked at Quinn from behind his desk. “Are you ready for this?”
“Of course I am.”
“You shouldn’t do this, Quinn,” Pearl said, ignoring the astounded look Renz gave her.
“We didn’t set this up to waste time,” Renz said. “He has to do it, for his own reasons.”
“He’s right,” Quinn said. “And I have to do it without NYPD protection the killer might spot. This is an opportunity we can’t risk screwing up.”
“You’re playing a game with your life, Quinn!”
“It’s a game I’m forced to play.”
Pearl gave him a dark, probing stare. “This is some kind of honor thing with you, right?”
“Not entirely.”
“Don’t take the honor part of it lightly,” Helen told Pearl.
Pearl ignored her. “Your job is to catch a killer, Quinn, not risk your life in some archaic macho game that you have to play by the rules.”
“It amounts to the same thing, Pearl. If the killer realizes I’m not playing the game honestly, he’ll simply back off and continue what he’s been doing. I have to do this on the up and up with him, and alone.”
“That’s how it is, Pearl,” Renz said.
Pearl looked at Sal Vitali, who shrugged. His partner Mishkin did the same.
“Bullshit! Mano-a-mano bullshit!” Pearl said. She looked at Renz appealingly. “At least give him some protection.”
“I can’t do that,” Renz said. “If protection was spotted this would all be for nothing.”