Mustn’t get them confused, he cautioned himself with a smile.
My God! Helen and Zoe are right. At least a part of me is enjoying this.
Though he didn’t think he was being followed, the tension was still there. His back muscles were tight, and his antennae were out for anything unusual, anything that might spell danger. He was moving through the city in a kind of hyperawareness. It was a strain that would eventually take its toll.
The trick, he soon realized, was to stay among people, but not so many that they provided cover to fire from and then escape into.
Stop thinking defensively. You be the one to use crowds for cover, to look for the killer and apprehend him, to take him down if necessary without killing anyone else.
Quinn was just beginning to realize how difficult that would be.
He didn’t want to keep pounding the pavement wearing himself out, and just in case he was at the moment being stalked, he didn’t want to become a still target, whatever the time.
On First Avenue he saw a bus preparing to stop for a knot of people standing in front of a bank. At the last second, he boarded and fed in his change. He found a seat away from the window, near the back of the bus, and settled in for his ride uptown.
The roar of the bus’s engine, the rhythm of accelerating and stopping, allowed him to relax. Manhattan was a big island. It wouldn’t be easy for hunter and prey to come together. The killer would be waiting and watching at points where his quarry might show—workplace, apartment, the near proximities of friends and associates, known haunts. That was part of the problem. Quinn knew practically nothing about his prey, and didn’t know how much his prey knew about him. He was beginning to catch on as to how this game was played. He would at some point have to actively hunt. Hunter could become prey in an instant.
He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock.
He was fair game.
74
Dr. Alfred Beeker’s blond assistant Beatrice was on duty behind her desk in the anteroom when Quinn arrived at the doctor’s Park Avenue office. She was the only one in the room. A mug of coffee and a half-eaten cinnamon roll sat on a white paper napkin on her desk. The whole place smelled like cinnamon.
She looked up at Quinn and appeared frightened. Had Beeker told her about Quinn? Was Beatrice herself part of the S&M lifestyle that Beeker embraced?
“Is Doctor Beeker in?” Quinn asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “the doctor’s with a patient.” Doing a nice job of pretending not to remember Quinn.
“In his office?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to look in on him.”
Now Beatrice looked alarmed. Beeker must have put a word in her ear about Quinn. She glanced back at the door, then at Quinn, weighing her chances of stopping him from barging in on Beeker and not liking them.
“I need to see him,” Quinn said.
“I told you, he’s—”
“You don’t understand,” Quinn said. “I only want to see him. I won’t even say hello, if you don’t want me to.”
She stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Quinn admired her spunk.
“I’m not going to go away until I see him,” Quinn said. “Which way would be less all-around trouble? If you called in and asked him to step out here for a moment, or if I barged in while he’s in the middle of a session with a patient?”
“What if I call the police?”
“You remember me, dear. The police?” He showed her his shield, though he was sure she already knew who he was.
“Why didn’t you say in the beginning this was police business?”
“I wanted to see how cooperative you’d be.”
“I’d say you just like to play games,” she said. Not angrily, though.
“You’ve got me there.”
She sat back down, plucked the receiver from her desk phone, and pushed a button. Then she turned her back on Quinn and talked softly enough that he couldn’t understand her.
A few seconds after she’d hung up, the large door on the wall behind the reception desk opened, and Beeker stepped into the anteroom. He glared at Quinn, and his face turned a mottled red. Plenty angry, Dr. Alfred Beeker. Again, though, Quinn noted the doctor was unafraid.
As he stood looking at Beeker, Quinn became acutely aware of the compact revolver in his pocket. In an odd way it wasn’t at all like the gun he usually carried holstered, his old police special revolver. That gun was used to maintain order, to protect people, or to use in self-defense. This gun was for a separate and distinct purpose—for stalking and killing another human being. Quinn couldn’t help imagining Beeker in his black leather outfit, standing and holding a whip, with Zoe…
“Make this fast,” Beeker said.
I’d love to.
Beatrice took a large bite of cinnamon roll. It released a surge of sweet scent in the office.
Quinn nodded to Beeker, smiled and nodded to Beatrice, then turned and walked out the door.
He’d learned what he wanted to know. The doctor was in.
And not outside in the city streets, stalking him.
75
Quinn soon learned the rhythm of the hunt.
He moved along the sidewalk at the speed of pedestrian traffic. The knack was in being careful to stay near other people, but at the same time avoid becoming part of a crowd that might shield the killer’s approach. He knew that a larger crowd tended only to mean more confused and conflicting witnesses. After shooting him, the killer might even become part of the swarm of onlookers.
It was no good to think of yourself as only the prey. Quinn knew that to survive he’d sometimes have to become the hunter. He crossed streets often, and every half hour or so doubled back. Sometimes he’d find a concealing doorway, or some other quiet corner from which he could observe. There he would wait to see who was walking in his wake. He had no idea what his pursuer looked like. What he wanted was to see the same man twice, to judge his bearing and attitude. He was pretty sure he was being followed, and that he’d be able to spot the killer. At that point Quinn would become the stalker. Quinn figured he had a chance here. He was good at spotting tails, and at shaking them. Why not at arresting them?
Or, if necessary, at killing one of them?
In truth he was almost positive that was what he’d have to do, that this was a serious game played to the death.
But the morning wore on, and whoever was following Quinn—if there was someone following him—remained anonymous and all the more dangerous.
It was almost eleven o’clock when Quinn decided he should have lunch. He’d stop at a diner, someplace he’d never been before, where it couldn’t be predicted he would go. The noon lunch crowd was still an hour away, so the restaurants shouldn’t be crowded yet. He could get a table or booth where he’d be facing the door, away from a window through which he might be seen, or even shot.
It all seemed so incongruous at that moment. So unreal. The morning, the street, the city seemed so normal. Was he really taking part in some madman’s deadly game?
He knew that kind of thinking could be like an opiate, dulling alertness. He was in a game, all right. A hunt. And he’d damned well better remember it.
About a hundred feet ahead, a knot of pedestrians waited at an intersection. People were standing on and just off the curb, impatient for the light to change so they could cross. Quinn thought about hurrying to join them, then became aware that his right shoelace had come untied and was flopping around. He was passing a low stone wall running parallel to the office building on his right, and he didn’t want to catch up to the people at the corner too fast. It was a good time to tie the shoelace.