glanced over at her, wondering if she was going to answer her call.
Feeling that she had little choice, Pearl made the connection. “Officer Kasner.” Let her mother know she was working. She glanced at Quinn, who was staring straight ahead. Was he smiling? Was that bastard smiling?
“It’s your mother, Pearl,” came the strident voice from the phone. Pearl didn’t want to hear it, yet she had to press the tiny phone close to her ear so Quinn and Fedderman couldn’t overhear.
“Pearl? Is that you, dear?”
“Yes.” Keep it terse and simple. Brief.
“I called your apartment, dear, and got your machine. Such a world since we started using machines to answer our phones. Maybe the phones could just talk to each other. Don’t you ever check your messages?”
“Sometimes.” Brief.
“Maybe your machine erases mine. What I wondered, dear, is if you and Milton Kahn left each other on good terms.”
Huh?
“I mean, after last night,” her mother said.
What? This was unacceptable. “Who told you? What do you mean?” Unacceptable!
“That’s two questions, dear.”
“Then answer them both.”
“Don’t snap, Pearl. That’s very rude. Mrs. Kahn told me. And why not? It’s no secret you and her nephew Milton are hotsy-totsy.”
Pearl had a pretty good idea where Mrs. Kahn had gotten her information. She fell silent, noticing Quinn watching her from the corner of his eye. “Some things you don’t talk about,” Pearl said.
“Don’t you know I agree with you, dear? But these were extraordinary circumstances. Mrs. Kahn tells me Milton is worried sick about you. About your personal safety. They—Mrs. Kahn and wonderful Milton—thought I should talk to you about it.”
Wonderful Milton’s going to learn to keep his mouth shut. “I appreciate his concern, but it’s really none of his business. Or the business of whomever he might have told.”
“The people who love you, darling Pearl, they’re concerned. What else do we have in this world where everything, including your own mother, will someday turn to dust? Someday soon, I might add in all sincerity, feeling more and more distressed every day as I do here in this nursing home hell.”
“Assisted living. It’s not a nursing home. Assisted-living apartments with televisions, comfortable beds, kitchens, private baths, recliners, all the food you can eat—including the pot roast you like so much. People who were on The Lawrence Welk Show come there to perform. There are game rooms, buses to Atlantic City. They’re assisted-living apartments.”
“Death’s waiting rooms, dear.”
Pearl was seething. “I think not.” She so yearned to terminate this conversation. “Is that all you wanted? If so, I’m busy.”
“You’re being snappish again.”
“I mean to be.”
“What I want is for you to consider the future, Pearl. Milton and a home—and children, God willing. A place without killers and guns and knives and rap talk. There are other jobs, Pearl. Milton said to Mrs. Kahn that you could work as his receptionist. It would be safe there. He wants you off the streets, Pearl. We all do. The people who—”
“Yeah, yeah. This is my job.”
“What I’m saying, Pearl, is there are other jobs.”
Like dermatologist receptionist.
Quinn blasted the horn and cursed at a battered, dusty cab that had cut him off.
“Is that that nice Mr. Quinn I hear, Pearl?”
“The same.”
“Such a good man. A protector and a provider. You should feel blessed, Pearl. You have your choice between two good men—one a mensch policeman retired with a generous pension, and the other a medical doctor, no less.”
“An obsessive maniac and a weasel.”
“What?” Quinn asked.
“I was talking into the phone.”
“What, dear?”
“I have to end this conversation, really.”
Quinn blasted the horn again, still focused on the cab that had cut him off. The driver extended his arm out the window and raised his middle finger.
Quinn leaned on the horn again. “If we had time I’d pull that bastard over.”
“We’ve got time,” Fedderman said from the backseat. “Lady we’re going to see is dead.”
“Look at that asshole, Feds!”
“Cabbies think they own the road like cops,” Fedderman said.
“Screw a buncha cabbies.”
“Pearl? Dear?”
“I need to go now. Sorry.”
Pearl broke the connection and sat seething over weasel Milton yammering his business to his motormouthed aunt.
What was wrong with the world?
“Was that your mother?” Quinn asked, seeing clear pavement ahead and goosing the car to higher speed.
“How’d you guess?” Pearl asked.
“Shoulda told her I said hi.”
“I should have, since she thinks you’re God.”
“Shoulda told her hi from me, too,” Fedderman said from the backseat.
“She thinks you’re a prick,” Pearl said.
The passageway where the dusty green Dumpster squatted like a military tank without a gun was blocked off at both ends with yellow crime scene tape. CSU techs were swarming busily about the scene with their luminol, magnifiers, tweezers, and plastic evidence bags. Tagging and bagging. The photographer was finished and tinkering with her equipment. Nobody seemed to want to look directly at the pale, waxy flesh object beside the Dumpster.
Quinn glanced around and didn’t see Nift. Maybe the Napoleonic little pest had come and gone.
Then a woman wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those vests with a thousand pockets approached. She was in her forties and had short brown hair in a practical cut, a trim body, and a sweet, lined face that was slightly red around the nose and eyes, as if she had rosacea. She was carrying a black medical bag.
“Detective Quinn?”
He admitted it.
