over the phone to detectives they’d only recently met.
“Hold on a minute,” she said.
Quinn waited, the phone pressed to his ear, hearing unintelligible voices in the background on the other end of the connection.
Linda’s voice came back on. “My friend from ballistics just gave me the report on the bullet. It was fired by the same gun that killed the other victims. So there’s something else you know for sure. You wanna meet someplace for coffee?”
“Pardon?”
“You don’t need a pardon; you’re a cop. I’m asking you out on a date. You’re not exactly a real NYPD cop, and even if you were, you’d be my superior officer, so it wouldn’t be sexual harassment. A yes or no’ll do.”
Quinn got over his surprise and thought, what the hell. Laughed. “It’s a yes, Linda. We’ll meet somewhere for drinks.”
“I did say coffee.”
Quinn sensed that he’d tweaked a nerve. “Sure. Coffee it is.”
“I used to drink alcohol for nonmedicinal purposes. I’ll be up front about that.”
“You’ve got lots of company if you used to have a drinking problem,” Quinn said, thinking immediately that he shouldn’t have told her that. She hadn’t exactly said she’d had a problem.
“Nobody ‘used to have’ a drinking problem, Captain Quinn. I’ve been dry for over two years and intend to stay that way.”
“It’s just Quinn, Linda. Tonight at the Lotus Diner on Amsterdam suit you?”
“Sure does. I know where it is. About seven?”
“Let’s make it six. We might have coffee, then decide to go out for dinner.”
“We’ve got a date, Quinn.”
Quinn was smiling. Then he remembered this was an official conversation. “Anything else about the victim, Doctor?”
“She didn’t drown.”
A date, Quinn thought, staring at the phone’s tiny blank screen. What unsettled him somewhat wasn’t that Linda Chavesky had come on to him. In his early fifties, he was still at least presentable enough to be in the game. What struck him was that not once during his conversation with Linda had he thought about Pearl.
He knew he was as obsessive and stubborn, as Pearl often told him he was, but even the most determined person finally got tired of knocking on a door and not getting an answer, of waiting patiently and then waiting some more.
Maybe Pearl had finally convinced him that any possibility of them ever being in a loving relationship again was gone forever. Possibly she was right and that was how it should be, accepted by both of them and not just her.
Or maybe he was simply giving up hope.
And grasping for more hope.
15
Jill had settled on E-Bliss.org.
She’d checked out several of the matchmaking services on the Internet, limiting them to those based in or serving New York City. There was no shortage of them, especially if you had some sort of exotic sexual preference. A few of them seemed respectable if not downright staid. It was among those that she’d found E-Bliss.org. She’d carefully filled out its online questionnaire for its personality profile. She’d had a flattering photo, a head shot from a wedding she’d attended a few years ago back home, already on her hard drive. She’d attached the jpeg along with the filled-out, surprisingly detailed questionnaire, then put it on “Mail Waiting to Be Sent” and given herself two days to reconsider.
Two days later, to the hour, she’d drawn a deep breath and clicked her computer’s mouse on SEND.
Almost immediately she’d received an e-mail telling her what a wise choice she’d made, how wonderful she appeared in her photograph, how perfect was her personality profile. She could be assured that there were many suitable males who would request a meeting with her. She could establish a password and browse through profiles of potential partners or, as most clients did, wait for the experts at E-Bliss.org to use their comprehensive database and special software to match her with the best possible choice.
Jill didn’t hesitate before moving her computer’s cursor to the button requesting expert matchmaking. That was what she was paying for on her Visa card. God knew she hadn’t done well on her own when it came to attracting and choosing among men. Let the experts do it for her. If they could design her closet and scrapbook, they could design her life. She clicked the mouse and immediately felt relieved. She’d made her choice and followed through.
Time to wait, and at that she had become an expert.
They sat in a window booth in the Lotus Diner, by chance Quinn’s favorite booth, where he often had breakfast and read the papers over coffee. Daylight was battling dusk, and the sidewalks were still crowded. The steady stream of pedestrians hurrying past were mostly unaware of Quinn and Linda Chavesky, though they were at times less than a foot away on the other side of thick plate glass.
Quinn and Linda were ill at ease with each other at first, but by their second cup of coffee were somewhat more open. Quinn liked Linda, and he sensed that she liked him. Dressed in slacks and a loose-fitting yellow blouse, with her hair calculatingly mussed and a gold chain necklace, she seemed much more attractive than she had at the earlier crime scene. The light they were sitting in didn’t do her any favors, and she didn’t need any. Judging by the crows-feet just beginning to show at the corners of her intelligent blue eyes, Quinn guessed her to be in her early forties. That was the principal thing about her, he thought, her obvious intelligence. And a subtle sadness born of hard experience. Quinn recognized that expression; he’d seen it often in the mirror. She had some kind of makeup on this evening that mostly disguised the redness of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
“Rosacea,” she said, smiling at him. She’d noticed him staring.
“Pardon?”
“It’s a hereditary affliction that causes a kind of redness in a ring pattern on the face. At times it makes me look something like a raccoon.”
“I wasn’t thinking raccoon,” Quinn assured her, taking a sip of coffee.
“Also makes me look like a drunk, since alcoholics sometimes have the same look from ruptured capillaries.”
“Obviously, you’re not a drunk.”
“Well, I am, but a dry drunk. I intend to stay that way.”
“I had my own go-round with the bottle a few years ago,” Quinn said. “When I had the problem in the department and my wife left me.”
“When things finally worked out at least somewhat for you, did you have trouble quitting?”
“Not really. I don’t think it ever became a problem in itself. And I still have a drink now and then.”
“There’s the difference between you and friends of Bill, like me.”
They
