Mister X by John Lutz Page B

investigation and then gave them copies of whatever paperwork there was, including the clipping files given to them by Chrissie Keller—if the woman had been Chrissie Keller. Vitali and Mishkin had turned copies of the murder books over to Quinn and Associates. Everyone had been polite and professional, and nothing had really changed except that there were two more warm bodies on the case, representing Harley Renz’s political ass-covering. Nobody knew any more after the meeting than before.
    “At least,” Harold Mishkin had said from under his brushy, graying mustache, “we’re all getting paid. I mean, with the economy and all.”
    “That’s something,” Quinn had said, exchanging glances with Sal Vitali, who was grinning.
    “Harold always takes the practical view,” Vitali said.
    Pearl couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “It isn’t practical to have a client we can’t find, while we’re investigating murders that happened over five years ago, committed by a killer who, for all we know, is dead or living in another city.”
    “What?” Vitali growled in his gravel-pan voice. “You wanna quit?”
    Pearl sighed. “Can’t.”
    “The economy,” Mishkin said.
    “Not the economy,” Pearl said.
    Vitali winked at her and shrugged. “We soldier on.”
    “Only practical thing to do,” Quinn said, standing up.
    And the meeting was over.
    He watched his detectives trail from the office. They looked eager but tired. They knew that most of the case, the hardest part, still lay ahead of them. Phase two of the investigation had begun. It was one of those forks in the road nobody would consider significant until they looked back at it while driving over a cliff.

PART II
    From their folded mates they wander far,
    Their ways seem harsh and wild:
    They follow the beck of a baleful star,
    Their paths are dream beguiled.
    —R ICHARD F RANCIS B URTON , “Black Sheep”

20
    Pearl stopped and stood on the curb, waiting for a traffic light to flash the walk signal. Her gaze fell on a glowing sign in a window across the street: HITS AND MRS . She’d been walking past the place forever and noticed now for the first time that it was a lounge. Its wide front window was dark because of narrow-slatted blinds behind it. The only thing displayed in the window was the glowing red sign.
    She was more thirsty than hungry, and she’d had enough lack of progress for one day. Hits and Mrs. looked respectable enough, maybe because it was next to Love Blooms, a florist specializing in weddings. Pearl wondered if she was the only one who saw a connection between the two businesses. Might they be in cahoots?
    After the meeting with Vitali and Mishkin, featuring Quinn’s stoicism and Fedderman’s usual bullshit, she decided she owed herself a drink. She changed direction and crossed the intersection at a ninety-degree angle to her previous course, not quite beating the light.
    A car horn blared at her, and voices shouted something indecipherable. Pearl didn’t bother to look, but raised her middle finger in the general direction of the racket.
    Inside, Hits and Mrs. was softly lighted, with the long bar on the right and booths on the left and in back. Indirect lighting glowed from sconces that vaguely resembled seashells. There were fox-hunting scenes on the paneled walls, and the stools and booths were upholstered in dark green leather or vinyl. About half the booths were occupied, as were three of the bar stools. It seemed all in all a sheltering boozy place where people went after dinner or the theater, or simply to unwind. Everyone looked reasonably like an upright citizen.
    Pearl sat on a stool about halfway down the bar, and a too-handsome red-vested bartender with the air of an out-of-work actor sauntered down and took her order for a draft Heineken, every move a pose. Pearl thought, Guys like you are all over this city, their numbers exceeded only by cockroaches.
    When her draft beer arrived, she took a long drink from the frosty