Quinn decided the super couldn’t be faking it. Vomiting would certainly add to his credibility, but Quinn had learned how to read people like Fred, and figured the henpecked super had never killed anyone. Quinn didn’t need to see any real regurgitation to be convinced.

The queasy super’s story seemed simple and honest enough. Quinn thanked him and his wife and stood up, letting them know the interview was over. Pearl left a card on the coffee table, snapping it down as if it were a high card out of a deck, and said, “Call us anytime.”

Fred stayed seated, still obviously upset by walking in on a butchered woman who had been a tenant and at least something of a friend. An artsy friend at that.

“Thanks both of you for your help,” Quinn said. He meant it; he had seen a lot of what it was like when someone’s life intersected suddenly and bloodily with the dead.

Serri stood, tucked the card in a pocket, and escorted them to the door.

“It’s jarring to discover a dead body,” Pearl said. “Especially when it’s a murder victim. Sometimes a session with a professional counselor can help. Jeanine Carson’s death seems to have hit your husband hard.”

“Like a rocket-propelled grenade,” Serri Charleston said. Still in the Middle East.

“Those things make a lot of noise, cover up a lot of other noises,” Quinn said.

Leaving her to wonder.

25

Quinn wished the mayor smoked cigars. Then he, Quinn, wouldn’t have to wonder so much, be so uneasy. He could never remember when and where cigar smoking was legal in New York. Or what the penalty was if you were caught puffing illegally. Death, probably. If not by lethal injection, then from the cigar.

So here Quinn was, walking to the office from a subway stop that disgorged its passengers in a neighborhood just now being gentrified. Amid the paint fumes, the rancid scent of ages-old plaster dust, the stench of trash and garbage still curbside for pickup, the odorous assault of exhaust fumes, strolled Quinn with his offending cigar.

The horrified and angry glances of a cluster of passersby indicated to Quinn that he was probably breaking the law. He puffed on.

Quinn’s cell phone rang. Nothing tricky about it—just the regular, well-worn repetitive ring that had presaged so many meaningful conversations since Alexander Graham Bell had turned the device loose on society.

It took Quinn a few seconds to wrestle the thing out of his pants pocket.

He squinted down at the tiny illuminated screen. Renz was calling.

“What’ve we got, Harley?” Quinn asked, veering toward a low brick wall in front of a vacant-looking stone building.

“A break,” Renz said.

Quinn sat down on the wall and exhaled cigar smoke.

“Are you smoking one of your Cubans?” Renz asked. Casually, as if an admission of guilt might slip smoothly out of Quinn.

“Cuban what?” Quinn asked, with an inner smile.

“Never mind.”

“So what’s the break?”

“We found Jeanine Carson’s cell phone tucked down between the cushions of her sofa. The sofa was the kind that opened and became a bed, so the phone slid down out of sight in the mechanism.”

Quinn felt his interest quicken. “Anything helpful on it?”

“Maybe. There were a lot of calls to the phone from Andria Bell’s number.”

“Any recorded messages?”

“ ’Fraid not. The last such call was made from LaGuardia airport the morning of Andria’s death and the mass murders at the Fairchild Hotel. Another call that day, from Jeanine Carson’s phone, went to a Winston Castle.”

A new player?

“Is that a person or a place?” Quinn asked.

“Both, in a way. A guy named Winston Castle owns a restaurant called the Far Castle, on the Upper West Side. He runs the establishment, along with his wife Maria.”

“I don’t know the place,” Quinn said.

“It hasn’t been open all that long. One of those trendy theme restaurants. It’s been renovated to resemble a medieval castle, with towers, narrow vertical archers’ windows, concrete cornices, gargoyles, and a serene English garden where customers can dine among statuary and topiary. The garden was put in when the neighboring building, a closed lamp and fixture shop and showroom, collapsed and created an empty lot. Castle extended his long lease on both lots. Did it in such a way that the leaser receives a cut of restaurant profits.”

“You’re telling me this Winston Castle is a kinky businessman type.”

“Weaver went to the restaurant to size him up. She said phony stands out all over him.”

Quinn didn’t like the idea of Weaver running around without his supervision, but he knew there wasn’t much he could do about it. And he trusted her judgment.

“Anyway,” Renz continued, “there was enough space and rich enough soil to extend the garden. There’s even a miniature but baffling English hedge maze.”

Quinn was surprised. “A valuable piece of Manhattan real estate used for a garden and maze?”

“Yep. New York for you. When Castle is asked about selling it, he laughs and tells prospective buyers he’s planning on putting in a moat and alligators.”

Quinn looked across the street, where a Con Ed crew had arrived and had put up cones and sawhorses to divert traffic. Four husky guys wearing hard hats, swaggering around and striking poses as if they were on camera. And maybe they were. One of them was wrestling a jackhammer from the back of their dusty van.

“And Jeanine Carson talked to this guy on her phone the day Andria Bell died?”

“Talked to him or his wife.”

“Maybe she called to order takeout,” Quinn said. He took a silent pull on his cigar and exhaled carefully, turning his face away from the phone.

“You think I would have called you before checking that out?” Renz asked. He sounded genuinely injured. Weren’t they both pros here? He must be a pro—he was the goddamned commissioner.

“Sorry, Harley,” Quinn said, halfway meaning it. “I’ll get on this.”

“Whatever you come up with, let’s keep it under our hats for now.”

“By ‘our’ you mean only Q&A Investigations and you.”

“Correct, Quinn.”

“And Nancy Weaver?”

“Of course. She’s a great snoop. Got the balls of a cat burglar.”

“I don’t know that much about her anatomy,” Quinn said.

“You don’t?”

Quinn understood the incomprehension in Renz’s voice.

“That’s her reputation, Harley, not her anatomy.”

“Whatever works for you,” Renz said. He paused. “You absolutely sure you’re not smoking one of those Cubans?”

“Sure as sure can be,” Quinn lied.

“I know that tone, even over the phone. You could be lying to me about cigars and Weaver. Probably you’re batting at least five hundred.”

“You got an address on the Far Castle restaurant?” Quinn asked, steering the conversation away from cigars and Nancy Weaver and batting averages. There was already enough rumor and innuendo about the woman. It all seemed to overlook the fact that she was a damned good cop.

Renz gave Quinn the address, a block off Amsterdam.

“Your part of town,” Renz said. “Moats and alligators would fit right in.”

“My cigar smoke keeps alligators away,” Quinn said. “And for some women it’s an aphrodisiac.”

“You bastard! I knew it. You’re smoking a Cuban! You know damned well there’s a law against—”

Quinn broke the connection. He wondered if there were alligators in Cuba.

There must be, he decided.

26

After talking with Renz, Quinn walked back toward the office, unobtrusively smoking his Cuban cigar until it was a mere stub. He dropped it on the sidewalk, stepped on it with a crushing turn of sole, and deftly kicked it into the gutter.

A heavily perspiring woman in blue Lycra and walking a bicycle glared at him as if he’d just killed a puppy.