He stumbled toward the door, bracing himself against the wall again, leaving more smudge marks, brushing a framed photo of the New York skyline and knocking every building crooked. He managed to open the door and half fell through it, and somehow closed it behind him.
The three detectives stared after him.
“There goes a walking powder keg,” Fedderman said.
“Too bad we don’t have an umbrella stand,” Pearl said. “He could have knocked that over, too.”
“So what was Socrates’s Cavern?” Pearl asked.
“It was on the West Side,” Fedderman said. “All voluntary, or so they said. Bad girls and boys in cages, bondage and discipline, flogging.” He finished stirring the coffee he’d gotten, along with a fresh cup for Pearl, and laid the spoon on a napkin alongside the brewer. “Some weird shit went on there, games for consenting adults. Even more than that, was the rumor. Believe the whispers and they were into some heavy action.”
“You talk like you were there,” Pearl said.
“I was. Not long before the place closed in the seventies. An assault call. But when we got there we couldn’t find a victim. Well, I mean about half the people we talked to were victims. A good percentage of them wanted to be handcuffed and taken in just for the experience. I had a young partner, DeLancy. He asked some dominatrix dolled up in black leather what a golden shower was. They started having fun with him, and he didn’t seem to mind. We left without arresting anybody.”
Pearl leaned back in her chair, away from her computer that by some miracle Lido hadn’t knocked off the desk. “So what did you think, Feds? I mean, you think the sex devil was at work there big-time?”
“My sense of the thing is that the same behavior that was going on there is still going on, only then it was more…”
“More intellectual,” Quinn said. “That gave it an air of semi-respectability and upper-class clientele.”
“Like the Playboy Clubs?” Pearl asked.
“Like the Playboy Clubs with handcuffs and whips,” Quinn said.
“Is it possible our killer just happens to be named Philip Wharkin?”
“And just happened to write his name in blood on the bathroom mirror?” Fedderman asked.
“More likely,” Quinn said, “he’s somebody who knows who Philip Wharkin was and is using the name. Fashioning himself after Wharkin, maybe as a way to rationalize his crimes.”
“Maybe there’s a new, modern version of Socrates’s Cavern,” Fedderman said, “and we’re just now learning about it.”
“Or that’s what he wants us to think,” Pearl said.
“I’m halfway there,” Fedderman said, “thinking that’s what it is.”
“Wishful thinking,” Pearl said scornfully. “And not with the part of you where you wear your hat.”
Fedderman ignored her. “I remember when we raided Socrates’s Cavern. There were women there leading men around on leashes.”
“DeLancy,” Quinn said.
“Yeah. My old partner. Freddy DeLancy.”
“As I remember, he got tangled up with a woman from Socrates’s Cavern. Broke enough regulations they had to make up new ones to cover what he was doing. He left the NYPD and moved out to California.”
“Became a nudist,” Fedderman said. “The club must have influenced him.”
“That’s not really the same thing,” Pearl said. “Socrates’s Cavern and a nudist colony.”
“Oh, DeLancy didn’t belong to any kinda colony. He was what you’d call a lone nudist, and in public places where it wasn’t a good idea. Like on buses.”
“Back to the point,” Pearl said, “we’ve got what might be a modern version of Socrates’s Cavern, or we got a nut operating on his own who knows about the club and is imitating it.”
“Or he’s not so nuts and wants us to think there’s a new Socrates’s Cavern,” Quinn said.
Fedderman said, “I’m thinking there is a new one.”
“You’re hoping,” Pearl said.
“So what if I am? Detective work can be interesting sometimes, right?”
“You’re easily led.”
“Me and DeLancy,” Fedderman said.
Pearl said. “I don’t like to think about it. Or maybe I do.”
9
Nora Noon stood near her booth inside the brick school building on the West Side, where the weekly flea market was held. It was warm and drizzling beyond the door at the end of the long corridor, slightly cooler but dry inside the school.
The rain was bad for the market in general, where most of the antique and specialty booths were lined up out in the schoolyard. But for Nora it wasn’t bad at all. The small woman with the big, good-looking guy had strolled past her booth three times, the woman eyeing a one-of-a-kind cotton wrap designed and created by Nora. She knew what the woman was thinking: She and Nora were about the same size, and both of them quite shapely, so if Nora sewed something that looked good on her, Nora, it would look good on most women Nora’s size and build.
The woman and the good-looking guy slowed and approached the booth. The guy gave Nora the up-and-down glance she knew so well, but she didn’t mind. Hell, she was used to it and kind of liked it, now that she was pushing thirty. A silent compliment.
Standing at Nora’s display of light coats, the good-looking guy kept his distance while the small woman reached out and stroked a light gray cashmere and cotton creation with a matching sash and scarf that doubled as a collar. She was quite pretty up close, with blond hair and dark roots, like Nora’s hair, and almost startlingly beautiful dark eyes, unlike Nora’s blue eyes. The woman fondled the label.
“This is you?” she asked. “ ‘Nora N.?’ ”
Nora smiled and nodded.
“You have a shop?” the good-looking guy asked, having moved a few steps closer. He was broad-shouldered and had a neatly trimmed gray beard.
“I have places where I display,” Nora said. “Sometimes I’m my own model.”
The good-looking guy smiled. He was something for as old as he must be. His wife, or whatever she was, looked twenty years younger.
“I work in a space near where I live in the Village, and I sell at places like this and over the Internet. Everything is one of a kind, and I design for real people, not six-foot, onehundred-twenty-pound models.”
“With eating disorders,” the good-looking guy said.
Nora smiled. “Sometimes.”
“I sure like this,” the small woman with the dark eyes said, slipping into the coat. And she should, Nora thought. It looked great on her.
“Made for you,” Nora said, “even though we haven’t met until today.”
They played out the familiar scene then, the small woman being reassured by Nora and the good-looking guy that yes, she looked terrific in the coat.
And you do look great, Nora thought. It would be a pleasure to sell to this woman. She thought back over the work that went into the coat’s design, and then the hours getting the cut and stitching just right. She knew the woman was going to buy the coat. Right now, Nora felt so good about what she was doing. She was in the right business and would make a major go of it. Someday the Nora N. brand would sell to the major buyers, be in the finest stores. No doubt about it, if she just kept working. And she would keep working; she was getting better and better at the design end of the business, and developing an accurate sense of what would sell.
“How much is it?” the good-looking guy asked. He asked it like a man ready to be generous to his lady.
“Three hundred dollars,” Nora said.
The shapely dark-eyed woman, looking sexy as hell in the soon-to-be hers coat, gave him a look calculated to melt. The good-looking guy shook his head and smiled in a way that made Nora like him. “Okay by me, if it’s what you want.”
That was it. The guy had too much class to try to talk her down; he knew the coat was a bargain at three hundred.
Nora gave him a smile. You’ve got faith in the Nora N. brand, too.
The good-looking guy paid with Visa, and Nora watched the happy couple walk away, the small, shapely woman clutching the coat in its plastic bag tight to her side.