7

When asking that question, I deliberately omitted the word again, since it would just add humiliation to my hurt.

“Breaking up with you?” he said. “Are we even together? I don’t even know that much.”

I didn’t know, either. But whatever the right word was for what was between us, I had a feeling that it wasn’t together.

We’d slept with each other, but only once. The closest we’d ever come to going on a date was when he bought me a chili dog in the park on a cold December night. Since we’d met—no, since he’d first broken up with me—months at a time passed without any contact between us. Recently, we’d gone several weeks without even being on speaking terms.

Sounding frustrated, he said, “I have no idea what’s going on with us.”

“A few minutes ago, you called me your girlfriend.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them.

“I did?” He sounded puzzled.

Ouch. That hurt.

I decided not to pursue it. Instead I asked, “What exactly are you trying to say to me?”

“Good question.” He was silent for a moment. “I think there is something I’m trying to say, I just don’t know what. But, uh . . .”

“But?”

“I have the feeling that this isn’t a phone conversation.”

I frowned. “Yes, it is. We’re on the phone.”

“I mean, I think if we’re going to talk about us—and it seems like that’s something we need to do—we should do it in person.”

Right. Where I could see him. So that losing him would hurt even more. Good plan.

Can you lose someone you’re not even together with?

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe this isn’t a phone conversation.”

“Esther, I . . .”

“What?”

By the time he finally spoke, I thought he’d changed his mind about saying something.

“I think about you all the time,” he told me.

“Oh,” I said, surprised and pleased. And now I felt a little better. This was what he could do to me, without even trying.

“But I . . . well, I tried to date you, and it didn’t work,” he said. “I tried to break up with you, and that didn’t work, either. I tried to stay away, and I couldn’t. I tried to get back together with you, and it was a mess.”

That depressing summary, I realized, was an accurate account of our relationship.

“That’s why this isn’t a phone conversation,” he said, sounding tired. “It’s not nearly simple enough to talk about over the phone.”

“No, it’s really not,” I agreed.

After a moment of silence, he asked hesitantly, “So are we done talking? For now, I mean?”

I was about to say yes, but then I remembered there was another subject we needed to cover. “There’s one other thing.”

“What?” he asked warily.

“What can you tell me about Detective Quinn?” I asked.

“Huh?” He sounded understandably surprised.

“Andy.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. Why are you asking about him?”

Inspiration struck me. “Is he single?”

“Yes,” Lopez replied. “Well, divorced. Why?”

“I have a friend I was thinking he might like,” I lied.

“You want to set up one of your friends with Andy?” he asked dubiously.

“Maybe,” I said. “He seems like a decent guy. And he has a good job. But I only met him that one time. So I need to know more about him.”

“Like what?”

I thought quickly. “Does he like animals?”

“Why is that what you want to know?”

“My friend is a dog lover.”

“Well, we’ve never talked about it, so I don’t know.”

“Speaking of dogs,” I said oh-so-casually, “I hope he wasn’t too upset about Nelli’s behavior to him yesterday?”

“You mean, was he upset that a dog the size of a minivan tried to go for his throat?” Lopez said. “Actually, he took it pretty well. Never even mentioned it. But now that you bring it up, Esther, you’ve got to talk to Max about that d—”

“Andy is divorced?” I interrupted. “Has he told you what happened?”

He paused for a moment, deciding whether to let me get away with changing the subject, then gave in. “Not really. Just that marriage is tough, especially when one partner is a cop, relationships turn sour, that kind of thing.” After a moment, he added, “His first wife left him for another man, but he doesn’t seem bitter about that. It sounds like the marriage had already run its course by then.”

“First wife?” I prodded.

“Yeah, he was married twice. The second divorce—I think that one bothers him more.”

“Bothers him in what way?”

“Still hurts.”

I tried to think of what else to ask. “How about on the job? You’re with him all day long. Is he good company?”

“He’s okay. We get along.”

Lopez’s traditional male reticence about these topics was frustrating. Most women I knew, including me, could have riffed for at least ten minutes on any one of those questions. So could Thack, as well as quite a few actors and male cabaret artistes of my acquaintance. But Detective Lopez stuck to annoyingly brief answers as I continued poking and prodding. Since the two men had been working together for only a few weeks, he also just didn’t know that much.

It sounded like Quinn had a checkered career in the department, but Lopez was vague about that—and it obviously hadn’t been checkered enough to prevent Quinn from becoming a detective second grade and getting assigned to the OCCB. His personal life had a few problems (“like most people’s” Lopez said), and his two divorces had played havoc with his finances (whereas unemployment was what tended to play havoc with mine). But there wasn’t anything about him that sounded . . . well, evil.

“Is he Catholic?” I asked.

“Lapsed.”

I phrased my next question carefully. “Is he into any New Age stuff?”

“Like what?”

“Unconventional beliefs or unorthodox practices?”

In the silence that followed, I realized I had overplayed my hand.

“All right, now I have a question,” he said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to learn more about Quinn.”

“Why? For real, this time.”

Oh, well, no point in playing dumb. It would just annoy him. “Because there’s something strange about him.”

Lopez snorted.

“Really strange,” I said.

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“That’s why Nelli reacted so badly when she—”

“You know what? I don’t even want to hear it. Just don’t tell me.”

“I’m just saying—”

“No,” he said. “I’ve had enough. Breaking into my car to steal a cookie is one thing, but this is a person you’re talking about. And my partner.”

“That’s why I’m so con—”

“So whatever the hell has got you fixated on Andy now, let it go, Esther.”

“But—”

“I mean it,” he said. “Drop it, forget it, and move on. And leave Detective Quinn alone.”

“If you’d just—”

“We’re done here, Esther.” Before ending the call, he added, “Oh, and do something about that neurotic dog of Max’s before she mauls someone, would you?”

After that, I sat staring moodily at my phone for a while, working my way through anger, frustration, sadness, worry, and resignation.

In retrospect, I thought the entire conversation had gone worse than expected. Moreover, I didn’t think I had learned anything useful about Quinn, but now Lopez would be defensive about his partner—and might even warn Quinn that I’d taken an interest in him, so to speak.

I felt like I had failed in every respect.

Plus, it sounded as if, even though Lopez had feelings for me, he was giving serious consideration to ending our . . . whatever was between us.

Which didn’t change the fact that he was partnered with someone who I suspected of reanimating the dead. Someone who I feared might be very dangerous—and might be a menace to Lopez.

I had to learn more about Quinn. And Lopez certainly wouldn’t help.

So I needed to find another way.

But no bright ideas were coming to me, and I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Max and Lucky before this evening. They were venturing out to the suburbs today to interview the bereaved Capuzzo family and find out what they could about the departed. We would meet at the bookstore this evening to compare notes and decide what to do next.

Meanwhile, I’d been so busy lately that I’d had no time to do laundry or clean the apartment. And since I didn’t need to go look for a job today—long live The Dirty Thirty!—I decided to spend the day catching up on chores.

I lived in a rent-controlled apartment in the West Thirties. The High Line, a public park built on an elevated old freight rail line, now ran along the West Side, starting below Fourteenth Street and ending in the lower Thirties. Frenzied development followed closely behind the gradual construction of this park, and so the area had gotten more upmarket—as well as more expensive. My street, however, hadn’t changed a bit yet, and it was almost as elegant as the floor of a public bathroom.

My apartment had the usual flaws of rent-controlled accommodation, being shabby, poorly maintained, and drafty. But I had a lot of space for a person of my modest income living in Manhattan—though it would be considered cramped by the standards of cities with more elbow room. The place was furnished with thrift shop finds, hand-me-downs, and items abandoned by roommates who’d fled New York after a year or two. Although I would have less financial strain if I got a roommate again, I enjoyed the privacy of having my own apartment, so I preferred working a little harder to cover the rent on my own.

All of my clothes were clean and so was most of my apartment by the time Thack called me back that afternoon. I had an appointment for a meeting at D30’s production offices to get a partial script, do a read-through with Michael Nolan and some other cast members, and talk about scheduling. I’d also need to go for costume fittings.

“The first thing that production will ask you to do tomorrow is sign the confidentiality agreement,” said Thack. “You’ll be in the final three episodes of the season, and they want to discuss the story arc with you—but not until after you guarantee you’ll willingly die under torture rather than reveal their secret plot points.”

“I’ll probably have to simulate performing oral sex on Michael Nolan,” I said, “so don’t joke to me about torture.”

I was also very happy with the fee Thack had negotiated. The money would keep the wolf from the door for a few months. And multiple episodes of D30 would look good on my résumé and maybe generate some interest at auditions.

All right, yes, my love life was a mess and I was worried about an evil corpse reanimator lurking among us, but at least my career was coming up roses for a change.

There wasn’t much in my kitchen besides rice, beans, pasta, and a discount tub of nonfat yogurt. Now that I was sure there was a brief spell of decent income in my immediate future, I went grocery shopping and indulged extravagantly in things like chicken, salmon, fresh vegetables, chocolate, and bran muffins. I also bought a modest bottle of wine, which I took with me to Zadok’s Rare & Used Books that evening so that Max and Lucky could help me celebrate.

“Ah, yes!” Max said, when I told them my good news. “That was the drama where you played the, er, not entirely respectable young woman with whom one of the policemen is infatuated.”

“Talk about art imitating life,” said Lucky.

I ignored that. “Detective Conway isn’t really infatuated with Jilly C-Note,” I said. “He’s just using her for convenient, um, gratification.”

They had brought back some Italian carry-out, and we were sitting down to a casual dinner at the big walnut table. Nelli lay by the gas fire, gnawing contentedly on a large bone.

“He seemed infatuated to me,” Max said as he put some lasagna on a plate and passed it to me. “There was, if I may so, a perceptible alchemy between your two characters.”

I opened the bottle of wine and poured a glass for each of us, pleased that he had paid so much attention to the episode I was in. It wasn’t as if Max was a television watcher, after all.

As we all started digging hungrily into the food on our plates, I asked them about the results of their expedition.

“We got squat,” said Lucky.

“Our interviews and researches produced only a negative result—which I am inclined to think we can consider conclusive.”

“Meaning?”

“Capuzzo’s clean,” said Lucky. “I mean, really clean. Good husband, good father, good neighbor, good employer, and a good Catholic. Never involved with anything mystical, occult-related, illegal, or even a little woo-woo.”

“And no connection to Quinn?” I guessed.

“The last time Mr. Capuzzo engaged with a police officer, as far as anyone knows, was twenty-four years ago when he reported a burglary at one of his stores.”

“Hm.”

“Nate was right about the widow being a nice lady,” said Lucky. “She sent some cannoli home with us.”

“And she gave Nelli that lovely bone.”

“You took Nelli with you?” That must have been a surprise for the Capuzzos.

“I wanted to see whether she would react to anyone in the Capuzzo family the way she reacted to Detective Quinn,” he said. “But she was perfectly relaxed in their household throughout our visit.”

“So now we turn our full attention to the redheaded cop, I guess,” said Lucky. “Did you squeeze any juice out of Lopez?”

I immediately banished the mental image that phrase evoked. “I got less than squat. I got squat’s rejects.”

I summarized what I had learned from Lopez and explained that I’d told the truth (or started to) when he demanded an explanation. I concluded, “I don’t think any of the information I got tells us anything relevant. Lopez is no longer a source. And it’s possible he’ll alert Quinn to my suspicion.”

“Ah, don’t beat yourself up, kid. Lopez is a detective. He was bound to notice he was being interrogated.”

“He was in a pretty bad mood to begin with, too,” I said. “It turns out that he’s the cop who that lawyer—the one Nathan saw in the news—is blaming for Uncle Six’s ‘suicide,’ so that situation is causing him problems.”

“Oh, really?” said Lucky. “Lopez is being investigated? Got some legal trouble? What a shame. My heart bleeds for him.”

I ignored that, too, since Lucky’s resentment was understandable. It could have been avoided altogether, of course, if he had not chosen a life of crime; but it was understandable.

I changed the subject. “Plus he’s got gremlins, so he’s pretty stressed out.”

“He must be mistaken,” Max said seriously. “Gremlins are a myth. There is no such thing in reality.”

“I didn’t mean real ones,” I said with a smile. “It’s a saying, Max. When your appliances and electronic devices keep breaking down, people say your stuff is infested with gremlins.”

“Ah, I see!” He beamed. “That’s rather clever.”

“Any chance these gremlins will wipe his computer clean of anything to do with Victor Gambello?” Lucky asked grumpily.

“Well, his computer is one of the things that’s stopped working,” I said. “But I really doubt OCCB leaves all the evidence or records for a big case in one cop’s computer, with no duplicates or backup anywhere else.”

“Sometimes I really hate technology,” Lucky grumbled.

“By now, I think Lopez probably hates it, too. He’s on his third cell phone in one month—they just keep dying on him.” I frowned. “I wonder if there should be a recall? Does—”

“Do I understand correctly that two separate cell phones have ceased functioning for Detective Lopez recently? As well as his computer?”

I nodded. “He’s been having a run of bad luck. Oh, and then there are the cars.”

“What about the cars?” asked Lucky.

So I told them.

“He has been having bad luck,” Lucky said—with noticeable schadenfreude. “Tell me more. I’m enjoying this.”

“It’s Detective Quinn,” Max murmured, staring at me.

We both looked at him.

“What’s Quinn?” I asked.

“The malfunctioning of communications devices, the disruption of electrical equipment, the unexplained breakdowns in machinery . . .” Staring off into space as he considered these incidents, Max mused, “And there was also Nelli’s reaction.”

“What are you on to, Doc?” Lucky asked. “What are you thinking?”

“All of these things have occurred in the vicinity of Detective Quinn.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that Max mentioned it . . . “Well, yes. I guess. He’s around Lopez a lot, so he’d be around any machines or devices that Lopez uses when he’s working.” I remembered something Lopez had said, and I added, “And he used Lopez’s computer before it went haywire. Lopez told me he thought Quinn had done something to it—by accident.”

“Where are you going with this, Max?” Lucky wondered.

“These incidents are signs of the demonic,” he said.

“A car breaking down is a sign of the demonic?” I asked doubtfully.

“Not as an isolated incident, no. But as part of a repetitious pattern? Yes.” He stroked his beard pensively. “Three cars, two phones, a computer . . .”

I gasped as I realized something else. “Lopez said all of these things had happened within the past few weeks!”

“Ah!” said Max.

“I get it!” Lucky slammed his hand down on the table. “They’ve been happening since Quinn became his partner!”

“And that’s why Lopez, despite spending lots of time with him, hasn’t noticed anything weird about Quinn! Because the weirdness isn’t in Quinn’s own behavior, it’s in what’s happening around him. And it would never occur to Lopez to associate Quinn with these incidents. The only reason he thinks Quinn may be the one who messed up his computer is that the guy used it one day. Apart from that—well, knowing Lopez, it’s not a connection he would see, despite how observant he is.” I added, “It’s not a connection I would see, either, if you hadn’t pointed it out, Max.”

“So we’re saying Quinn is a demon?” Lucky asked.

Max shook his head. “No, I think it more likely that Quinn is being oppressed by a demon. Incidents such as the ones Esther has described are common in cases of demon oppression. That would also explain Nelli’s reaction. She may not have been aggressive toward Quinn, but rather toward something that is enmeshed with him. An entity which is present wherever he is present, but not visible to us.”

“But Nelli saw it,” Lucky said, looking at the dog with admiration.

“Or sensed it,” said Max.

“Good work!” Lucky said. “Good Nelli!”

Upon hearing her name, Nelli wagged her tail, but she did not pause in her enjoyment of her bone.

“Then this demon is what animated Mr. Capuzzo?” I guessed.

“I assume so,” said Max.

“Why?”

“Yes, that is the question we must explore.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I thought you might already know.”

“Well, certainly there are demons that take a strong interest in death, graveyards, tombs, mummies, corpses, human remains . . .”

I pushed my plate away, feeling my appetite wane.

“But reanimation of the dead is unusual.”

“Was it just a prank?” I wondered. “It frightened people. Could that have been the goal?”

“Well done, Esther!” Max beamed at me. “Demons thrive on fear, so that is certainly a possibility.”

“Then there are other possibilities, too,” Lucky guessed.

“Yes. We shall have to investigate this more closely to narrow them down. So we still need what we needed before.”

“More information about Quinn,” I said gloomily.

“And more direct observation of him. There are a number of questions for which we need answers. Who or what is this demonic entity? How or why did it attach itself to Quinn? Is Quinn aware of it or not? And . . .”

“And?” Lucky prodded.

I think I knew the next question. “What does it want?”

“Correct,” said Max. “And what will it do in order to get what it wants?”

Thinking of Lopez again, I said, “And who will it hurt?”