Larry Fedderman stood where the killer had stood and observed Weaver leave her apartment building. Fedderman was a tall man, skinny but with a potbelly. One of those guys who look like he’d be in good shape if he hadn’t swallowed a basketball. His wife Penny had bought the blue Armani suit he wore, but it still seemed not to fit him. One shoulder was higher than the other, and his right shirt cuff extended unbuttoned like a white surrender flag. If he happened to be carrying a cup, Fedderman might become the only panhandler in an Armani suit to collect a handout.

A black traffic-control car pulled to the curb in front of the apartment building. It didn’t sound its horn. Two men sat in it. Both looked as if they were wearing eight-point NYPD caps.

They must have called upstairs with a cell phone, because a minute or so after the car had parked, Weaver, wearing her own eight-point cap, emerged from the building in full uniform.

She looked right and left. Her gaze seemed to hesitate on Fedderman and then moved on.

Fedderman observed that, in uniform, even wearing dark sunglasses—maybe especially with the glasses—Weaver was an attractive woman. He’d been around her enough to have no doubt the uniformed cop was Weaver. How she was built, curvy and sturdy, born to make different kinds of trouble.

Few of her neighbors who hadn’t realized she was a cop would recognize her with the uniform and glasses.

The right rear door of the traffic control car opened and she slid smoothly inside. The whole thing hadn’t taken half a minute.

Fedderman knew where they were going—to that kid Wallace’s funeral. Okay, there was probably no place where Weaver would be safer, surrounded by grieving cops.

This gave Fedderman the opportunity he needed.

He decided to let himself into Weaver’s apartment. He had the briefcase containing the equipment Quinn had given him.

Fedderman was pretty good at bugging apartments, so he’d only be inside Weaver’s for about ten minutes. Besides, he was a cop and had a right to be there. Sort of. It could be argued.

Weaver, being Weaver, was too stubborn to move out of her apartment. She would continue with her life, perhaps even adding to her dubious reputation. Fedderman had heard so many stories about her that some of them had to be true. No doubt her conversations would be interesting, even if the killer didn’t try for her again.

The thing was, there might be phone conversations with the killer, if he did what a lot of these sickos did. They liked to call their once and future victims to let them know they were still on the hook. There might be conversations with Minnie Miner, when she called. Or with the NYPD, if Weaver called someone there.

For this to work, of course, Weaver would have to be unaware that her apartment was wired. (Not wired, actually. Fedderman had been given a wireless setup by Jerry Lido.)

Fedderman was in the apartment less than a minute when he detected a problem. The most unlikely, and therefore best, place to plant a bug was where someone suspicious was least likely to look. He chose a plastic wall plate with a lamp plugged into one of its sockets. The plate itself conducted sound well, and the free socket was still live. It was where it wouldn’t be used unless Weaver chose to plug in a vacuum cleaner or some such thing. The bug would be interfered with then, but it would regain its effectiveness as soon as the vacuum or any other device was unplugged or turned off.

The plan presented only one problem to Fedderman. The plug already contained a listening device behind its plate.

Fedderman knew where to look for any additional bugs.

It didn’t take him long to determine that the entire apartment was already bugged. It wasn’t as sophisticated a system as the one Fedderman had brought, but it was effective.

Who would have—could have—done such a thing?

A few names immediately leaped to mind. Renz! Minnie Miner!

The killer?

Would D.O.A. have had the time and opportunity? The balls?

Fedderman decided to let Quinn wrestle with those questions. But before he left the apartment, he did a simple splice into the listening system.

That kind of amused Fedderman. New technology partnering with the old.

Now it was a party line.

39

Sarasota, 1993

The courts building’s air-conditioning system was operating, but not very effectively. It couldn’t keep up with the heat. Florida Power and Light would get around to finding the problem and setting it right as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the courtroom in downtown Sarasota was almost too warm to use.

The judge was a balding, cantankerous man well into his sixties, with a weight problem and what appeared to be a drinker’s nose, bright pink with ruptured capillaries. He wanted this trial to progress at full speed. The jurors looked either aggravated or bored. The foreman’s obviously dyed black hair was plastered flat to his forehead and dripping perspiration onto his face, and then onto the front of his white shirt. The judge was in shirt sleeves, and had given everyone in the courtroom permission to be the same. The only three people wearing jacket and tie were the prosecutor, the defending attorney, and the defendant, Bill Phoenix.

The witness, Dwayne Aikin, was wearing faded jeans and a green T-shirt. The shirt’s chest and back advertised a surfers’ supply store and bore the image of a slim, graceful man riding a wave. The prosecutor had requested that Dwayne look and seem young to the jury, thus the shirt. As if the word of anyone youthful who surfed could not be impugned. A surfer was an innocent; not like Bill Phoenix the amorous pool cleaner. The judge knew what was going on and didn’t like it, but he wasn’t surprised. This prosecutor, Elliott Murray, not much older than the defendant, was a smartass.

But Murray, a tall, blond man who himself looked like a surfer, was a smartass with a solid case. The jurors had seen photos of the victim’s dead body, and of the pool service van parked in the driveway of a house whose pool didn’t need cleaning, and wasn’t scheduled to be cleaned the day of the murder. There was a close-up photo of the murder knife, taken where it was found hidden beneath a front seat of the defendant’s van. The victim’s blood was on the knife blade.

Smartass Murray was the only one in the court room who didn’t seem to be in a hurry to reach judgment and go to some cooler place and get something cold to drink. He was also the only one in the room who wasn’t drenched in sweat, despite the coat and tie.

“Did the defendant visit the victim, Maude Evans, only on days the pool was to be serviced?” Murray asked in a calm voice.

Dwayne Aikin said, “No.”

Murray shot a knowing look at the jury, whose members he had charmed from the first day of the trial. “Did these visits last longer than it takes to clean and service a swimming pool?” he asked the witness.

“Sometimes. Uh, yes.”

“Was the pool serviced on a regular basis?”

“Yes.”

“Did the defendant visit to work on the pool between these regular visits?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“Fifty percent of the time?”

“No.”

“Higher or lower?”

“Higher.”

The jury stirred despite their impending heat prostration.

“Did the pool actually require servicing on all of the defendant’s visits?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Was the pool maintenance man there because something was broken?”

“No.”

“Or because the pool needed regular maintenance?”

“No.”

Murray had begun a confined little pacing, three steps each way, with the rhythm of his questions. “Did the pool usually need cleaning when he came to the house and spent time with Maude Evans?”