Read Online 3 Quarters by Denis Hamill - Free Book Online Page A

search of my apartment and found it covered in blood. They find a bloody knife in my car. With my prints. They lock me up on suspicion of murder. Say I killed Dorothea in my apartment and transported her to the cemetery in my car, cremated her, and fell asleep.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell Tuzio or the cops about this O’Brien and Cleary guy who Mickey-Finned you?” Gleason asked.
    â€œOf course I told them I’d been drugged,” Bobby said. “But when they went to The Anchor, everyone denied I was ever there that night. I couldn’t prove it.”
    â€œThen they booked you?”
    â€œYeah,” Bobby said. “It took less than twelve hours to do a positive blood match between the blood in my apartment, my car, and the crematorium. My head was spinning. I never knew what the hell happened. Still don’t. And I went over it every night for the past eighteen months.”
    â€œSure you don’t want a Kit Kat?” Gleason asked, eating one himself.
    Bobby blinked and looked in the rearview mirror. The Taurus was obviously going to follow them all the way into the city. The cat-and-mouse was starting to give him a restless edge. It made him know he had no time to waste. He was out, which meant he had to dive right back in.
    â€œThis newspaper pain-in-the-ass, this Max Roth, can he be trusted?”
    â€œHe doesn’t like you,” Bobby said. “But he likes me. We go back to my Brooklyn College days, before I transferred to John Jay College after I joined the PD. I helped him with stories over the years.”
    â€œYou mean you leaked him stories,” Gleason said. “Your office was a sieve, and your leaks won him awards. I know. Some of them were won on my clients’ convictions. The awards got him a fuckin’ column. He owes you at least a six-pack of blow jobs . . . .”
    Bobby took no offense, knowing that in the tabloid trade a positive story was referred to as a “blow job.”
    â€œHe has integrity,” Bobby said.
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜Integrity’ is just a word sandwiched between ‘incest’ and ‘intoxication’ in the dictionary,” Gleason said. “But we need a newspaper guy. His readers are my jury pool. Can you trust this shifty, ink-stained suckass?”
    â€œYeah,” Bobby said, refraining from telling Gleason what names came to his mind when he looked at him. “But he’s no suckass.”
    â€œOkay, so you got your brother, a kid, an ex-wife, some nosy old fuckin’ flatfoot, a retired-cop-slashsaloon-keeper, and Roth,” Gleason said. “That’s the whole fan club? You’re not too popular.”
    â€œNeither are you, Sleazy Izzy,” said Bobby, realizing they had just entered the city of New York. He saw a sign for the Triboro Bridge and another for the Henry Hudson Parkway.
    â€œThat’s why we’ll make a great team,” said Gleason. “We got nowhere to go but up.”
    â€œThis isn’t a team. This is another bad marriage.”
    â€œWhat’s your first move?”
    Bobby looked in his rearview mirror, saw that the Taurus was following him onto the Henry Hudson. At the last possible moment Bobby made a hard left and veered across three lanes of traffic for the ramp to the Triboro. Horns honked at him and the Taurus braked suddenly, doing a squealing half spin. Bobby slowed and in the rearview he made out the numerals 682. New York State JDF-682.
    Bobby looked over at the Taurus, gave it the finger, and headed over the Triboro.

9
    A half hour later Bobby knocked on the big door, feeling the reinforced steel reverberate through his knuckles. After fifteen seconds he rang the bell and then knocked again. He stood outside the polished black marble cube of a building on Gerritsen Avenue, the main boulevard of this low-key, etherized section of Brooklyn. A small brass sign was bolted into the gleaming stone: GIBRALTAR SECURITY
    Bobby