Read Online A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow - Free Book Online

“I don’t know, maybe I should never have said anything. First Mr. Chase, then the other guy, now you. I don’t want to get involved with the police. I just got accepted to Brown.”
    “I’m not a cop.”
    “Then I don’t have to talk to you.”
    “No. Which other guy?”
    “A big guy. Kind of young. Older than you, though.”
    “Tall, heavyset, curly black hair? Pushy?”
    Scott nodded. “Real pushy.”
    I’ll kill Levine, Neal thought.
    “Do you want something?” Neal asked, gesturing at the menu.
    “I’ll have some coffee. I have an exam tomorrow.”
    Neal signaled the waitress, pointing at his own cup and Scott. She brought the coffee over quickly.
    “I just want to check a few details,” Neal said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like your whole story is bullshit.”
    Scott set his cup down. “What do you mean?”
    “I’ve been looking at your yearbook, Scott. Track, football, lacrosse, basketball. You say you saw Allie in Hyde Park and ‘gave chase,’ no pun intended. ‘Gave chase’? Nobody talks like that. That’s the sort of thing cops say when they lie on the witness stand.”
    “She didn’t beat me, exactly. She ran into the subway.”
    The kid was lying. Person looks up and to the right when they’re telling you something, they’re making it up as they go along.
    “The subway? In Hyde Park?”
    “Hyde Park Corner. There’s a station there.”
    A hint of that wonderful teenage defensive whine had snuck into his voice. Neal didn’t answer him.
    “I didn’t have a token,” Scott continued.
    “You mean a ticket.”
    “Yeah, okay, a ticket.”
    Neal played with the salt and pepper shakers on the table, moving them in lazy figure-eight patterns.
    “I’m not a cop,” he said. “If you tell me that’s the story, we finish our coffee and it’s over. But we’ll both know you’re holding back.”
    Scott took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.
    “You won’t tell anyone?”
    “The dean of admissions will never hear it from me.”
    “If this ever got out—”
    “It won’t.”
    “A friend and I—he doesn’t go to this school—stayed over a few days after the school trip. We got kidding around one night…”
    “Go ahead.”
    “We called one of those services. You know, they have phone numbers in the paper? We called one of them.”
    Neal’s heart bounced. “And they sent a couple of ladies over,” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    “And did you…”
    “Yeah.”
    “And was one of them Allie Chase?”
    Scott looked shocked. “No! No way! Really!”
    “Okay, okay. I believe you.”
    “After we … we got talking a little, and we asked these girls if they knew where we could get some hash.” This last tidbit came out in a rush and Neal could see the kid relax.
    “Hey, Scott, I’ll bet they knew, huh?”
    “Yeah.” He sort of chuckled. “They called this guy who said to come meet him.”
    “And you went?”
    “I know it sounds dumb, but it was right out in public. Right by this movie theater in Leicester Square. We even knew the place, because we’d seen the new Bond movie there.”
    “Where does Allie come in?”
    “She was with him.”
    “With who? The dealer?”
    “Him and two others. A guy and a girl.”
    “Did you talk to Allie?”
    “No. When she walked up with this guy, she was laughing and all, but then she saw me and she turned away real quick, behind the other girl, and they backed off into the alley.”
    “Scott, are you sure it was her?”
    Scott nodded. “Real sure.”
    “How come?”
    “Allie and I … you know … we’d partied.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “We bought the hash and took off.”
    “Did you try to approach Allie?”
    Scott blushed. “Her friends were pretty punk-looking. I didn’t want to push it.”
    “You were right. You did the right thing.”
    “Anyway, when I got back, I thought I should tell Mrs. Chase, but I didn’t want to—”
    “Tell everything. Sure.”
    “So I made up the story about seeing Allie in the