Read Online In This Rain by S. J. Rozan - Free Book Online

predestination, and Charlie got his program. A program that gave citizens a way to participate, added amenities, and cut costs: who could ask for more?
    He watched the wind push the fountain’s water around. At the height of last summer’s drought, Environmental Conservation had ordered all the fountains off. Charlie had personally thrown the switch on the City Hall one at a press conference where he’d talked about public-spirited sacrifice, praised DEC’s Commissioner for making tough decisions, and expressed the hope that the drought would be short. He’d looked into the suddenly still bowl and said, “Boy, I’ll miss that fountain.”
    “You just said all citizens have to make sacrifices, Mayor,” some press wiseass had cracked.
    “Yeah,” he’d snapped back, “but they don’t have to enjoy them!”
    Then he’d stalked off. It was one of the things the polls said New Yorkers liked about Charlie Barr, that he wasn’t goddamn cheerful all the time.
    The drought hadn’t been short; summer stretched into fall and the fountains stayed dry. But this year New York could have its fountains, its grass, its gardens. Parks could stop fretting about their specimen trees (which they’d watered anyway last summer, legally but, by Charlie’s order, in the middle of the night). This year there was plenty of rain.
    The doorknob clicked. Charlie turned from the window. Lena was holding the door wide to admit Mark Shapiro and Greg Lowry.
    “Thanks, Lena. What about Don?”
    “Here.” Don Zalensky, probably fresh off a Camel break, eased around Lena. She smiled at him. Don and Lena, so different in all ways, had always gotten along, seeming to share some private source of amusement. Charlie suspected it was him, but what the hell.
    “You need me?” Lena stood in the doorway.
    “No, go on home,” Charlie told her. This meant, This meeting’s private and off the record, but these days no one winked at a secretary and said, Sweetheart, get lost. “Thanks for coming in,” he added.
    “Anytime, Charlie,” she said drily, and pulled the door shut as she left.
    Don sat in the wooden straight-backed chair he favored, shifting it to face the leather armchairs Shapiro and Lowry were settling into. Don’s gray suit, fresh from the cleaner (Charlie had had to suggest, after the limo picked Don up, that he pull the tag off the sleeve), was already looking rumpled. Greg Lowry had on a white shirt, brown jacket, maroon tie, gray slacks. Even if Charlie didn’t know Lowry wasn’t married, he’d know he wasn’t married. No woman would let a man out of the house looking like that. Mark Shapiro, of course, was in full dark-suit-and-tie regalia, down to spit-shined shoes and NYPD twenty-year pin.
    Charlie’s own jacket was hanging in the closet where it wouldn’t wrinkle, and his shirt was blue, for the TV cameras. He perched on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. “Well?”
    Lowry and Shapiro exchanged glances. Shapiro cleared his throat. “Well, of course you can’t guarantee anything based only on observation.”
    “Fine, disclaimer accepted. But?”
    Shapiro shrugged. “But I can’t say anything suggests either of them knows something they’re not saying.”
    “Greg?”
    “No, me either. Nothing raised a red flag for me about those two.”
    Charlie breathed out a long breath. “Thank God for that.”
    “Those two” were Virginia McFee and Les Farrell.
    The stated agenda for the first Sunday morning meeting, just ended, was a briefing on the investigation into the fatal construction site accident late Friday night: falling bricks that had left Harriet Winston, single mother of three small children, dead on an inner-city sidewalk.
    The agenda for the second meeting, just starting, was a discussion of the other reason for the first meeting.
    “And nothing else, either?” Charlie asked. “New cars? Vacations? Either of them suddenly pay off a mortgage?”
    “No,” said Lowry. “Matches what we found at the lower levels at Buildings, over the last week or so. If