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

anything’s going on there, they’re doing it for free.”
    In the chair beside Charlie, Don recrossed his legs for the fourth time. “Don, for chrissake, light up if you want to!”
    Don, after a moment’s hesitation, slipped a Camel from the pack. As he lit it, Shapiro frowned and shifted his chair away. Don went to the window, holding the cigarette outside between puffs. Shapiro didn’t look any happier, but too bad.
    “And it goes without saying,” Charlie said, because it didn’t, “that you’ve been absolutely quiet about it?” Looking at Shapiro’s starched face, he couldn’t help adding, “Like little church mice?”
    Shapiro, probably never before compared to anything less ponderous than a bull moose, frowned again and looked to Lowry.
    “I did it myself, Mayor,” Lowry said. “On tiptoe.”
    “But they’ve got to know,” said Shapiro. “McFee and Farrell. Everyone expects to be investigated in a situation like this.”
    “I don’t care if they know. But I don’t want to read in the Post that the city’s investigating the mayor’s appointees, unless and until one of them’s arrested. And if that happens I want to announce the arrest myself.”
    Silence from the DOI men, which the mayor decided to interpret as accord.
    “Okay. So— ”
    “Mayor?” That was Shapiro. “What would you have done if we’d found something?”
    “Burn ’em,” Charlie shot back. “Anyone I trust who fucks me up, they’re on their own.”
    “No matter how it makes you look?”
    “Makes me look a lot worse to slap their wrist and send them on their way. Why? Who’re you thinking about?”
    “I’m not. Just wanted to know how far you really wanted us to take this, if we did find something.”
    “All the way. If I end up eating crow, it won’t be the first time and it won’t kill me. Looking like I’m covering up for a friend, that’s what’ll kill me.”
    Shapiro nodded thoughtfully, the worry folds between his eyebrows minutely easing.
    “Look at that, Don,” the mayor said. “I made Mark happy.”

CHAPTER
13
    Heart’s Content
    “The pressure’s gotten so high in Manhattan”— Ann’s brisk voice, Joe’s back porch: she was talking about real estate; he wondered how much he’d missed— “developers are taking to the boroughs. These guys, Three Star Partners— you can tell what they think of themselves by the name, huh?” Interrupting herself, she turned to him. He continued to stare over the rail to the far bright corner of the garden. In the lee of a granite boulder, white peonies were unfurling from tight, waxy buds.
    “Three Star,” Ann continued. “They assembled a site in Mott Haven and got it cheap. Who wouldn’t sell, up there? Near the subway, police station a block north, school two blocks south. Three Star says they can make it go.”
    He shook his head. He meant, That area can’t have changed that much in two and a half years. And he meant, Three Star Partners, whoever they are, are up to something. And he meant, I live in a different world now and none of this matters to me anymore.
    He shoved his chair back, strode across the grass to where the yellow irises glowed hard against the pines. From here you could hear the stream. He listened to the water racing south as though it had a place it had to be.
    Ann crossed the yard and came to stand beside him.
    She might have remarked, at that moment, on the beauty of his garden, the rush of the water, the sun’s warmth. That was an interrogator’s trick Ann knew well: say something that will suggest to the subject the connection of common ground. But this was not an interrogation and Joe was not a subject and the connection— even now, even after all this, even to his dismay— did not have to be suggested. Ann said nothing about the landscape or the weather.
    She said, “It’s why I need you.”
    “Go home, Ann.”
    She paused; when she spoke her voice held a new tone, part triumph, part wonder. “Oh! Wait. You think— Joe? You think I’m trying to do you a favor? That that’s what this is about? I tracked