Read Online Night Secrets by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online Page B

come?”
    â€œMy choice,” Tannenbaum said. He smiled quietly. “Maybe I’m getting a little like you in my old age.” He pulled a chair over beside his desk. “Have a seat.”
    Frank sat down.
    â€œSo, what’s on your mind?” Tannenbaum asked.
    â€œThe murder,” Frank told him. “The fortune-teller.”
    Tannenbaum didn’t look surprised. He nodded, then glanced toward the large windows at the front of the room. They were covered over with an opaque mixture of dust, soot, and urban grime, so that the panes looked dull and milky, like rows of square, pupil-less eyes which watched the room from behind a thin wire mesh. For a moment, Tannenbaum’s eyes moved over them in a steady sweep like two nightsticks thumping down a corridor of steel bars. Then he snapped out of it suddenly, and looked back at Frank. “Did someone hire you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut you’re working it?” Tannenbaum asked. “I mean professionally?”
    â€œJust at night.”
    A curious, uneven smile fluttered onto Tannenbaum’s lips, then instantly disappeared. “Well that’s the kind of thing it is,” he said. “A night case.”
    Frank looked at him quizzically.
    â€œYou know the kind I mean, Frank,” Tannenbaum said. “A beautiful woman, an untimely death.” He smiled. “Add a little cigarette smoke, maybe a saxophone, and you got all you need to get you through the night.”
    â€œThere may be more to it than that,” Frank said.
    Tannenbaum smiled his worldly smile. “Frank, there’s never more to anything than that.”
    Frank didn’t feel like arguing the point. He shrugged.
    Tannenbaum leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. “Well, you know how it works, Frank, in this case just like any other one. You get anything, I’m the one you show it to.” He pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket and bit off the tip. “Have you got anything on it yet?”
    â€œMaybe a little something that might save a few steps,” Frank told him.
    The end of the cigar twitched slightly. “I’m listening.”
    â€œYou’ll never find her name because she doesn’t have one,” Frank told him. “She goes by a title: Puri Dai. It means she’s the Tribal Woman.”
    Tannenbaum looked at Frank unbelievingly, but said nothing.
    â€œFarouk says that’s the way it is.”
    â€œAnd he’s some kind of expert on Gypsies?”
    â€œHe knows things,” Frank said simply.
    Another detective came into the room, shifting slowly through the maze of desks and file cabinets. He wore a faded green suit and moved very heavily toward the far end of the room. When he finally got to his own desk, he switched on the small plastic radio that rested on top of it, and a distant, scratchy wail of steel guitars swept the room.
    â€œThat’s McBride,” Tannenbaum said. “He’s like you, another Rebel. Louisiana, I think.” He laughed softly. “Talk about a fish out of water. They just shipped him over to Manhattan North from some place in the Bronx.”
    Frank’s eyes shifted over toward him. He’d grown up with boys who looked much like him, pale faces, greenish, watery eyes—boys with slow, lumbering gaits who kept silent until the moment they exploded.
    â€œSomebody raped his wife a few years ago,” Tannenbaum said. “Then shot her. She’s been paralyzed since then. From the neck down, I hear. He brought her up here for treatment. Never left.” He drew his feet from the desk. “You should talk to him sometime. He was the first guy from Homicide on the scene.”
    Frank nodded. “Does he work the night shift, too?”
    â€œYeah,” Tannenbaum said, “always has.” He took a deep breath. “You Rebels are like that, night crawlers. It makes me glad you’re on our