Read Online Sharky's Machine by William Diehl - Free Book Online

the release button. The door opened and Mary pitched out head-first.
    Sharky opened the front door and jumped out.
    Two uniformed cops were eight feet away, leaning across the hood of a Chevrolet, their service revolvers trained on Sharky.
    ‘Hold it right there.’
    Sharky held his ID. high over his head and strode towards the rear of the bus.
    ‘Sharky, Central Narcotics,’ he yelled. ‘Get an ambulance.’
    ‘I said, “Hold it right there,” ‘ the cop yelled again.
    Sharky threw the wallet at him. It bounced off the hood of the car and spun around, opened at his shield.
    ‘I said, “Call a goddamn ambulance,”’ Sharky said and kept walking. He reached Mary’s still form lying face down in the street and stood over him, his gun aimed at the back of the dope dealer’s head. He slid the .25 away from the body with his foot, then slipped it under High Ball, and rolled him slowly over.
    The dealer looked straight up at the dark sky. Blood rattled in his throat. The eyes turned to glass and rolled up in his head. Sharky stuck his gun in his belt and reached down, pressing his fingers into Mary’s throat. Nothing.
    One of the two cops was shouting into his radio mike. The other joined Sharky and handed him his wallet. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked.
    ‘I just retired a junkman. Better have your partner call the ME too.’
    People pressed in from all sides. Horns blared as the traffic built up. Inside the bus, passengers crowded to the windows, pressing their faces against the cold glass. The elderly woman suddenly opened her mouth and screamed over and over at the top of her lungs. A flashgun went off, blinding Sharky.
    ‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled.
    ‘Somebody took a picture.’
    ‘No pictures, goddammit! No pictures!’ Sharky barked.
    ‘Too late,’ the cop said.
    More noise. More confusion. A siren was shrieking nearby.
    Sharky leaned against the bus. He felt suddenly tired, disgusted, used up, sick to his stomach. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said, half aloud.
    He leaned over 1-ugh Ball Mary’s body, his fingers feeling the coat lining. He felt the bags, then a zipper, and pulled it open. Inside, in small pockets sewn into the lining of the coat, were fifteen one-gram bags of cocaine.

Chapter Tw o
    He arrived at the station at 9:45, fifteen minutes before his appointment. Jaspers’s secretary was a hard-faced, sour- tempered policewoman named Helen Hill, a competent officer turned mean after eight years tied to a desk. She was less than affectionately known in the House as the Dragon Lady.
    ‘Sit over there,’ she snapped, pointing to a hard oak chair without arms. She glared at his scruffy exterior for a moment, then ignored him.
    The outer office was Spartan. Nothing to read, no pictures on the wall. The Dragon Lady got up once, poured herself a cup of coffee from an urn on a ta6le near the door, and sat down again. She did not offer Sharky coffee, a drink of water, the time of day, or a kind word. Finally he got up and helped himself to a cup.
    ‘Don’t you ask?’ the Dragon Lady growled.
    ‘May I have a cup of coffee?’ Sharky said with a mock smile. He sprinkled half a packet of sugar into the cup, stirred it with his finger, licked it off, and returned to his seat. The Dragon Lady ignored him. He slurped his coffee loudly and stared at her. She continued to ignore him. The minutes crawled by. Fifteen minutes seemed to take an hour, at least. At exactly ten o’clock the phone on her desk buzzed.
    ‘Yes, sir? Yes, he is. Yes, sir.’ She hung up. ‘All right. You may go in now,’ she said, without looking at him.
    He plopped the half-empty cup in the middle of her desk. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for starting my day so cheerfully.’ She glared at him as he knocked on the door. A voice inside said, ‘Come.’
    Captain Jaspers was a tall, angular, emotionless man in his early fifties. A scar as thin as a fishing line stretched from in front of his left ear down to his