Read Online The Analyst by John Katzenbach - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Katzenbach
Tags: thriller
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huh?”
“Sometimes.”
“Cool. Well, one guy ain’t gonna be talking no more. You better speak to the detective. Head through the double doors, keep going down the corridor, office is on the left. Riggins caught the case. Or what there was of it after the Eighth Avenue express came through the 92nd Street station at about sixty miles per. You want details, that’s where to go. Talk to the detective.”
The policeman gestured in the direction of a pair of doors that led into the bowels of the station. As he pointed, Ricky could hear a spiraling sound rising from some room that seemed alternately below and then above them. The desk sergeant smiled. “That guy’s gonna get on my nerves before the night is out,” he said, turning away and picking up a sheaf of papers and stapling them together with a noise like a gunshot. “If he doesn’t shut up, I’m likely to need a shrink of my own by the end of the night. What you need, doc, is a portable couch.” He laughed, made a swooping motion with his hand, the papers rustling in the breeze, shooing Ricky in the right direction.
There was a door on the left marked detective bureau which Ricky Starks pushed through, entering a small office warren of grimy gray steel desks and more of the sickeningly bright overhead lighting. He blinked for a second, as if the glare stung his eyes like saltwater. A detective wearing a white shirt and red tie, sitting at the closest desk, looked up at him.
“Help you?”
“Detective Riggins?”
The detective shook his head. “Nah, not me. She’s over in the back, talking to the last of those people who got some kinda look at the jumper today.”
Ricky looked across the rooms and spotted a woman just shy of middle age wearing a man’s pale blue button-down shirt and striped silk rep tie, although the tie was loosely hung around her neck, more like a noose than anything else, gray slacks which seemed to blend with the decor, and a contradictory pair of white running shoes with a Day-Glo orange stripe down the side. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled back sharply from her face in a ponytail, which made her seem a little older than the mid-thirties that Ricky might have guessed. There were wearied wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The detective was speaking with a pair of black teenage boys, each wearing wildly exaggerated baggy blue jeans and baseball caps that were cocked at odd angles, as if glued askew on their heads. Had Ricky been slightly more aware of the ways of the world, he might have recognized this for the current style, but, as it was, he merely thought their appearance distinctly odd and a bit unsettling. Had he encountered the pair on the sidewalk, he would have undoubtedly been frightened.
The detective sitting in front of him suddenly asked, “You here on that jumper today at 92nd Street?”
Ricky nodded. The detective picked up his phone. He gestured to a half-dozen stiff-backed wooden chairs lined up against one wall of the office. Only one chair was currently occupied, by a bedraggled, dirt-strewn woman of indistinct age, whose wiry silver gray hair seemed to explode from her head in a multitude of directions, and who appeared to Ricky to be speaking to herself. The woman wore a threadbare overcoat that she kept hugging increasingly tighter to her body, and she rocked a little bit in the seat, as if keeping rhythm with the electricity bounding about within her. Homeless and schizophrenic, Ricky diagnosed immediately. He had not seen anyone with her condition professionally since his graduate school days, although he’d hurried past many similar people over the years, picking up his pace on the sidewalk like virtually every other New Yorker. In recent years, the number of homeless street people seemed to have diminished, but Ricky always assumed that they had simply been shunted to different locations by political maneuverings so that the enthusiastic tourists and the well-heeled and well-moneyed folk making
“Sometimes.”
“Cool. Well, one guy ain’t gonna be talking no more. You better speak to the detective. Head through the double doors, keep going down the corridor, office is on the left. Riggins caught the case. Or what there was of it after the Eighth Avenue express came through the 92nd Street station at about sixty miles per. You want details, that’s where to go. Talk to the detective.”
The policeman gestured in the direction of a pair of doors that led into the bowels of the station. As he pointed, Ricky could hear a spiraling sound rising from some room that seemed alternately below and then above them. The desk sergeant smiled. “That guy’s gonna get on my nerves before the night is out,” he said, turning away and picking up a sheaf of papers and stapling them together with a noise like a gunshot. “If he doesn’t shut up, I’m likely to need a shrink of my own by the end of the night. What you need, doc, is a portable couch.” He laughed, made a swooping motion with his hand, the papers rustling in the breeze, shooing Ricky in the right direction.
There was a door on the left marked detective bureau which Ricky Starks pushed through, entering a small office warren of grimy gray steel desks and more of the sickeningly bright overhead lighting. He blinked for a second, as if the glare stung his eyes like saltwater. A detective wearing a white shirt and red tie, sitting at the closest desk, looked up at him.
“Help you?”
“Detective Riggins?”
The detective shook his head. “Nah, not me. She’s over in the back, talking to the last of those people who got some kinda look at the jumper today.”
Ricky looked across the rooms and spotted a woman just shy of middle age wearing a man’s pale blue button-down shirt and striped silk rep tie, although the tie was loosely hung around her neck, more like a noose than anything else, gray slacks which seemed to blend with the decor, and a contradictory pair of white running shoes with a Day-Glo orange stripe down the side. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled back sharply from her face in a ponytail, which made her seem a little older than the mid-thirties that Ricky might have guessed. There were wearied wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The detective was speaking with a pair of black teenage boys, each wearing wildly exaggerated baggy blue jeans and baseball caps that were cocked at odd angles, as if glued askew on their heads. Had Ricky been slightly more aware of the ways of the world, he might have recognized this for the current style, but, as it was, he merely thought their appearance distinctly odd and a bit unsettling. Had he encountered the pair on the sidewalk, he would have undoubtedly been frightened.
The detective sitting in front of him suddenly asked, “You here on that jumper today at 92nd Street?”
Ricky nodded. The detective picked up his phone. He gestured to a half-dozen stiff-backed wooden chairs lined up against one wall of the office. Only one chair was currently occupied, by a bedraggled, dirt-strewn woman of indistinct age, whose wiry silver gray hair seemed to explode from her head in a multitude of directions, and who appeared to Ricky to be speaking to herself. The woman wore a threadbare overcoat that she kept hugging increasingly tighter to her body, and she rocked a little bit in the seat, as if keeping rhythm with the electricity bounding about within her. Homeless and schizophrenic, Ricky diagnosed immediately. He had not seen anyone with her condition professionally since his graduate school days, although he’d hurried past many similar people over the years, picking up his pace on the sidewalk like virtually every other New Yorker. In recent years, the number of homeless street people seemed to have diminished, but Ricky always assumed that they had simply been shunted to different locations by political maneuverings so that the enthusiastic tourists and the well-heeled and well-moneyed folk making
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