Read Online The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lawrence Block
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators, Short Stories, Hard-Boiled, Large Type Books, New York, New York (State), New York (N.Y.), Scudder; Matt (Fictitious character)
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the basement entrance. The door at the bottom of the stairs had a glass window set at eye level, but I couldn’t see anything through it. The door was locked. It didn’t look as though it would be terribly hard to force it, but I didn’t try. I don’t know that I would have wanted to go in even if it had been unlocked.
I went back to the corner of Fifty-fifth and Eleventh, got out my notebook and made a rough sketch of the scene. There was a Honda dealership on the corner where Holtzmann was killed, a Midas Muffler franchise directly across the street. I remembered Tom Sadecki’s scenario and tried to figure out where George might have lurked in the shadows while somebody else did the shooting. I didn’t see any doorways, but there was a spot alongside the entrance to the Honda showroom where a person might have stood or crouched without being too conspicuous. There was a trash can on the corner, not ten yards from the pay phone, and others on the opposite curb and ranging alongside the muffler shop.
The sun had been shining when I left Elaine’s apartment. Clouds obscured it by the time I reached the site of the murder, and the sky kept getting darker by the minute. The temperature was dropping, too, and it occurred to me that the jacket I was wearing wasn’t going to be warm enough. I headed back to my hotel to change, and pick up an umbrella while I was at it.
But when I got to Ninth Avenue there was a bus just pulling up and I ran and caught it. Maybe the rain would hold off, I told myself. Maybe the sun would come out and warm things up again.
Sure.
IT was almost twelve-thirty when I walked into a room on Houston Street, filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, and took a couple of cookies from a chipped china plate. I found a chair, and someone stood up and read the AA preamble and introduced the speaker.
The group was mostly gay, and a lot of the sharing was about AIDS and HIV. At one-thirty we held hands and had a moment of silence, followed by the Serenity Prayer. The young man on my right said, “Do you know how they close the meetings at the agnostics’ group? They have a moment of silence, followed by
another
moment of silence.”
I walked down through SoHo, stopping at a pizza stand for a Sicilian slice and a Coke. Lispenard Street is just below Canal and only two blocks long, and Jan’s loft is on the fifth floor of a six-story building wedged between two larger and more modern buildings. I stepped into the vestibule and rang her bell, then went back onto the sidewalk and waited for her to open the window and throw down the key.
That’s what she’d done the night I met her, and on quite a few subsequent occasions. Then for a while I’d had a key of my own. I’d used it a final time on the afternoon I came to pick up my things. I had filled two shopping bags with my clothes and left the key on the kitchen counter, right next to the Mr. Coffee machine.
I looked up. The window opened and the key sailed out, hit the pavement, bounced, clattered, lay still. I picked it up and let myself into the building.
Chapter 7
“Come on in,” she said. “It was sweet of you to come. You’re looking well, Matthew.”
“So are you,” I said. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Hah,” she said. “Finally.” She tilted her head and looked me in the eye. “What do you think? Is it an improvement?”
“You’ve always looked good to me, Jan.”
Her face clouded and she turned from me, saying that she’d just made a fresh pot of coffee. Did I still drink it black? I said I did. No sugar, right? Right, no sugar.
I went to the front of the loft, where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Lispenard Street. Her bronze head of Medusa, the hair a writhing mass of snakes, stood on its plinth to the right of the low sofa. It was early work; I’d seen it and remarked on it the night we met. Don’t look her in the eye, Jan had told me, for her gaze turns men to stone.
Her own gaze when she
I went back to the corner of Fifty-fifth and Eleventh, got out my notebook and made a rough sketch of the scene. There was a Honda dealership on the corner where Holtzmann was killed, a Midas Muffler franchise directly across the street. I remembered Tom Sadecki’s scenario and tried to figure out where George might have lurked in the shadows while somebody else did the shooting. I didn’t see any doorways, but there was a spot alongside the entrance to the Honda showroom where a person might have stood or crouched without being too conspicuous. There was a trash can on the corner, not ten yards from the pay phone, and others on the opposite curb and ranging alongside the muffler shop.
The sun had been shining when I left Elaine’s apartment. Clouds obscured it by the time I reached the site of the murder, and the sky kept getting darker by the minute. The temperature was dropping, too, and it occurred to me that the jacket I was wearing wasn’t going to be warm enough. I headed back to my hotel to change, and pick up an umbrella while I was at it.
But when I got to Ninth Avenue there was a bus just pulling up and I ran and caught it. Maybe the rain would hold off, I told myself. Maybe the sun would come out and warm things up again.
Sure.
IT was almost twelve-thirty when I walked into a room on Houston Street, filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, and took a couple of cookies from a chipped china plate. I found a chair, and someone stood up and read the AA preamble and introduced the speaker.
The group was mostly gay, and a lot of the sharing was about AIDS and HIV. At one-thirty we held hands and had a moment of silence, followed by the Serenity Prayer. The young man on my right said, “Do you know how they close the meetings at the agnostics’ group? They have a moment of silence, followed by
another
moment of silence.”
I walked down through SoHo, stopping at a pizza stand for a Sicilian slice and a Coke. Lispenard Street is just below Canal and only two blocks long, and Jan’s loft is on the fifth floor of a six-story building wedged between two larger and more modern buildings. I stepped into the vestibule and rang her bell, then went back onto the sidewalk and waited for her to open the window and throw down the key.
That’s what she’d done the night I met her, and on quite a few subsequent occasions. Then for a while I’d had a key of my own. I’d used it a final time on the afternoon I came to pick up my things. I had filled two shopping bags with my clothes and left the key on the kitchen counter, right next to the Mr. Coffee machine.
I looked up. The window opened and the key sailed out, hit the pavement, bounced, clattered, lay still. I picked it up and let myself into the building.
Chapter 7
“Come on in,” she said. “It was sweet of you to come. You’re looking well, Matthew.”
“So are you,” I said. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Hah,” she said. “Finally.” She tilted her head and looked me in the eye. “What do you think? Is it an improvement?”
“You’ve always looked good to me, Jan.”
Her face clouded and she turned from me, saying that she’d just made a fresh pot of coffee. Did I still drink it black? I said I did. No sugar, right? Right, no sugar.
I went to the front of the loft, where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Lispenard Street. Her bronze head of Medusa, the hair a writhing mass of snakes, stood on its plinth to the right of the low sofa. It was early work; I’d seen it and remarked on it the night we met. Don’t look her in the eye, Jan had told me, for her gaze turns men to stone.
Her own gaze when she
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