Chill Of Night. John Lutz

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СКАЧАТЬ fleeing man suddenly skidded to a halt, at the same time whirling and dropping to one knee. It was a graceful, dancer’s movement made possible by youth.

      He shot Beam.

      It was like getting whapped in the thigh with a hammer.

      Beam was on the hard concrete floor without knowing how he got there, fire pulsing in his right leg. He craned his neck and peered toward the garage exit and saw that the kid was getting away.

      Rubber screeched out on the street, and there was the dull sound of impact. A woman shouted something over and over that Beam couldn’t understand.

      He reached for his two-way. If the damned thing would work in the garage, he could get help, maybe nail the bastard on the street.

      Then weakness came with the pain.

      Then darkness.

      Beam thought, Lani…

      2

      “What’s it been, bro?” Cassandra Beam asked. “A week?”

      “Nine days,” Beam said. That was how long since he’d been released from the hospital into a bright spring day. His right leg still ached and wasn’t as strong as his left. He’d lost twenty pounds while laid up, and his clothes hung on him as if they were somebody else’s.

      He was wearing a pale gray shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and folded neatly halfway up his forearms. His face was so gaunt as to be almost vulpine, with blue eyes that could charm or cut steel, and an intensely curious, slightly lopsided expression due to a missing right earlobe that had been bitten off in a saloon fight his rookie year as a cop. Beam looked like a guy who’d been dragged bumping and thumping through life, resisting every inch.

      The bullet fired in the parking garage had done only minimal damage to the bone, so he’d be able to walk soon without a cane. He was having lunch at Fostoria’s, on Central Park West, with his sister, Cassie, who was a psychiatrist with her office nearby. A long way from downtown, where they’d spent their childhood.

      The restaurant’s tables were small and round, with lacy white tablecloths, and the place was filled with brilliant winter sunlight. They were waiting for their server to bring them their orders of croissant sandwiches. It looked to Beam as if everyone in the restaurant was eating something on a croissant.

      Their table was by the window, and both had been watching people stream past out on the sidewalk. It was easier than talking.

      “You were thinking about retiring anyway,” Cassie said.

      She hadn’t done well in the gene pool. Unlike Beam, who was tall and rawboned, his older sister was short and blocky, in a sturdy way that dieting would never change. Her eyes were darker than his, too, staring at Beam now from beneath black bangs.

      “Thinking about and doing are two different things,” Beam said.

      Cassie gave him her gap-toothed smile. “You’re telling me that?”

      Beam had to smile back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget what you do for a living.”

      “Getting shot, so soon after Lani, it was like a one-two punch.”

      “Is that psychoanalyst talk?” Beam asked. “A one-two punch?”

      Cassie took a sip of lime-flavored bottled water. “I’m not talking like an analyst now. More like a sister. Not that I don’t think analysis wouldn’t help you, but it should be done by another professional.”

      “I’ll get through it,” Beam said. His wife of twenty-three years, Lani, had for reasons unknown leaped from the high balcony of her friend and business partner’s apartment, where she was attending a cocktail party and charity fund raiser. It was five months later when Beam had been surprised by the suspect in the parking garage, while investigating the robbery shooting of the attendant, and was shot in the leg. The shooter, who turned out to be twenty-two years old, with an impressive record of armed assault and burglary, had been struck and killed by a car in the street outside the garage exit. Beam’s final collar.

      Not the best way to end the career of legendary New York homicide detective Artemis Beam, the cop who’d made his reputation understanding and hunting down serial killers. He’d been kicked up to the rank of captain and unceremoniously pensioned off. Since then he’d had to use pills to help him sleep, and awake he wandered alone and uneasy in the shifting world of the retired.

      Cassie was the first to tell him he’d never been one to adjust easily. She had a seer’s gift for spotting trouble even before it appeared on the horizon, and she’d known Beam’s retirement was going to be hell. As usual, she was right.

      Beam still grieved for Lani.

      Beam’s leg still hurt.

      Beam still missed the hunt.

      Here came the croissants.

      3

      It felt like butter.

      Lois Banner stood in front of the bolt of rich fabric and again ran her fingertips over it along the barely discernible warp of the material that was so incredibly soft despite its high wool content. It was dark gray, with a faint black splatter pattern, and would be perfect for some of the fall lines she’d seen at last week’s fashion show. Evening in Paris was the name the supplier had affixed to the material, and Lois thought they had it right. That was what the soft fabric reminded her of, her earlier, not-so-innocent years in the city that lent itself to sin.

      Lois herself was a former fashion model, almost forty now, and twenty pounds beyond her working weight. But she would still look good in some of the clothes due in the shops next season. In fact, she would look fantastic. Her features were still sharp, her eyes a brilliant blue, and her dark hair was skinned back to emphasize prominent cheekbones that looked like swept back airplane wings. As a model she’d been considered exotic. She was still that, if she dressed for it. Which happened less and less often.

      Lois preferred to spend time tracking fashions and buying the wonderful fabrics that her customers, gained from longtime business contacts, would purchase wholesale to make the most of what was new. And always, in the world of fashion, something—the most important thing—was new.

      The main office of Fabrics by Lois was on Seventh Avenue. This fabric warehouse and showroom was on West Forty-sixth Street, in the loft of a building that housed offices below. Though most of the bolts of fabric were stored vertically to maximize space, at five feet, ten inches, Lois was the tallest thing in the unbroken area with its vast plank floor. It was evening and dark outside. The Forty-sixth Street end of the loft was shadowed but for dappled light that filtered through unwashed windows and skylights. The rest of the area was dimly illuminated by original brass fixtures suspended on chains from the high ceiling. Lois would not abide florescent lighting—the cruel tricks it played on colors!

      She was dressed simply and casually in black slacks and blouse this evening, and wore white Nikes, no socks. On Lois, the outfit looked even more expensive than it was.

      A breeze played across her bare ankles, as if a door had opened. But the loft was accessible by elevator. The only door was to the fire stairs that ran down the south side of the building.

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