A Killer in the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

“A yellow cab picked him up on the corner of Park.”
    “Picked him up? He didn’t hail it?”
    “Cab just stops. Door swings open. Guess who’s inside?”
    I licked my lips. My mouth was dry. “You saw her?” I wished I could clear my head. I wished I could get some sleep.
    “Just a flash,” said Monahan. “Mostly her big, fat body.”
    “Not her face?”
    Monahan hesitated. “Just a flash, it . . . I couldn’t see, it . . .”
    “Where the hell’s her face at? Who is this woman?”
    Another pause. “It was dark in the cab. Hard to make out,” Monahan said.
    That night I stayed in the cover apartment, just in case the thug came back. The bed there was big, the mattress thick and soft. The painted cherubs looked down from the ceiling above me.
    I turned from side to side. I lay on my back and stared back at the cherubs. I’ve got her. I’ve got her . Sleep was impossible. I didn’t get a minute of it, not a wink. I got up, sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding my head in my hands. I was so tired. I found a decanter of brandy. Drank some. It didn’t work. I had a few sleeping pills—pretty standard-issue equipment in Vice. I took them too. They made my thoughts fuzzy and vague but didn’t stop them. I’ve got her . I kept seeing the featureless, piebald front of her head. Where the hell’s her face at? I kept seeing Emory with his cute, wrinkled nose, like an old woman cooing to her poodle. Are we being naughty now? What were these people up to? Evil. Something evil. The big word kept coming back to me.
    Finally, I threw the comforter off me, cursing. Jumped out of my bed, bare feet to the carpet. I needed something. I’d never been like this, never. I had to get some sleep or I wasn’t going to make this case. Brandy and Ambien weren’t going to cut it. I had to stop thinking. The thinking was driving me crazy.
    I got up and got dressed. Christ, it was almost two in the morning. I had my Harley parked in the building’s garage. It roared to life, the noise echoing off the concrete walls.
    There was a guy I knew. Janks. A CI—a confidential informant—who’d helped me bring down a kiddie porn ring. Janks dealt in anything you could smoke or swallow. He had extensive contacts in the medical profession.
    I found him in the Harlem Lounge, like any buyer would. No one blinked to see a white man walk down the bar past the line of all-night drinkers to the stool at the end that was Janks’s headquarters. Even Janks didn’t look up when I sat down next to him.
    “I need something,” I told him.
    Janks was scrawny and solemn. A dark brown undertaker type with a self-important air. He fancied himself a proper pharmacist or doctor, dispensing his medicine to the sick or sick-at-heart.
    “What you think you need?” he said, from on high, his chin lifted.
    “I can’t sleep.”
    “You can’t sleep or you crazy?”
    “I’m crazy and I can’t sleep,” I said.
    “Take some Ambien, man.”
    “I did. I’m in Vice, dude. You see the stuff I see, Ambien’s like an after-dinner mint.”
    “All right. Wait here.”
    I waited while he went into the men’s room. I tried to flag the one-eyed bartender, to order a drink. The one-eyed bartender showed me his empty socket and wouldn’t look at me. The Harlem Lounge reserves the right to refuse service to white junkies.
    Janks came back. He slipped me a Baggie full of white pills.
    “This be Z. You know Z?” he said.
    I shook my head.
    “This be powerful shit, nome saying? You take this, you won’t be crazy. You’ll sleep like you’re waiting for Jesus.”
    “It’s not Jesus I’m waiting for, believe me.”
    “Don’t be drinking with it.”
    “All right.”
    “It’s powerful shit. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    “All right.”
    “You get an erection lasting more than four hours? Don’t be bringing it to me.”
    I slipped the Baggie into my bomber jacket. Slipped Janks some money. Down-low. In case there were any cops in the