Bread Upon the Waters Read Online Free PDF

angel.” He laughed softly. “Quite the reverse of the usual situation.”
    “Where did it…?” Strand asked.
    “In the park. I was a little later than usual this evening. Pressure of business. The old trap.” Leslie had gotten most of the blood off him by now and he looked sedate and confident of himself, slightly florid, but with a strong, well-formed face that reminded Strand of the portraits of Spanish conquistadors, confident and used to giving orders. “I was on my usual daily spin around the park, the advice of my doctor—you know how fussy they are about men approaching middle age who lead sedentary lives in offices…”
    Leslie stepped back to examine her handiwork. “That’s about the best I can do for the moment for the upper works,” she said. “It doesn’t look too bad. Now for the hand.” She began to wrap bandages across the knuckles and under the palms, tearing strips of adhesive tape with a ripping noise.
    “I lost my hat somewhere,” the man said. “I imagine that would help my appearance.”
    “What were you hit with?” Strand said. “Maybe you need a tetanus shot.”
    “The…the instrument,” the man said dryly, “looked immaculate to me, although I wasn’t in the position to make certain at the time. I’m sure my doctor will do whatever is necessary.”
    “What instrument?” Jimmy asked curiously.
    “From my reading,” the man said, “I would expect it would be a piece of lead pipe. Oh, I’ve been remiss. Let me introduce myself. I’m Russell Hazen.” He said the name as though he expected it to be recognized, but as far as he knew, Strand had never heard it before.
    “Allen Strand,” Strand said. “And this is my wife, Leslie. And my son, James.”
    “I’m honored.” Hazen made a small, sitting-down bow. “I hope we meet again under more auspicious circumstances.”
    Bloody or not, Strand thought, he had the vocabulary of a lawyer. My honorable colleague, who has just hit me over the head with a lead pipe …
    “You don’t have to talk, you know,” Leslie said, “if you don’t really feel up to it.”
    “I want you to know,” Hazen said, ignoring Leslie’s invitation to silence, “that you have an extraordinarily courageous daughter…”
    “What did she do?” Jimmy asked. He sounded disbelieving, as though of all the virtues he might think his sister might possess, physical courage was not one that would immediately come to his mind.
    “As I was saying, I was making my daily spin around the park…”
    “Spin?” Jimmy asked. “What kind of spin?”
    For the young, Strand thought, wishing Jimmy would shut up, the facts came first and compassion after, if at all. Jimmy sounded suspicious, as though if the truth were finally to come out, his sister’s condition, the blood on her clothes and the hysterical sobbing in Eleanor’s arms, were at bottom Hazen’s fault.
    “On my bicycle,” Hazen said. “Excellent exercise. One does not need a team or a partner and especially on a fine spring day like today one can enjoy the bounty of nature.”
    He must have learned how to speak in the eighteenth century, Strand thought, without changing his expression as he listened to the man.
    “I stopped for a little breather,” Hazen continued. “I went off the path a little and leaned against a tree and I smoked a cigarette, I’m afraid. My doctor would undoubtedly say I was undoing all the good the exercise had done me. Still, a lifetime habit, comforting at certain moments…. I was thinking about a problem that had kept me at my office a little later than ordinary and I thought that perhaps five minutes or so of reflection…”
    “Then they jumped you?” Jimmy was not one for reflection, his or anyone else’s.
    “It was dusk,” Hazen went on evenly. “I was enjoying looking at the lights in the buildings on Central Park West in the calm air.” He stopped, touched the wound on his cheek lightly. “Then, as you say, James, they jumped