Chill of Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

with a towel as she opened the door and went into the bedroom to let Lenny see what she’d been looking at in the mirror. She got the result she expected.
    â€œC’mon back to bed with me,” Lenny said, snuffing out his cigarette in a room service glass he was using as an ashtray.
    â€œIt’s almost two o’clock, Lenny. I’ve gotta get back to work.” Bev moved toward where her clothes were folded on the chair near the bed. Too near. His hand closed gently but firmly around her wrist. She pretended to struggle but didn’t really pull away. “I just took a shower, Lenny.”
    â€œYou took one, you can take another in no time. You’re already undressed for one.”
    She laughed. “I don’t think a shower’s what you have in mind.”
    He pulled her toward the bed. “Mind reader, you.”
    Â 
    At twenty after three they left the hotel together. It was one of the big chain hotels, the lobby was crowded, and it was midday in Midtown. No one paid much attention to them.
    Out on the sidewalk, after the dim room with its closed drapes, it seemed unusually bright and sunny. While the doorman was standing with one foot on the curb and the other in the street, trying to hail a cab, Lenny kissed Bev on the cheek. “Gonna ride back to work?”
    â€œNo. It’s a nice day. I’ll walk.” A cab veered toward the curb and the doorman stepped out of the way, then opened a back door.
    â€œI thought you were late.”
    â€œI am. I’m also sales manager.”
    Lenny grinned as he lowered himself into the cab, simultaneously tipping the doorman. “Must be nice being boss,” he said.
    â€œIt sure is some days, around noon.”
    She watched the cab pull out into heavy Midtown traffic. Lenny lifted a hand, so a wave went with his grin.
    Bev began striding along Fifty-first Street, a tall, attractive woman, well dressed but with her hair, fluffy from the hotel drier, mussed by the breeze as soon as she crossed the intersection. She drew appreciative stares, even a honking horn that might have been for her. She might be married to Floyd, but she wasn’t a fossil like Floyd. Not yet by a long shot.
    Halfway back to Light and Shade, she got the feeling she’d been getting too often lately. It was a prickly uneasiness, like a slight pressure on the back of her neck, and sometimes when she turned around it was as if there might have been someone there if she’d only turned faster. Once, when Floyd was out of town with his golf buddies, and she’d come home from work exhausted and kicked off her high heels and fallen into a leather armchair, she could have sworn the cushion was still warm, as if somebody had been sitting there and left only minutes before she arrived. It was creepy, and she had an idea what it might be.
    Floyd suspected something and had hired someone to investigate her. A detective.
    Bev almost grinned at the thought. If Floyd wanted a divorce, he could have one. They had an iron-clad pre-nup, so there was no logical reason he should hire a detective other than to satisfy his curiosity. No monetary reason, anyway.
    Of course, there were other reasons and other kinds of satisfaction. Floyd didn’t get it up very often these days, but he still had an active mind.
    Hell with it.
    Bev crossed the intersection against the light, taking her time even though traffic up the block was bearing down on her. If anyone honked she’d give him the finger. That was the kind of mood she was in.
    But no one honked.

7
    Even though he’d taken a pill, Beam didn’t sleep well.
    His dreams were a jumble of images. Lani leaping without hesitation from a balcony high in the night, da Vinci smiling at him and holding out a badge, swastikas, pale stone buildings with columns, people lying dead with red letter J s on them, da Vinci again, still smiling, pointing at something on the sidewalk, something that had fallen.
    He