Darker Than Night Read Online Free PDF

amazingly sober then. “Listen, Kasner!”
    But Pearl had spun on her high heels and was striding toward the ladies’ room, where she knew he wouldn’t follow.
    She understood immediately the gravity of what she’d done. Knew she’d screwed up. At least there were witnesses in the bar, a lineup of men and a few women, many of them grinning at her in the back-bar mirror as she passed. Hotel guests, most of them. Witnesses. She could locate them if she had to. Asshole Egan would have to know that.
    â€œKasner!”
    Now she did turn. She balled her right fist and raised her voice. “You really want me to come back, Captain Egan?”
    He flinched. He was in plain clothes, but he didn’t like his rank and name spoken so loudly. Not in these circumstances.
    Maybe he knew what she was doing and suddenly realized his own vulnerability, because he seemed suddenly aware of the other lounge patrons and the two bartenders, all staring at him.
    He dug out his wallet, threw some bills on the bar next to his empty glass, then stalked out.
    Pearl continued to the ladies’ room.
    When she emerged ten minutes later, calm but still angry, Egan was nowhere in sight.
    As she walked swiftly through the bar toward the lobby, she heard applause.
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    The dinner date was disastrous. Pearl couldn’t stop thinking about Captain Egan and what had happened, what she’d done. She couldn’t stop blaming herself as well as Egan.
    Anger, depression, stress. Pearl’s world.
    Days had passed, and that world didn’t collapse in on Pearl. Word had gotten around, though, like a subterranean current.
    Still, there had been no reprisals. Egan was married. There were witnesses to his altercation with Pearl, and he’d been close to falling-down drunk, while she’d been sober. Internal affairs was never involved. No official charges were ever filed. NYPD politics at work.
    She, and everyone else, knew that Egan was patiently waiting for his opportunity. Pearl didn’t figure to have a long or distinguished career as a cop.
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    â€œDamn!” she said to her bedroom ceiling, and tried to think about something else. Her mind was a merry-go-round she couldn’t stop. Maybe she should get out of bed and paint.
    Yeah, at eleven-thirty at night.
    It was one of the few times in her life when Pearl wished she had something other than her work. But she’d had several disastrous romances and had lost her faith in men. Most men, anyway. No, all men. The entire fucking gender. None of them seemed to be for her.
    Fedderman, being her partner, was the man she spent the most time with. A decent enough guy, married, three kids, overweight, overdeodorized, eighteen years older than Pearl, and more interested in pasta than sex.
    Not much hope there.
    The other men in her life, her fellow officers and men she encountered in other city jobs, sometimes made plays for her. None of them interested her. These guys were far more interested in sex than pasta, or anything else. Invariably, they talked a great game, but it was talk. The few guys she’d given a tumble couldn’t keep up with her in or out of the sack, and they tended to run off at the mouth. Pearl didn’t like that. Pearl figured the hell with them. When it came to what really mattered, they didn’t have it.
    Maybe she picked them wrong. Or maybe that was just men.
    She laced her fingers behind her head and closed her eyes. If she could only meet some guy who wasn’t all front. Who wasn’t shooting angles or afraid to care and act like he cared. Who wasn’t so dishonest with her.
    Who knows how lonely I am.
    Who isn’t so…
    She fell asleep thinking about it.
    Him.
    Like she sometimes did on nights when she didn’t drink scotch or take a pill.
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    Lars Svenson wouldn’t let the woman sleep. Whenever he knew she was dozing off, he’d lay into her again with the whip. It was a short, supple whip,