Don't Ever Look Back: A Mystery (Buck Schatz Series) Read Online Free PDF

he said: “My current circumstances entirely justify that decision.” Then he braced a little, in case that caused me to hit him.
    “You think you’re real smart, don’t you?” I said.
    “I wouldn’t mind being a little dumber, if I could also run a little faster,” he said.
    “It ain’t the weight of your brains slowing you down, Paul.” I pushed the toe of my boot into his soft belly, and he curled himself up into a fetal position.
    “It feels like something is grinding inside of me.”
    “Those are your ribs. I’ve gone and broken your damn ribs. And if you don’t start talking, I will break something else.”
    Schulman didn’t respond, but his gaze fixed on a point behind me. I glanced back and saw that my son had caught up with us.
    “What are you doing, Dad?”
    “Get in the car and shut the door,” I said.
    “Why did you hit Mr. Schulman?”
    “Get in the car and shut the door.”
    “It’s okay. Your pop and I are just having a little chat,” said Schulman.
    “Don’t talk to my kid,” I told him.
    Brian crossed his arms. “This is wrong.”
    “Give me something, Paul,” I said. “I don’t necessarily want to beat you in front of the boy, but I’ve got a real bad temper and I might just lose it.” I raised the club and he winced. Usually, it took very little persuasion to get a low-rent scumbag of this caliber to squeal. The list of people who could clam Paul Schulman up like this was short.
    I knelt next to him; got my face close to his. I looked in his eyes, and I could tell if he was deciding whether his fear of me outweighed his fear of whoever he was protecting. I made a quick calculation. “Tell me what you know about Elijah. Are you in on this job he’s lining up?”
    I tightened my grip on the club. He looked at me for about ten seconds, while I loomed enormous and occupied his entire field of vision, and he realized that I was all-knowing and all-seeing and terrible in my wrath.
    “I’m on the outside of this thing,” he said. “I know a little, but not much. Please, Buck, don’t hit me again.”
    “Give me what you have, and we’ll see how much mercy it buys you.”
    He shuddered, and then he cringed, because shuddering shifted his cracked ribs. Then he screamed a little, because cringing just made it hurt worse. “Ari Plotkin has a piece of it, but he says Elijah don’t trust me. I heard the job has got something to do with the colored boys striking down by the river. That’s all I know.”
    I stood silently over him for long enough to see if he had anything else he wanted to say. But it didn’t look like there was anything else for me to get out of him, except for tears and drool.
    “I ought to arrest you, Paul. I know damn well you’ve been up to something lately that should earn you six months upstate. But I’m off duty, and I’m feeling charitable,” I said. “When you think about what happened here tonight, think about how nice I was to you. Next time you make me chase you, I will be a lot less forgiving.”
    I rose to my feet, which brought me eye-to-eye with Abramsky, who was standing with one protective arm draped over Brian’s shoulder.
    “This is a place of prayer, Detective,” he said.
    I glanced down at Schulman, who was quivering on the sidewalk. “I guess Mr. Schulman should have prayed a little harder.”
    The rabbi pinched his features so hard, his lips turned white. “These are your own people. How can you do this to your own people?”
    “Pretty easily, it turns out,” I said. I pointed at Brian with the club. “Get in the car.”
    But my son just stood there and balled up his fists. “I want to hear a real answer to that question.” In some ways, he was a lot like his mother.
    I looked at the rabbi. “Isn’t there a commandment about how he’s got to do what I say?”
    Abramsky crossed his arms. “He’s almost a man, and a man can’t just look the other way when he sees something like this. I think you had better try to