Elsinore Read Online Free PDF Page B

surlier I got.”
    â€œSo we go out on the road and make a little trouble.”
    â€œAnd business,” Phipps said.
    â€œThank you … I’ll be in touch.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œI want to visit my fiancée.”
    â€œHolden, be here tomorrow at nine, or I swear, I’ll have Abruzzi’s own men chop you down.”
    Holden smiled. “That’s not the way to treat your future companion.”
    And he parted company with the old man, left him with his cane and his rubber boots, and that ghost city he’d constructed for his own meals. Holden preferred a fish sandwich at Blimpie’s or some ratatouille at home. And then he had to remind himself. His home was in that ceiling of stars downstairs in Phipps’ lobby.

4
    Elsinore wasn’t hard to find. It was a country where a guy named Hamlet once lived. Holden had read the play in high school. He remembered poison going into somebody’s ear. And a mad princess. A queen who liked to kiss her son on the mouth. A prince who went around killing people. Hamlet was a bumper, like Sidney Holden.
    And this Elsinore was near the old Flushing airport. On a side street, in College Point. But Hamlet forgot to bring his sword. And Holden wasn’t wearing his shooter this afternoon. He didn’t have Hamlet’s noblesse oblige. He couldn’t afford to bump people at a nursing home. Elsinore was a great wooden hut with porches and a tin roof. There weren’t any weirdos drifting out on the porch, or keepers in white suits. It could have been the oversized cottage of a shingle salesman in College Point. But there was one clue. The street was on a tiny hill, and Holden could see across Flushing Bay to the roofs of Rikers Island. So he was in the mood for penitentiaries when he knocked on the nursing home’s front door.
    He expected a fuss. Shooflies with submachine guns. Nurses with clubs. Some poor old slob of an actor shouting Shakespeare. The usual hurly-burly of a mad-person’s inn. But it was a tranquil place where Abruzzi had put his daughter-in-law. The waiting rooms sat above the sea. The water was dark and green, and Holden felt like some voyager on a route he hadn’t charted for himself. Captain Sid.
    He didn’t have to go through a circle of secretaries. Holden got to the chief resident in a couple of minutes. And it disturbed him, because he liked the guy and he didn’t want to. The resident was younger than Holden, and he didn’t play the psychiatric genius. Dr. Herbert Garden.
    â€œWe were expecting you,” the doctor said. “I’ve been told how persistent you can be.”
    â€œHow come Paul doesn’t have one of his shooters in the house?”
    â€œI’d be an idiot, Mr. Holden, if I allowed detectives to run around scaring patients.”
    â€œBut why did Paul pick this place? He must know lots of inns.”
    â€œMaybe he thought I could help Mrs. Abruzzi.”
    â€œShe won’t be Mrs. Abruzzi for long,” Holden said. “I’m going to marry her when she’s feeling better.”
    â€œHow did you meet Mrs. Abruzzi?”
    â€œWell, it’s complicated,” Holden said. “I rescued her from three friends of mine.”
    â€œI read about that incident in Newsday . But no rescuer was ever mentioned.”
    â€œRight. I’m not a sheriff, Dr. Garden. I don’t wear a badge. I have to creep around the law. Big Paul was feuding with the Pinzolo brothers. Mike, Ed, and the Rat. They grabbed her, and I had to get her from Mike.”
    â€œAnd that’s how you met.”
    â€œWell, I went out to Rockaway. That’s where they were holding her. In a bungalow. I had a talk with Red Mike. And then Fay appeared, without her clothes. It was Mike’s idea. They were holding her like that, so she couldn’t run away.… I didn’t have a choice. I loved Mikey and his brothers. I grew up with them,