In the Midst of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

force because of corruption."

    "Oh?My mistake."

    I stood up and walked over to where he'd left the bourbon bottle.
    Ifreshened my drink and drank off half of it. Still on my feet I said,
    "Corruption never bothered me much. It put a lot of food on my family's table." I was talking as much to myself as toBroadfield . He didn't really care why I left the force any more than I cared whether he knew the right reason or not. "I took what came my way. I didn't walk around with my hand out and I never let a man buy his way out of something I considered a serious crime, but there was never a week when we lived on what the city paid me." I drained my glass.

    "You take plenty. The city didn't buy that suit."

    "No question."The grin again. I didn't like that grin much. "I took plenty, Matt. No argument. But we all have certain lines we draw, right?

    Why did you quit, anyway?"

    "I didn't like the hours."

    "Seriously."

    "That's serious enough."

    It was as much as I felt like telling him. For all I knew he already had the whole story, or whatever the back-fence version of it sounded like these days.

    What happened was simple enough. A few years back I was having a few drinks in a bar inWashingtonHeights . I was off duty and entitled to drink if I felt like it, and the bar was one where cops could drink on the arm, which may have constituted police corruption but which had never given me a sleepless night.

    Then a couple of punks held up the place and shot the bartender dead on their way out. I chased them down the street and emptied my service revolver at them, and I killed one of the bastards and crippled the other, but one bullet didn't go where it was supposed to. It ricocheted off something or other and into the eye of a seven-year-old girl namedEstrellita Rivera, and on through the eye and into the brain, andEstrellita Rivera died and so did a large part of me.

    There was a departmental investigation which ended with me being completely exonerated and even awarded a commendation, and a little while after that I resigned from the force and separated from Anita and moved to my hotel onFifty-seventhStreet . I don't know how it all fits together, or if it all fits together, but what it seemed to add up to was that I hadn't enjoyed being a cop anymore. But none of this was any of JerryBroadfield's business, and he wasn't going to hear it from me.

    So I said, "I don't really know what I can do for you."

    "You can do more than I can. You're not stuck in this lousy apartment."

    "Who brings you your food?"

    "My food?Oh.I been getting out for a bite and like that.But not much and not often. And I'm careful that nobody's watching when I leave the building or come back into it."

    "Sooner or later somebody's going to tag you."

    "Hell, I know that." He lit another cigarette. The gold Dunhill was just a flat sliver of metal, lost in his large hand. "I'm just trying to buy myself a couple of days," he said. "That's about all. She splashed herself all over the papers yesterday.I been here since then. I figure I can last the week if I get lucky, a quiet neighborhood like this. By then maybe you can pinch her fuse."

    "Or maybe I can't do a thing."

    "Will you try, Matt?"

    I didn't really want to. I was running low on money, but that didn't bother me too much. It was the beginning of the month and my rent was paid through the end of the month and I had enough cash on hand to keep me in bourbon and coffee, with a little left over for luxuries like food.

    I didn't like the big cocky son of a bitch. But that didn't get in the way. As a matter of fact, I generally prefer to work for men I neither like nor respect. It pains me less to give them poor value.

    So it didn't matter that I didn't likeBroadfield . Or that I didn't believe that more than 20 percent of what he had told me was the truth.
    And I wasn't even sure which 20 percent to believe.

    That last may have been what made my decision for me. Because I evidently wanted to find