Keeplock: A Novel of Crime Read Online Free PDF

worth a pack of cigarettes. That’s the fee for a young kid looking to make a rep. An experienced killer will do it for a carton.” I waited for a response, but he continued to stare at me. “I know I fucked you last time, Simon. I walked into your office a criminal and I used your goodwill to advance my career. But I can’t do the time anymore.”
    “Are you afraid, Pete?”
    I bristled inside. A prisoner never challenges another prisoner’s courage unless he’s looking for a fight. It’s the ultimate disrespect.
    “I’m not afraid of dying. It’s more than that.”
    His face softened and he sat back in his chair. “You have any idea how ‘high risk’ you are? No family support. No job. No home. Institutional from age nine. Long-term drug abuser. You’re gonna have to fly upwind in a hurricane.”
    “That’s been my whole life, Simon. That’s what it’s all about.”
    “All right. Enough with the lecture. Here’s the referral slip. The address is 707 West 39th. You come back here on Monday at nine o’clock and I’ll try to line you up with a job. As long as you’re not particular.”
    “I’m not. I need something to fill up the days.”
    “You might wanna think about Narcotics Anonymous. Or something like it.”
    “I’m not crazy about the twelve steps. Too much like religion for junkies.”
    “Just think it over. It’s easier if you have help.”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    He got to his feet and stretched. “It’s been a long day. Shit, it’s been a long week. I’m goin’ home.”
    “Sorry I kept you late, Simon. The bus broke down near Albany.”
    “I know. I called Trailways and checked.” He smiled and shrugged. “That’s the way it’s gonna be, Pete. You still have my home number?”
    “It’s been ten years.”
    “Ten years?” He shook his head. “Take my card and put it in your wallet. Carry it all the time. You have a problem, which you will , call me first. Before you do something stupid.”

FIVE
    T HE LUDLUM FOUNDATION WAS so far west it was almost in the Hudson River. I walked to it through a neighborhood that hadn’t changed very much in ten years. The garment district was still a collection of low-rise manufacturing lofts, still deserted after eight o’clock. I’d been in any number of these lofts at night, though I was neither customer nor worker.
    The funny part was that most of the time I’d been there with the help of bosses who wanted their inventories to disappear. Clothing manufacturers sink lots of money, usually borrowed, into new lines, speculating on the future tastes of American women. When those lines turn out to be unpopular, the only option is insurance. The clothing wasn’t worth much, but our piece of the insurance check made the jobs profitable.
    I got my first surprise at Eleventh Avenue. Not the whores, who’d been working the southern end of the deuce for a hundred years and were out in force on a Friday night. What stopped me in my tracks was a huge black-glass building that seemed to fly off in all directions. I stood on the corner of 39th and Eleventh, staring at it, wondering what held it up.
    “Hi, sugar. You new in town?”
    The whore was tall, black, and muscular. Too tall and too muscular to be a woman. She was dressed in a pair of red pantyhose that almost hid the bulge in her crotch, and a red brassiere that almost covered her implants.
    “What’s that?” I pointed to the glass building.
    “That’s the Javits Convention Center. They built it about five years ago. Where you been?”
    “I been upstate.”
    “All this time?”
    “Yeah. All this time.”
    “Then you must be ready to rock and roll, Sugar. Come upstairs with me and I’ll take you ’round the world. Broaden your horizons.”
    She put her hand on my arm and I slapped it away out of instinct. “First thing is you don’t touch me without my permission. Second thing is I spent the last ten fucking years avoiding whores like you.”
    She was rubbing her arm