Known to Evil Read Online Free PDF

them when Twill had come across someone he thought D might like. It's supposed to be the other way around--the older brother is supposed to teach his younger sibling the ropes, but that wasn't the case in our home. Twill was the reincarnation of an old soul that had spent one lifetime after another in prison or on the run.
    Lately my youngest, and favorite, son had been running an online fence. He never saw or spoke to anyone, just had his e-wallet fat with transfers from a dozen different buyers and providers.
    I was looking into how to short-circuit his illegal enterprise but thus far the weak link eluded me.
    I couldn't see how that particular endeavor would get both kids in trouble.
    "It's okay, baby," I said to my wife.
    She sniffed and I wondered if she got a whiff of my make-out session.
    "I'm worried, Leonid."
    "You know Twill. He probably met some girl wants a college man for a night or two. That's the one thing would keep Dimitri away from here."
    "You think so?"
    "I'm sure of it. They'll call in the morning. Probably call me, 'cause they're so afraid of you."
    I could see the tension release in her shoulders and face.
    "Why're you so worried?" I asked.
    "I don't know. Maybe I just feel guilty."
    "Guilty about what?"
    "Not taking care of our children."
    "Children? Dimitri's twenty-two, and you know Twill was never a child."
    Katrina smiled then, letting go the last of her fear.
    "Go on to bed, honey," I said. "Go to bed and we'll hear from the boys in the morning."

7
    T here are three important furnishings in my den (which sometimes serves as a second office). One is a big black desk where I read and, now and then, brood over my life. Across from the desk, hanging in the center of an otherwise empty white wall, is a small oil painting, Alienated Man , done by the genius Paul Klee. I'd been given the painting, quite recently, by a young woman who taught me, better than my Communist father ever could, that wealth was mostly just a trick of the mind.
    Under the window sits a daybed that can also be used as a couch. I sat there for a while, looking over a dark swath that I knew was the mighty Hudson River.
    Sitting in darkness, I experienced a re-revelation: I didn't want the life I was living; I never had. Home-schooled on Hegel, Marx, and Bakunin until the age of twelve, I--from then on a ward of the state--had gone, continuously, downhill.
    I spent no more than three minutes feeling sorry for my lot. One hundred eighty seconds isn't bad in the wee hours when no one can see you, or hear.
    I thought for a while about the women who populated my night: Katrina, who believed that adult love was either beauty and wealth or else an act of will; Lucy, who was more willing than I had ever been; Wanda Soa was dead; and a woman named Tara wasn't there--or maybe she was Wanda and dead two times. That should be enough for any man. But I wasn't interested in them. All I cared about was Aura Ullman with her Aryan eyes and Ethiopian skin, her natural and deep understanding of what it meant to live under a lawless star.

    I DIDN'T REMEMBER LYING down on the daybed, much less falling asleep. But I was up before the sun. The boys hadn't come in--I would have heard Dimitri's racket if they had.
    I was still clad in the dull-yellow suit.
    I disrobed, hanging the ugly clothes on a standing rack near the door. Then I put on a checkered robe that was older than Dimitri and went down to take a cold-water shower.
    I start out each case with a cold shower. I find that it modulates my depressive mood and makes up for the sleep I miss almost every night. It hurts down to the bone, but I rarely yell. I just shiver like a wet dog and clench my teeth hard enough to bite through a circus strongman's thumb. After that, nothing seems so bad or insurmountable.
    As Gordo used to tell me, "Life is pain . . . unless you beat it to the punch."

    WE LIVE ON WEST Ninety-first Street. My office is a few miles south, on Thirty-ninth between Sixth and Seventh