Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery Read Online Free PDF

should have taken it straight to the police, but instead I did what Billie wanted. What else is new? Anyway, you're on your own."
    "Maybe we could be a little less hostile for now."
    "I'm not hostile. I'm angry."
    "At Billie?"
    "Sure, wouldn't you be?"
    I hadn't even thought of that. "This Palomino person, was Billie still seeing him?"
    "She dumped him, too."
    "Man or woman?"
    "For his twin brother."
    "What?"
    "You don't know about Billie's exploits?"
    "No." And I didn't want to hear about them.
    "You lived with her, right?" Sybel asked. "Oh, well, maybe she changed since then."
    "What do you think's in the ice tray?"
    "Listen to me: I don't know
anything
. I've got to go." She picked a dollar bill from her purse. I saw the Mace next to a fluffy stuffed whale. She laid the money beside her coffee cup.
    "What kind of guys are these Palominos?"
    "Freddy's okay. Leon's a dolt. Freddy's wife left him, took the kids and moved to Latin America somewhere. Freddy was always kind of mopey most of the time. Vulnerable. Leon's got these two plastic nudes standing in the back window of his Camaro. Their boobs rotate as the car moves." She stood up.
    "How can I get in touch with you?" I asked.
    "Why would you want to do that?"
    "In case I think of something."
    "Think fast."
    "Can I call you at Renaissance?"
    "No, stay away from there."
    "Why?"
    "It ties up the lines."
    "How about at home?"
    She peered at my eyes, looking for angles, then rummaged in her purse for a broken Bic and a crumpled cash-register receipt. She scrawled her number. "So long, Jellyroll," she said. Two horny yuppies at the bar discussed her ass as she walked out.
    Go home, I told myself. Listen to something with Dexter Gordon in it.

FIVE

    U PPER BROADWAY SEEMED happy in the rain. Lights twinkled. Arm in arm under single umbrellas, happy white couples strolled from
The Stranger
, playing at the Thalia. Smiling Hispanic couples in party clothes gathered outside the Tropical Ballroom, from which floated purple light and salsa. A black couple waited at the stoplight in a gas-guzzler that shook with their laughter. Those of all races out for a good time. Even the Korean grocers giggled, hacking carrots. I pulled my hood up and hailed a southbound gypsy cab, told the driver Eleventh and Broadway, please.
    Acappella Productions was on the third floor of the old Hotel St. Denis. Abraham Lincoln stayed there soon after John Brown seized the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Lincoln walked from the hotel in a chill February rain to Cooper Union, where for the first time he addressed the big-city audience: "All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could readily grant, if they thought it wrong." Except for a handsome, curving marble-and-wrought-iron stairway, nothing of the old St. Denis remained. The six floors were chopped up into tiny offices leased by therapists, raggedy-ass lawyers, mail-order book operations, and Central European emigre organizations maintaining a low profile. Billie was the only photographer.
    I stepped from the cab into a four-inch gutter torrent bound for the sea. Two winos sheltering under the awning watched me wade up onto the sidewalk. One nodded gravely at the torrent and said, "We got a severe drainage problem here."
    "Must report it to the proper authorities," said his associate.
    I squelched up the steps and unlocked the street door with Billie's key. Was I being watched? I looked around. Only wet winos. There it was, Renaissance Antiques, across the street, a square four-story ex-warehouse or factory from the days of light industry in Lower Manhattan. Cages were drawn down over the new, incongruous plate-glass windows full of furniture, but I was supposed to be looking for people following me. I saw none.
    I walked up to Billie's floor and stopped on the dark landing to listen. Somewhere water slowly dripped. ACAPELLA PRODUCTIONS, said the hand-carved wooden letters. Billie photographed bums