Night Kills Read Online Free PDF Page A

his mind. He was so good at what he did, sometimes it scared him.
    Eastwood chewed on his stubby cigar and squinted at him from the TV screen.
    Eastwood, or at least the characters he usually played in his movies, wouldn’t approve of him. But when the actor was younger, he might well have been handed altogether different kinds of scripts and would now be seen in an altogether different light. The man was an actor; his public image and probably his personal image had been shaped by the scripts he was given, written by someone he might never have met. In a way, we were all in the movies, whether we knew it or not.
    He smiled at Eastwood, then went over to an antique rolltop desk and removed a drawer. Reaching into the cavity left by the missing drawer, he worked a wooden lever that opened a secret compartment in the side of the desk. From the compartment he withdrew a gray metal lockbox with the key in it. He turned the key, opened the lid, and reached in and got out a small Colt semiautomatic, holding the gun by its checked handle. It fired hollow-point twenty-two-caliber bullets and made little more noise than a loud slap. Not a powerful weapon, but the hollow points would penetrate a human being and break into pieces that would rip and tumble through bone and tissue and cause a great deal of localized damage. One careful shot to the heart was enough to bring someone down. If the wound itself wasn’t sufficient to kill, the person would lie there in shock. And while the person lay stunned and disbelieving, almost certainly dying, two shots to the head would be enough to make sure. That’s what the little Colt was—sure. He had a fondness for the gun.
    He glanced at the silent TV screen. Eastwood was on a horse now, raising a lot of dust while galloping hell for leather over terrain that looked like Arizona but was probably in Italy.
    What must that be like, flying across a purpling plain on a white and brown speckled horse? It must really impress the ladies. The ones in Rome and Milan, anyway.
    He’d heard or read somewhere that Eastwood bought his cigars in a shop in Beverly Hills and cut them in half for his movie scenes. So much in life was an act.
    Ignoring the TV, he removed a cleaning kit and some gun oil from the metal lockbox, along with a soft white cotton cloth.
    He was about to clean and oil the gun when his cell phone, on top of the rolltop desk, played the first few bars of “Get Me to the Church on Time.”
    He glanced at the Caller ID before answering the phone. “I was hoping you’d call,” he said, smiling.
    A pause.
    â€œYes,” he said, still smiling. “Of course. Of course. Yes. Yes. You know I do. Yes.”
    He put down the gun and wandered the room as he talked, as if motion would lend import to his words. Whoever was on the other end of the connection was receiving his full attention.
    â€œOkay,” he said, “I’ll see you there. You can’t know how much I’m looking forward to it.” He idly picked up the broomstick and observed its sharpened point as he listened to the caller.
    â€œSee you there,” he said again. “Love you.”

6
    Death had drawn them together again. They met at Quinn’s first-floor apartment on West Seventy-fifth off Columbus in the room he’d converted into a den. Quinn sat behind his big cherrywood desk, his rough-hewn features sidelighted by the shaded lamp, making his oft-broken nose seem even more crooked. One of the Cuban cigars he had illegally supplied to him was propped at a sharp angle in a glass ashtray. The cigar wasn’t burning. It was pointless to start things off with Pearl already bitching.
    She was seated cross-legged in an armchair to the left of the desk, facing Quinn, wearing faded jeans, a blue Mets T-shirt, gray socks. The loafers she’d slipped off lay askew on the floor near the chair. Her raven-black hair was pulled back and wound in a knot. She wore her