Nocturne Read Online Free PDF

the room’s star, looked like there might be some kind of trouble
     here. One thing people in this city didn’t much care for was trouble. First whiff of trouble, people in this city picked up
     their skirts and ran for the hills. Even out-of-towners in this city (which some of the people in the room looked like), even
     foreigners in the city (which some of the other people in the room looked like), the minute they caught that first faint whiff
     of trouble brewing, they were out of here, man.
Miss Priscilla Stetson, Now Appearing
9:00 p.m .–2:00 a.m . was in imminent danger of playing her last set to an empty room. She suddenly remembered the time. “I’m on,” she said. “We’ll
     talk later,” and left the four men standing there with their thumbs up their asses.
    Like most macho fools who display their manhood to no avail, the men stood glaring at each other a moment longer, and then
     mentally flexed their muscles with a few seconds of eye-lock before the two cops went back to the bar and the two gun-toting
     whatever-they-weres went back to their table. Priscilla, professionally aloof to whatever masculine urges were surfacing here,
     warmly sang a set consisting of “My Funny Valentine,” “My Romance,” “If I Loved You” and “Sweet and Lovely.” A woman sitting
     at one of the tables asked her escort why they didn’t write love songs like that anymore, and he said, “Because now they write
     hate songs.”
    It was 2:00 a.m .
    Either Georgie (or his twin brother Frankie or Nunzio or Dominick or Foongie) asked Priscilla why she hadn’t played the theme
     song from
The Godfather
tonight. She sweetly told them no one had requested it, kissed them both on their respective cheeks and simultaneously kissed
     them off. Big detectives that they were, neither Carella nor Hawes yet knew whether they were bodyguards or wiseguys. Priscilla
     came to the bar.
    “Too late for a glass of champagne?” she asked the bartender.
    He knew she was kidding; he poured one in a flute. Dispersing guests came over to tell Priscilla how terrific she’d been.
     Graciously, she thanked them all and sent them on their early morning way. Priscilla wasn’t a star, she was just a good singer
     in a small café in a modest hotel, but she carried herself well. They could tell by the way she merely sipped at the champagne
     that she wasn’t a big drinker. Maybe her grandmother had something to do with that. Which brought them back to the corpse
     in the shabby mink coat.
    “I told you,” Priscilla said. “All her friends are dead. I couldn’t give you their names if I wanted to.”
    “How about enemies?” Carella asked. “All of them dead, too?”
    “My grandmother was a lonely old woman living alone. She had no friends, she had no enemies. Period.”
    “So it had to be a burglar, right?” Hawes asked.
    Priscilla looked at him as if discovering him for the first time. Looked him up and down. Red hair with white streak, size
     twelve gunboats.
    “That’s your job, isn’t it?” she asked coolly. “Determining whether it was a burglar or not?”
    “And, by the way, she did have a friend,” Carella corrected.
    “Oh?”
    “Woman down the hall. Played her old records for her.”
    “Please. She played those old 78s for anyone who’d listen.”
    “Ever meet her?”
    “Who?”
    “Woman named Karen Todd. Lived down the hall from your grandmother.”
    “No.”
    “When’s the last time you saw her alive?” Hawes asked.
    “We didn’t get along.”
    “So we understand. When did you see her last?”
    “Must’ve been around Eastertime.”
    “Long time ago.”
    “Yeah,” she said, and fell suddenly silent. “I guess I’ll have to call my mother, huh?” she asked.
    “Might be a good idea,” Carella said.
    “Let her know what happened.”
    “Mm.”
    “What time is it in London?”
    “I don’t know,” Carella said.
    “Five or six hours ahead, is that it?”
    Hawes shook his head, shrugged.
    Karen