One False Move: A Myron Bolitar Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

sure I see the point of this story.”
    “It’s not over yet.” Brenda stopped, looked down, summoned up a little something, raised her head again. “Three days later the two boys—Clay Jackson and Arthur Harris—were found on the roof of a tenement building. Someone had tied them up and cut their Achilles tendon in half with pruning shears.”
    Myron’s face lost color. His stomach took a nosedive. “Your father?”
    Brenda nodded. “He’s been doing stuff like that my whole life. Never this bad. But he’s always made people who cross me pay. When I was a little girl with no mother, I almost welcomed the protection. But I’m not a little girl anymore.”
    Myron absently reached down and touched the back of his ankle. Cut the Achilles tendon in half. With pruning shears. He tried not to look too stunned. “The police must have suspected Horace.”
    “Yes.”
    “So how come he wasn’t arrested?”
    “Not enough evidence.”
    “Couldn’t the victims identify him?”
    She turned back to the window. “They’re too scared.” She pointed to the right. “Park there.”
    Myron pulled over. People toddled about the street. They stared at him as though they had never seen a white man; in this neighborhood that was entirely possible.Myron tried to look casual. He nodded a polite hello. Some people nodded back. Some didn’t.
    A yellow car—nay, a speaker on wheels—cruised by, blaring a rap tune. The bass was set so high that Myron felt the vibrations in his chest. He could not make out the lyrics, but they sounded angry. Brenda led him to a stoop. Two men were sprawled on the stairs like war wounded. Brenda stepped over them without a second glance. Myron followed. He suddenly realized that he had never been here before. His relationship with Horace Slaughter had been strictly basketball. They had always hung out on the playground or in a gym or maybe grabbing a pizza after a game. He had never been in Horace’s home, and Horace had never been in his.
    There was no doorman, of course, no lock or buzzers or any of that. The lighting was bad in the corridor, but not bad enough to conceal the paint flaking off like the walls had psoriasis. Most of the mailboxes were doorless. The air felt like a beaded curtain.
    She climbed up the cement stairs. The railing was industrial metal. Myron could hear a man coughing as if he were trying to dislodge a lung. A baby cried. Then another joined in. Brenda stopped on the second floor and turned right. Her keys were already in her hand and at the ready. The door too was made of some sort of reinforced steel. There was a peephole and three bolt locks.
    Brenda unlocked the three bolts first. They jerked back noisily, like the prison scene in a movie where the warden yells, “Lockdown!” The door swung open. Myron was hit by two thoughts at exactly the same time. One was how nice Horace’s setup was. Whateverwas outside this apartment, whatever grime and rot were on the streets or even in his corridor, Horace Slaughter had not allowed to sneak past the steel door. The walls were as white as a hand cream commercial. The floors looked newly buffed. The furniture was a mix of what looked like fixed-up family pieces and newer Ikea acquisitions. It was indeed a comfortable home.
    The other thing Myron noticed as soon as the door was open was that someone had trashed the room.
    Brenda rushed in. “Dad?”
    Myron followed, wishing that he had his gun. This scene called for a gun. He would signal her to be quiet, take it out, have her stand behind him, creep through the apartment with her clutching on to his free arm in fear. He would do that gun swing thing into each room, his body crouched and prepared for the worst. But Myron did not regularly carry a gun. It was not that he disliked guns—when in trouble, in fact, he rather enjoyed their company—but a gun is bulky and chafed like a tweed condom. And let’s face it, for most prospective clients, a sports agent packing heat