Queens Noir Read Online Free PDF Page B

salon of his boat, still dazed and
woozy. He'd drive them back to the cars they had left on Bell
Boulevard the night before.
    Of late, however, with spring prickling the air, Dr. Sheridan was fond of taking his lady friends for a nightcap at the
elegant, brilliantly lighted Caffe on the Green overlooking
the Throgs Neck Bridge, a high-end restaurant that was once
home to Rudolph Valentino and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
And then for a moonlight cruise on his $300,000 luxury Silverton, replete with living room, salon, wide-screen satellite
TV, quadraphonic sound system, full-service kitchen, elegant
dining room, master bedroom with queen-size bed, and smaller
guest bedroom. Nikki would watch him drop anchor under
the Throgs Neck Bridge, where he and his young dates would
spend the night rocking in the tide.
    Nikki knew his routine. A month ago, she had positioned
herself alone at the bar of Uncle Jack's so that Dr. Sheridan
would spot her wearing her skin-tightest jeans, high spaghettistrap heels, and matching tight red leather waist jacket. He offered to buy her a drink and she asked for a bottle of Heineken,
no glass. As she drank the beer, she watched him sip his Grey
Goose in careful measures through the swizzle-stick straw.
    "Real guys don't suck straws," she said, pulling it from his
mouth.
    He laughed. She clinked her bottle against his glass and
he drank from the lip.
    "Real guys offer to buy beautiful women like you dinner,"
he said.
    "Maybe some other time. I just stopped off for a cold one
before work."

    "Where do you work?"
    "Queens."
    "Queens? Queens what? Queens Hospital? Queens College? Queens Supreme?"
    She slugged more beer. "Nah."
    He laughed. "Okay, doing what?"
    "My job."
    She wanted him to remember her. Nothing makes a rich
man remember you like a little bit of mystery and declining a
dinner invitation, she thought. Go to dinner, fuck his brains
out, and tell him your life story ... and you are as memorable
as yesterday's Dow index. Turn him down, keep your pants on,
tell him nothing, and he'll never forget you.
    He wrote his cell number and his private e-mail address
on the back of his embossed business card and handed it to
her. She opened her pocketbook and stuffed the card into her
wallet, then discreetly slipped the swizzle stick in a clear plastic bag. She finished the beer, said thanks, and left for work.
    The job consisted of sitting in her dark-blue jeep Cherokee
with tinted windows, parked up the block on Bell Boulevard.
Three hours later, after bar hopping along the same street, Dr.
Sheridan left a place called The First Edition accompanied
by a gorgeous wobbly blonde with a bubble butt and pants so
tight they looked like they hurt. Nikki figured her fake ID said
she had turned twenty-one the day before.
    Nikki followed Dr. Sheridan's BMW to the Bayside Marina,
where he and his date boarded The Dog's Life. Later, Nikki
watched them through her telescope from her condo window
as he pulled the boat under the Throgs Neck Bridge. After
one glass of bubbly, the young woman got up from a deck chair
and staggered sideways. Dr. Sheridan helped her into his salon
and closed the door.

    Hours later, Nikki watched him come up on deck wearing
only boxer shorts, gabbing on a cell phone. The second time
he came up he was completely naked, spraying Windex and
wiping off the railings and deck furniture. Nikki turned away,
but then felt compelled to look back with the zoom lens because something seemed odd. A close inspection through the
telescope revealed that Dr. Sheridan was a man completely devoid of body hair. Shaved from neck to ankles, like a toy poodle
in summer. Nikki could think of nothing less sexy than a completely hairless naked man doing housework. Retch-ro-sexual,
she thought, suppressing a wave of nausea.
    The girl never reemerged. Not until morning when Dr.
Sheridan had to help her off the boat on her wobbly platform shoes. Through the telescope the