Shadows Still Remain Read Online Free PDF Page A

would bite so enthusiastically. Now that they’ve decided Pena can sell papers, it’s become the kind of case that can launch a career. But not for long. If Pena’s disappearance is upgraded to a homicide, she and Krekorian will only get to work it for seventy-two hours. Then it will be turned over to Homicide South, and for O’Hara and Krekorian, it’s back to burglaries and domestic disputes, Astrid with her stroller and fake kids and Dolores in her bathrobe.

7
    Krekorian lives twenty miles up the Palisades in the Rockland County town of New City, or as he likes to call it, Jew City. He picks up O’Hara on his way in, and they get to Freemans at 2:30 p.m., several hours before it’s due to open. Although O’Hara finds the place a lot easier to take empty, the daylight isn’t kind to the decor and reveals how little money was spent to achieve its faux-antique effects. The oil-stained mirrors and dusty paintings that at night suggested the lodgings and funky heirlooms of a hard-partying disinherited count look like sidewalk trash during the day, and the animal heads on the walls look like roadkill.
    â€œTwo things you can’t avoid, Dar,” says Krekorian, nodding at a glassy-eyed elk.
    â€œDeath and taxidermy.”
    â€œI guess someone forgot to tell Wesley Snipes.”
    They sit at the bar and sip their coffee, while in the open kitchen a line chef sautées onions and a busboy pulls oversized plates from a dishwasher. Over the next hour, the waitresses and other kitchen staff trickle in, the employees getting prettier and whiter the closer they get to the customers. Themaître d’ arrives, sporting a natty tweed blazer a couple of sizes too small, and soon after the weekday bartender, Billy Conway. “She was too pretty not to remember,” says Conway, who actually looks like a bartender, with the thick shoulders and forearms of an ex-jock. “She and her friends had a couple spots at the bar. After they left, she moved to a table and stuck it out by herself to the bitter end.”
    â€œWhen was that?” asks O’Hara.
    â€œAbout three-thirty. Because of Thanksgiving, we closed a little early.”
    â€œShe leave alone?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œNo one followed her out?”
    â€œThere was no one left to follow her. She was the last one here.”
    â€œShe talk to anyone beside her friends?” asks Krekorian.
    â€œRight after her friends left, a guy came over and tried to chat her up, but got cut off at the knees.”
    â€œYou ever see him here before?”
    â€œFirst time. About five feet ten, bad skin, long hair, at least fifty. One of those ugly Euro guys some girls can’t get enough of.”
    â€œLittle old for this place, isn’t he?”
    â€œYeah, but we get a couple trawlers just like him every night. Polanskis we call them.”
    â€œSpeaking of age,” says O’Hara, “all four of those girls were under twenty-one.”
    â€œThey had IDs; I looked at them myself.”
    â€œYou should have looked harder. Polanski, how’d he take getting shot down?”
    â€œQuite well. I don’t think he was going to leave the country. Besides, she did it so fast, it was like laser surgery. If I wasn’t right in front of them pulling a draft, I wouldn’t have noticed. He finished his drink, put down a generous tip and left. Paid cash, or I’d look for the receipt. Then she took her Jack and Coke and sat down at that table.”
    â€œYou remember every drink you pour four days later?” asks O’Hara.
    â€œThe reason I remember is because she and her friends had been ordering one labor intensive cocktail after another, stuff that’s a pain in the ass to make. As soon as they left, she switched to something simple. I was relieved. The other reason I remember is because it confirmed something I already thought, which is that she didn’t fit in with her