Shadows Still Remain Read Online Free PDF Page B

leaving their car, they step into a vestibule papered with Chinese menus and hike the old tiled staircase, the marble so worn it looks like soft dough.
    The door to apartment 5B is unlocked and slightly ajar. When they knock and step inside, McLain looks up at them from a tiny couch. He has a paper cup in his hand, half a bottle of Jack between his hightops, and the room reeks of pot. The rich bouquet reminds O’Hara of the fireman, and although in weaker moments she still feels pangs for the treacherous stoner, she also misses the pot. For some unfair reason, the NYPD routinely tests for marijuana and the FDNY almost never does, so maybe she and the fireman were doomed from the beginning.
    â€œThrowing yourself a party?” asks Krekorian.
    â€œNo,” says McLain. “Just getting wasted.”
    â€œHow long you been at it?”
    â€œWhat day is it?”
    â€œMonday, Chief.”
    â€œA while.”
    â€œIs there a bed in this place?”
    â€œI’m sitting on it.”
    â€œWhere do you sleep?”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œWhen you did?”
    McLain nods at the purple sleeping bag on the floor.
    â€œYour old girlfriend slept on the couch, and you slept beside her on the floor? That sounds like fun. And you did that for almost a month?”
    â€œIt’s her place. She didn’t have to let me stay at all.”
    â€œShe ever bring home guys?”
    â€œTwice.”
    â€œShe make you watch?”
    â€œShe called from the street. I took a walk.”
    â€œAn eight-hour walk?”
    â€œWent down to Battery Park and watched the sun come up. I recommend it. It clears the head.”
    â€œEver occur to you that your old girlfriend was trying to tell you something? Rub your nose in it so bad, you’d take the hint and leave on your own?”
    â€œIt’s possible. But I don’t think so. She was looking forward to spending Thanksgiving together as much as me.”
    â€œSo that was the fantasy? You roast a nice turkey, and she realizes what a mistake she’s been making.”
    â€œBasically.”
    On the way up the stairs, the two agreed that Krekorian would ask the questions and O’Hara would look around, butMcLain’s responses are so guileless, Krekorian can’t get any traction, and the place is so small and sparsely furnished, there’s very little for O’Hara to look at. Against the wall behind McLain is a small table with two chairs, a dresser and a column of textbooks, but except for the iPod dock on the table and a small pile of wadded-up bills on the dresser, there’s not a single personal effect. It looks like Pena moved in over the weekend, not four months ago. More troubling to O’Hara, however, is the fact that there’s no trace of McLain’s Thanksgiving feast.
    â€œDavid,” asks O’Hara, “you ate the turkey yourself?”
    â€œToo depressing. I threw it out.”
    â€œHow about the pots and pans?”
    â€œI washed them.”
    â€œDavid, I need a list of everything you bought that night at the grocery store.”
    McLain slowly stands, toppling his bottle of Jack with his right sneaker, and at the same time that he reaches under the cushion of the couch and pulls out a scrunched-up menu like those all over the vestibule, he catches and rights the bottle with his left sneaker. This feat of stoned and drunken athleticism that impresses even Krekorian, a former hard-partying college point guard. The menu is from Empire Szechuan on Delancey, and running down the right side is McLain’s twenty-one-item list in small precise green letters.
    â€œKeep it,” says McLain.
    â€œYou remember the total?”
    â€œ$119.57,” says McLain, refilling his Dixie cup.
    â€œGot a pretty good memory,” says O’Hara.
    McLain gives O’Hara permission to look into the barely filled closets and drawers, but they are no more revealing than the blank walls and