The Broken Lands Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself about how much I actually had to do with it.” The other boy stretched, looked around. “Where the heck is everybody?”
    â€œIt’s Friday. They’re still working.” Sam dealt them each another five cards. “I won’t have any decent business to speak of till this afternoon.” He winced, remembering the previous afternoon’s business and the bruise still darkening on his cheekbone.
    â€œYeah,” Con said, eyeing the bruise. “That thing’s just looking worse and worse.”
    â€œSo not the rakishly handsome effect I was hoping for, then.”
    â€œNot so much, no.” Constantine looked over his cards. “Did you see Illy this morning?”
    â€œNope.” Normally Ilana was up early with her mother, starting the day’s baking, the first few batches of which were then delivered to a couple of stalls down on Culver Plaza. “She’d already gone by the time I got up.”
    â€œMeaning not only is she avoiding us, she’s angry enough to actually wake up even earlier to do it.”
    â€œMeaning she’s really angry,” Sam confirmed. He raised his eyes from his hand and took a long look around the plaza.
    â€œAny sign of him?” Constantine asked.
    â€œThe sharper from yesterday? No.” Sam kept expecting the fellow to appear at any moment, though. He still didn’t quite understand what had happened the day before: the unbelievable, invisible way in which the man had cheated, the way he’d almost seemed to be in two places at once when he’d thrown those two punches . . . it was hard to let the incident go just yet.
    â€œHey.” Constantine lifted his head and looked around, too. “You hear that?”
    Sam roused himself out of his thoughts and listened. It took a moment, but then he caught it, threading its way through the pound and flow of the surf: the sound of guitar music. Not the kind of music you heard in the saloons, though. This was something totally different.
    Sam scooped the cards into a pile and packed them into his kit. “Come on.”
    â€œWhere?”
    With shoes slung over their shoulders by knotted laces, the boys followed the faint sound along the beach: music that rose and crested, crashed, slid, clattered and tumbled. No wonder Sam had missed it at first. It blended with the sounds of the ocean, mimicking the motion of a wave reaching and receding, tumbling stones and sand and shells and making them dance in water that glittered in the sunlight.
    By the time they tracked the music to an old boat-rental pavilion, Sam knew who they were going to find, although he had no idea what made him so sure.
    The guitar player was perched on an overturned rowboat, trousers rolled up so he could sit with his feet in the water as it came and went. He looked up as the boys approached, and his face broke into a wide grin.
    â€œMornin’, Sam,” said Tom Guyot.
    Sam grinned back and introduced Constantine. “We heard you playing down the beach, Mr. Guyot. That’s some music.”
    The old man beamed. “Glad you approve. Tom’ll do, though. No need to stand on ceremony.” He looked up at the sun. “Good thing you two came along just then. I think I might have lost track of the time.”
    â€œYou got somewhere to be?” Sam asked.
    Tom stood and waded onto dry sand, slinging his guitar over his shoulder. “If you can believe it, I’m meant to be meeting someone for a meal. I don’t suppose you know the fastest way to get to the Broken Land Hotel, do you?”
    â€œSure.” Sam shrugged. “I’ll show you.”
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    The Broken Land had gotten its name in an act of bad translation, something to do with the way the Dutch name that had become “Brooklyn” sounded a lot like the Dutch translation for the local Indians’ name for Long Island. The builder of the hotel knew this, but he didn’t much care. He