The Good Chase Read Online Free PDF Page B

dried mud skittered across the slate tile in the foyer. He got out the broom and dustpan from the closet and swept everything up, so that Frances, his housekeeper, wouldn’t shake her finger in his face. She probably still would, but then she’d make him cookies and all would be well.
    The adrenaline from the rugby had worn off on the long ride back into the city, and now the dizzy tiredness and sore muscles started to settle in. Not for the first time, he wondered how in the world professional athletes in their midthirties survived doing this to their bodies every day. Aging sucked.
    In the bathroom, he stripped off the stiff, stinking rugby clothes—
sorry, Frances
—and tossed them in the hamper, then turned on the various knobs to start the overhead rain nozzle in his walk-in shower. He stood under the soothing spray and thought about the day. By the time he’d scrubbed off the dried sweat and mud and stepped out, pulling a towel around his waist, he had a pretty good hankering for some more whisky.
    After reaching into the glass-front cabinet for his razor and shaving cream, he decided against shaving. He wasn’t planning on going out that night anyway. A rare, blissful Saturday night, free of having to entertain one client or another. As he pulled his hand out of the cabinet, he caught sight of the little yellow toy caboose sitting on top. A pang of warm wistfulness shot through him, and then he closed the glass door.
    Going into his closet, he flipped on the switch, and rows of lights illuminated the cherrywood nooks that stored all his clothes. Frances had gone to the dry cleaners, he noted, the section with all his suits looking fuller than usual. With supreme satisfaction, he walked past the suits and the carefully pressed shirts and hanging ties. Not for another thirty-six hours would he have to think about which tie went best with which shirt, and for what client or meeting, and what that particular combo said about him. And thank fuck for that.
    Instead he went for the splintering, crooked dresser stashed way in the back. The top drawer stuck as he wrestled it out, but he’d been opening it so many years that he knew its secrets. He removed his favorite pair of shorts and a Wharton T-shirt and pulled them on.
    After a brief stop in the second bedroom, which served as an office—no crises had popped up on the computer he used for work, just a reminder of a late Sunday night conference call to Hong Kong—he padded out to the kitchen and found the only bottle of whisky he had. An intensely peaty one that he’d been sipping from on the rare occasions he drank at home.
    Tonight seemed to call for it, however.
    He brought the whisky and his phone over to where his laptop sat on the glass-topped coffee table. The sun was lowering, cradled in the tops of the buildings on the Upper East Side. No matter how much his job tended to drain him, he’d never tire of the view it had afforded him.
    He stretched across the large coffee table and straightened the little green toy train engine resting in its center, then he flopped backward onto the couch.
    His phone jumped, buzzed, lit up. George. A mass text to all of Manhattan Rugby.
    OK. Rhode Island has a games with a rugby tourney next weekend. Competition looks loose. Who’s in?
    Byrne cracked his neck, then took a good earthy mouthful of the whisky, thinking too late about what Shea had said about nosing the glass first.
    His phone danced with immediate positive replies going around the group, and then one text sent directly to him. From Dan.
    When are we going to get real competition? We’re better than this.
    Byrne scrubbed his face.
Leave the team if you want. I didn’t force you to join.
He’d said it to Dan a million times.
    No response. Then Dan’s affirmation came through, sent to the whole club. They had enough to field a team, and Byrne was already planning to bring along earplugs. Thinking about his