The Shadow Man

The Shadow Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Shadow Man Read Online Free PDF
Author: John Lutz
realize he was shivering from the cold.
    He returned to his desk, copied a name and address on a slip of paper which he stuffed into his shirt pocket, then shrugged into his brown sport jacket and topcoat. After placing his precious notes in a safe place and locking the door behind him carefully—there had been three break-ins in the building during his absence—he took the elevator down to the basement garage where his car was parked.
    Larsen turned left on Fifty-seventh and headed for Broadway and Columbus Circle. There was comparatively little traffic on the streets, and few pedestrians. A young couple walking arm in arm stepped gingerly around a ragged figure slumped against a building and tenaciously clutching a brown-bagged bottle. The girl was wearing a long dress that swept the pavement, and her escort had on a dark suit and black tie. The pathetic figure at their feet didn’t move. Manhattan’s mad juxtaposition of ugliness and beauty, wealth and poverty, never failed to intrigue Larsen.
    He was making a left turn onto Eighth Avenue to get onto Broadway when he glanced in his rear-view mirror.
    A pair of flat dark eyes stared back at him from the rear seat.

Chapter Six
    Judy Carnegie stood in the doorway to Andrews’ office wearing an expression between puzzlement and dismay. Andrews glanced up at her, waiting for her to speak, then did a double take when he saw her face.
    “You all right, Jude?”
    “I phoned Belmont sanitarium,” she said. “Your friend Dr. Larsen, he’s dead . . .”
    Andrews felt that dark sinking sensation he’d felt before on learning of the death of an old friend, on being reminded that time was demanding its due. He had known Dana Larsen when Dana still was bothered by youthful acne, then when he had become “Dr.” Dana Larsen, and now Dana would become a name and date chiseled on cold stone.
    “What happened to him?” Andrews asked.
    Judy gave a vague shrug. “His body was found in New York, in the Hudson River.”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday. They said at the sanitarium that he’d drowned, but they didn’t know much else about it.”
    Andrews sat silently for a moment. Dana Larsen dead by drowning. That, of all things, struck with heavy irony. Andrews remembered Dana stroking through the sun-shot waters of Lake Michigan on a long-ago summer vacation, pulling in the small boy who had become separated from his rubber raft in the wind-roughened, surprisingly powerful surf. Dana had reached the floundering boy within minutes, placed him back on the raft and effortlessly propelled him to shore. And Dana had been wearing pants and shirt.
    It was meaningless to speculate without facts, Andrews cautioned himself. “Get me a New York Times,” he said to Judy, who nodded and disappeared.
    The Times account of Dana’s death shed little added light. His body had been spotted by a cabdriver in the early morning floating in the Hudson near Manhattan’s lower West Side. The corpse apparently hadn’t been in the water long. Dana was identified by some plastic credit cards in his wallet, which also contained sixty-seven dollars, and transported to the city morgue. At this time, the police had no reason to suspect foul play.
    Andrews tossed the folded paper onto a desk corner, walked thoughtfully to the small bar in the office and poured himself three fingers of scotch.
    No reason to suspect foul play, he repeated to himself. Yet Dana had felt threatened. That was why he had come to Andrews. And Andrews had, in the press of more “important” matters, done nothing until this morning—when it was too late.
    Half the scotch in Andrews’ glass disappeared in one gulp.
    Judy knocked on the door, tentatively opened it and peered inside. She was her practical and calculating self again. When she saw the glass of liquor in Andrews’ hand, her dark eyes barely registered the fact. Her voice was its usual crisp instrument of efficiency. “Senator, you have the meeting with Bethancourt and
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