The Swede Read Online Free PDF Page B

table, the strange play of blinking lights at the bar.
    N. flinched when fingertips touched his arm. He was tired, and two beers with dinner had made him retreat into his own world. Vladislav was leaning back in his chair, talking to someone at a nearby table. The fingers were Mary’s. She touched one of the long scars, where you could still see the stitches.
    “I’m sorry,” she said when N. winced, though without embarrassment. She kept her hand on his forearm. “How’s it healing?”
    “Fine, I guess,” he said, pulling his arm away and rubbing back and forth over the scar.
    “Isn’t it time to get those stitches taken out?”
    “Maybe. I haven’t really thought about it.”
    “It’s not good to let them go too long.”
    “Irish,” said Vladislav, leaning forward over the table. “Shall we end with one?” He’d gotten a taste of Weejay’s Irish coffee a few nights back.
    “It’s too hot out,” said Mary.
    N. looked at the clock. “Just whisky for me.”
    “They can throw in a few ice cubes, if you’d like,” Vladislav said to Mary.
    “Right—ice, Nescafé, and condensed milk!” She said it with genuine disgust. Vladislav dismissed her with a shrug.
    She didn’t talk much more that night. Given the odd atmosphere, N. didn’t expect to see her at their table again, but she showed up the very next day. Same black dress, same white shoes, took her seat royally without even asking. Vladislav, needing his audience and already starting in with his stories, gave her a warm grin. And so it went: he wrestled with the menu, she left her vegetables untouched and ate only meat, and N. longed for the anesthesia of his last glass of whisky.
    Three souls at the same table, night after night.

CHAPTER 7
    Government Jet N5071l
    Night of April 26, 2008
    S OMETHING ABOUT S HAUNA F RIEDMAN’S NO-NONSENSE personality convinced Grip to go along with her. If she wanted to hand him the puzzle piece by piece, fine, he could live with that. Sooner or later he’d find out what she actually wanted him for.
    In the Cadillac they drove out of New York to a little airport, where a Gulfstream waited with crew. VIP atmosphere, private hangar, people in nice suits. The cabin of the small jet had two sections, and Grip heard voices in the rear as he boarded. A man greeted Friedman on his way to the back; otherwise Grip saw no one else during the flight. Grip and Shauna Friedman sat down in the saggy leather club seats, the color of sand. Facing each other by the windows, they drank sodas they’d taken from a cooler before takeoff, made polite conversation, and looked out. The weather was clear, and even though they were flying west—chasing a perpetual sunset—eventually the lights of midwestern towns appeared below them. When the last red stripe of twilight melted away, they had been in the air for nearly three hours. Friedman declined the sandwichoffered by a crew member, then moved to the next seat so she could stretch her legs and fell asleep.
    Grip nibbled a tuna sandwich made with too much mayonnaise. The cabin lights were switched off. Below him he saw small towns, their scattered clusters of lights, and after a while he could even pick out individual cars as they headed here and there. Lazily, he tried to imagine what people down there were doing, where they were going—was it an early or late evening for them? He had lost track of time. The topography was impossible to read in the darkness; he could see the lights of a bridge but not the water below it.
    Engines humming, air-conditioning cooling: with his mind on low, his gaze turned inward.
    “All the pineapple you wanted,” Friedman had said, “as much and any time.” Since they couldn’t talk shop during the flight, they had to talk about themselves. Pineapple—it was Friedman who brought up childhood memories. Summers she’d spent with her grandmother on Lanai, the small Hawaiian island that was mostly pineapple plantation. A fruit company owned the