Very Bad Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen her that morning when she left the house. She had on slacks the color of her raven hair, and a simple white blouse. And a necklace of glass beads—a mate to the one draped over the arm of my desk lamp, but in green rather than blue. Glass-bead necklaces are the only jewelry she ever wears. Her daughter makes them.
    Elizabeth chuckled at my question. “This isn’t that kind of call, David. I wanted to let you know I’ll be late tonight. Business.”
    â€œNot the book thieves again.”
    â€œNot them. Worse. A body in an apartment on Linden Street. Looks like it’s been there a while.”
    â€œHomicide?”
    â€œStrangled with a cord, is what I hear. Carter’s already there. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
    â€œI’ll wait up.”
    â€œYou don’t have to.”
    â€œI will anyway. Be careful.”
    We said good-bye and I closed the phone, but it buzzed again before I could put it down.
    I opened it. “I’m not here.”
    â€œI can see your feet in the window,” Bridget Shellcross said. “Why don’t you come down. I’ve ordered two gimlets.”
    â€œYou’re the boss.”
    I closed the window and gathered the pages of the story I’d been working on, sliding them into a folder.
    On my way through the outer office I passed a stack of envelopes on the reception desk. Manuscripts from hopeful authors. I left them there. In the hall I turned to lock the door and my gaze fell briefly on the black letters on the pebbled glass: GRAY STREETS. DAVID LOOGAN, EDITOR.
    I nearly missed the envelope in the hall, propped beside the door frame. It looked like just another manuscript. I picked it up and tucked it under my arm with the folder.
    Down the stairs, five flights, through the lobby, out onto the street, and the sea of humanity was like something from a Third World capital.
    Every July, over the course of four days, half a million people pass through the streets of downtown Ann Arbor. They look like tourists in a foreign city, and like tourists they’re here mostly to eat and shop. Hamburgers and pizza, kabobs and funnel cakes. Sculptures and paintings and handmade jewelry. The Ann Arbor Art Fair. Half a million people, and most of them seemed to be milling around between me and Bridget Shellcross, who had somehow secured a table across the street in front of Café Felix.
    When I reached her she rose and kissed me on the cheek. She had to stand on tiptoe to manage it. Bridget is something over five feet tall, and the something is roughly the thickness of a blade of grass. She wears her brown hair short and artfully disheveled, and though she tends to dress in black, today it was an ivory-colored blouse and a burgundy skirt.
    Bridget is a mystery writer, and a few months back she became the publisher of Gray Streets after buying the magazine from the widow of the previous owner. She lets me run things as I see fit. About the only time I see her is when we get together for a drink.
    I dropped my envelope and folder on the table and we sat, and I asked her how she would spell “wrassling.”
    A sip from her vodka gimlet—there was another in front of me, but I didn’t touch it—and she said, “I’d need to know the context.”
    I opened the folder and handed her the story I’d been editing. “Page six, in the margin,” I said. She found it and read it silently. I knew it by heart.
    The phone rang and when I answered it a voice told me to hold the line, and I held it like a Cuban fisherman wrassling a marlin.
    She laughed, but not so much that she was in danger of spilling her drink.
    â€œThis is Fletcher’s new story?” she asked me.
    â€œYes. He thinks he’s the next Raymond Chandler. Leans heavily on the similes, so I figured one more wouldn’t hurt.”
    Bridget flipped through the pages. “You’ve done a lot of tinkering with