Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 Read Online Free PDF

apparently finally got himself
into a more comfortable position because he stopped moving, and sighed, and
settled down to watch the city go by.
                 I
settled down, too, but not that much. We were traveling without siren or
flashing light, in an unmarked green car, which meant we were going with the
general flow of the traffic. Unless there’s a specific reason to make a fuss, it’s better not to. But the result was, we were from time to
time being stopped by red lights, and from time to time crawling along in very
slow traffic, and I didn’t want Lambeth to suddenly decide to jump out of the
car and make a run for it with Ed’s cuffs. The door was locked, and he seemed
quiet, but I nevertheless kept my eye on him.
                 After
three or four minutes of watching the world outside the window, Lambeth sighed
and looked at me, and said, “I’m ready to get out of this city, man.”
                 I
had to laugh again. “You’ll get your wish,” I told him. “It’ll probably be ten
years before you see New York again.”
                 He
nodded, grinning at himself. He seemed less freaky, more human, than he’d been
back in the coffee shop. “I dig,” he said. Then he gave me a serious look, and
said, “Tell me something, man. Give me your opinion on a question I have in my
mind.”
                 “If I can.”
                 “What
do you say; is it the bigger punishment to get sent out of this city, or to
stay here?”
                 “You
tell me,” I said. “Why’d you stay here long enough to get yourself into a bind
like this?”
                 He
shrugged. “Why do you stay, man?”
                 “Tm
not dealing,” I said.
                 “Sure
you are,” he said. “You’re dealing in machismo, man, just like I’m dealing in
scat.”
                 Ever
since drugs got tied in with the cultural revolution ,
the junkies have had a richer line of horeshit. “Anything you say,” I said, and
turned away to look out my own window.
                 “None
of us started out this way, man,” he said. “We all started out as babies,
innocent and pure.”
                 I
looked at him again. “One time,” I said, “a guy a lot like you, full of talk,
he showed me a picture of his mother. And while I was looking at it he made a
grab at my hip for my gun.”
                He gave a big broad grin; he was
delighted. “You stay in this town, man,” he said. “You’re gonna like what it
does to you.”

           Joe
     
     
                 The
woman was all right coming down the stairs. She was bleeding from a long cut on
her right arm, and she had blood all over her face and hands and clothes, some
of it her own and some of it her husband’s and I guess she was still dazed by
it all. But when we went out the front door and she looked down the tenement
steps and saw the crowd of people standing around gaping at her, she flipped
her lid. She started screaming and struggling and carrying on, and it was hell
to get her down the steps to the sidewalk, particularly because all the blood
made her slippery and tough to hold onto.
                 I
didn’t like that situation at all. Two uniformed white cops dragging a bloody
black woman down the steps into a crowd in Harlem . I didn’t like any part of it, and from the
expression on Paul’s face he didn’t like it either.
                 The
woman was yelling, “Let me go! Let me go! He cut me first, let me go! I got a
right, I got a right, let me go!” And finally, as we neared the bottom of the
stoop, I could hear over her yelling the sound of a siren coming. It was an
ambulance, and I was glad to see it.
                 We
got to the sidewalk just as the ambulance came to a stop at the curb. The crowd
was keeping out of it so far, giving us