While My Pretty One Sleeps Read Online Free PDF Page A

the back of it wrote a note to slip under Ethel’s door: “I have your purchases. Call me when you get in.” She put her home phone number under her signature. Then, struggling under the weight of the boxes and bags, she got back into the cab.
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    Inside Ethel Lambston’s apartment, a hand reached for the note Neeve had pushed under the door, read it, tossed it aside and resumed his periodic search for the hundred-dollar bills that Ethel regularly squirreled away under the carpets or between the cushions of the couch, the money she gleefully referred to as “Seamus the wimp’s alimony.”
    Myles Kearny could not shake off the nagging worry that had been growing in him for weeks. His grandmother used to have a kind of sixth sense. “I have a feeling,” she would say. “There’s trouble coming.” Myles could vividly remember when he was ten and his grandmother had received a picture of his cousin in Ireland. She had cried, “He has death in his eyes.” Two hours later the phone had rung. His cousin had been killed in an accident.
    Seventeen years ago, Myles had shrugged off Nicky Sepetti’s threat. The Mafia had its own code. They never went after the wives or children of its enemies. And then Renata had died. At three o’clock in the afternoon, walking through Central Park topick up Neeve at Sacred Heart Academy, she’d been murdered. It had been a cold, windy November day. The park was deserted. There were no witnesses to tell who had lured or forced Renata off the path and into the area behind the museum.
    He’d been in his office when the principal of Sacred Heart phoned at four-thirty. Mrs. Kearny had not come to pick up Neeve. They’d phoned, but she was not at home. Was anything wrong? When he hung up the phone, Myles had known with sickening certainty that something terrible had happened to Renata. Ten minutes later the police were searching Central Park. His car was on the way uptown when the call came in that her body had been found.
    When he reached the park, a cordon of policemen was holding back the curious and the sensation seekers. The media were already there. He remembered how the flash-bulbs had blinded him as he walked toward the spot where her body was lying. Herb Schwartz, his deputy commissioner, was there. “Don’t look at her now, Myles,” he begged.
    He’d shaken Herb’s arm off, knelt on the frozen ground and pulled back the blanket they’d put over her. She might have been sleeping. Her face still lovely in that final repose, none of the expression of terror that he’d seen stamped on so many victims’ faces. Her eyes were closed. Had she closed them in that final moment or had Herb closed them? At first he thought she was wearing a red scarf. Denial. He was a seasoned viewer of victims, but at that moment his professionalism abandoned him. He didn’t want to see that someone had slashed down the length of her jugular vein, then slit her throat. The collar of the white ski jacket she’d been wearing had turned crimson from her blood.The hood had slipped back, and her face was framed by those masses of jet-black hair. Her red ski pants, the red of her blood, the white jacket and the hardened snow under her body—even in death she’d looked like a fashion photograph.
    He’d wanted to hold her against him, to breathe life into her, but he knew he should not move her. He’d contented himself with kissing the cheeks and the eyes and the lips. His hand grazed her neck and came away bloodstained, and he’d thought, We met in blood, we part in blood.
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    He’d been a twenty-one-year-old rookie cop on Pearl Harbor Day, and the next morning he’d enlisted in the Army. Three years later he was with Mark Clark’s Fifth Army in the battle for Italy. They’d taken it town by town. In