While My Pretty One Sleeps Read Online Free PDF Page B

on a diet have for lunch? he wondered. Maybe they’d go back to good, thick hamburgers. The notion made his mouth water. But it did remind him that he was supposed to defrost the pasta sauce.
    At six o’clock he began to prepare dinner. He brought outthe makings for a salad from the refrigerator and with skillful hands broke lettuce, chopped scallions, sliced green peppers into razor-thin bands of green. Unconsciously he smiled to himself, remembering how, growing up, he’d thought a salad was tomato and lettuce globbed with mayonnaise. His mother had been a wonderful woman, but her calling in life was clearly not as a chef. She’d also cooked meat until “all the germs were killed,” so that a pork chop or a steak was dry and hard enough to be karated instead of cut.
    It was Renata who had introduced him to the delights of subtle flavors, the joys of pasta, the delicacy of salmon, tangy salads that hinted of garlic. Neeve had inherited her mother’s culinary skills, but Myles acknowledged to himself that along the way he’d learned to make a damn good salad.
    At ten of seven he began to worry actively about Neeve. Probably few taxis on the road. Dear God, don’t let her walk through the park on a night like this. He tried calling the shop, but there was no answer. By the time she struggled in with the bundles of clothes over her arm and dragging the boxes, he’d been ready to call headquarters and ask the police to check the park for her. He clamped his lips together before he admitted that.
    Instead as he took the boxes from her arms he succeeded in looking surprised. “Is it Christmas again?” he asked. “From Neeve to Neeve with love? Have you used up today’s profits on yourself?”
    â€œDon’t be such a wise guy, Myles,” Neeve said crossly. “I tell you, Ethel Lambston may be a good customer, but she’s also a royal pain in the neck.” As she dropped the boxes ontothe couch she skimmed through the tale of her attempt to deliver Ethel’s clothing.
    Myles looked alarmed. “Ethel Lambston! Isn’t she the ditsy you had at the Christmas party?”
    â€œYou’ve got it.” On impulse, Neeve had invited Ethel to the annual Christmas party she and Myles gave in the apartment. After pinning Bishop Stanton to the wall and explaining why the Catholic Church was no longer relevant in the twentieth century, Ethel had realized Myles was a widower and hadn’t left his side all evening.
    â€œI don’t care if you have to camp outside her door for the next two years,” Myles warned. “Don’t let that woman set foot in this place again.”

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    It was not Denny Adler’s idea of a good time to be breaking his neck for minimum wages plus tips at the deli on East Eighty-third Street and Lexington. But Denny had a problem. He was on probation. His probation officer, Mike Toohey, was a swine who loved the authority vested in him by the State of New York. Denny knew that if he didn’thave a job, he couldn’t spend a dime without Toohey asking him what he was living on, so he worked and hated every minute of it.
    He rented a dingy room in a fleabag on First Avenue and One Hundred and Fifth Street. What the parole officer didn’t know was that most of Denny’s time away from the job was spent panhandling on the street. He changed both the locations and his disguises every few days. Sometimes he’d dress like a bum, put on filthy clothes and shabby sneakers, smear dirt on his face and hair. He’d prop up against a building and hold a torn piece of cardboard which read, “HELP, I’M HUNGRY.”
    That was one of the better sucker baits.
    Other times he’d put on faded khakis and a gray wig. He’d wear dark glasses, carry a cane, pin a sign to his coat, “HOMELESS VET.” At his feet a bowl quickly filled with quarters and dimes.
    Denny picked up a lot of loose pocket