A Killer in the Wind Read Online Free

walked across the living room to greet me. I shook his hand and I thought: He’s evil . I did, just like that, right off. He was round-faced, bland-faced—flaccid-faced somehow though he was barely forty. Pale and soft, with short, sandy hair and green eyes embedded in wrinkled folds of flesh. There was something coy and provocative in the way he looked at me. It was the same attitude I sensed in the apartment generally, the same giggly hint of a barely hidden secret, a cherished pet wickedness that only the initiated were allowed to see full-on.
    We sat in his office down the hall. Wooden paneling. Leather-bound books. A vast mahogany desk with a glass top and gold trimming. We sat side by side and examined my fake portfolio displayed on his computer monitor. He gave a speech about diversification and hidden opportunities in the current market. He made it sound like he was addressing my case specifically, but I could tell it was a speech he’d made before. For my part, I played it strictly straight, nothing out of line. I was supposed to be one of these creative types who made a lot of money but didn’t understand the ins and outs of high finance, so I nodded a lot, as if I were pretending to understand what he said but didn’t. All the while, I was buzzing inside, wired, electric. There was something about this guy that felt like bingo. For the first time since I’d heard of her, I thought I was on the trail of the Fat Woman.
    Only when we were done, only when we were shaking hands again, out in the living room, out by the door, did I drop my bait.
    “This all sounds very good,” I told him. “I’m going on vacation next week, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
    “Oh, where are you going?” Emory asked politely, because that’s what people politely ask.
    “Bangkok,” I told him. “Thailand. I spend a lot of time there,” I added, averting my eyes.
    “Good food, I hear,” said Emory. And then, as if joking: “And lots of prostitutes, right?”
    I laughed and said, also as if joking, “You got to spend your money on something.”
    He laughed too, but his mocking eyes caressed me.
    I knew I’d set the hook. I knew I had him. I wouldn’t have to do anything else, not yet. He’d come back to the subject on his own. They all do. They can’t help themselves, these guys. They want to tell. They want to share. They want to convince themselves that everyone is secretly like them, deep down.
    I couldn’t sleep all that week. I never slept much but this was different. I lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling, night after night after night. Thinking the same thing over and over, the same words: I’ve got her. I’ve got her . I didn’t even know why I thought that. I didn’t even know how I knew. But I knew. Monahan was right. The Sutton Place hookers were just a pastime for Emory, a stopgap. He was into something else—something dark, something nasty, something only the Fat Woman could supply. I’ve got her. I’ve got her . Night after night. I couldn’t sleep a wink.
    “How were the prostitutes?” That’s what he asked me the next time I saw him. Sitting in his living room with the wraparound windows. With the gray winter sky and the gray winter river. Me on the sofa, him in a chair. “How were the prostitutes?” As if he were joking.
    “Young and cheap,” I said with a laugh. As if I were joking.
    “Seems like a long way to travel just for a good time,” he said. Laughing. As if he were joking.
    “Depends on your definition of a good time,” I said. As if.
    “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure with your money, you could find it a lot closer to home.” Laughing, he opened a folder on the glass table between us. Portfolios. Opportunities. “I, meanwhile, have been using my time more productively on your behalf . . .”
    See, now he had tossed out his bait, his hook: You could find it a lot closer to home . And I was supposed to say: Really? Are you serious? What do you mean? And I