A Killer in the Wind Read Online Free Page A

would say it. But not today. That would have been too eager. It might have tipped him off, put him on his guard. I had to seem to be cautious. I had to seem afraid. Take it slow. Step by step.
    That was the hard part. The waiting. The slow pace and the tension and the constant buzz. No sleep, night after night. Night after night.
    I called him about a week later. Asked him if we could meet somewhere. A restaurant maybe. Have a drink.
    “If you’re going to be handling my money, I’d like to get to know you better,” I said.
    We met at his club. We sat in leather chairs at a small square table under a white marble fireplace the size of a studio apartment. I was wearing an Armani suit I’d DARed—charged to the city on my Daily Activity Report. I thought it was the kind of suit you might wear if you had money but didn’t know money. If you only knew the famous names like Armani. I ordered Laphroaig, a single malt. Just a little water, no ice. I’d learned about that on singlemalt.com. But I pronounced the name of the scotch wrong and the waiter corrected me. That was an accident, but luckily it suited my cover.
    “So let me ask you something,” I said. Kind of shyly. Smiling, but not laughing now. This was beyond the point where I could pretend I was joking. This was it. I was making my play. “When you said I could probably find my pleasures closer to home, whatever they were, what did you mean? Were you serious?”
    Emory smiled, an impish, boyish smile, looking down at the table, then up at me. “Are we being naughty now?” he said—and he wrinkled his nose like a dowager talking to her poodle.
    It turned my stomach. This was the thing, the thing that was keeping me awake at night. Not just the scent of the Fat Woman. Not just the feeling that I was getting close. It was this: the evil. I don’t know any other word to describe it. My growing sense that I was in the presence of evil.
    See, I’d seen that look before. That wrinkled nose, that laughing sparkle in the eyes. In the movies, the evil guys laugh out loud. Bwa-ha-ha. Or they chuckle suavely, swirling their drinks in their glasses. But this is the real deal, the real look most of these monsters have. A sort of cute, dainty, delicate recoil from speaking the thing out loud. The forbidden joke of it.
    Are we being naughty now?
    Naughty to me is snapping your girlfriend’s butt with a towel. Naughty to these guys is the unspeakable.
    Emory gave me no other answer. He bluntly changed the subject.
    “Let’s talk about other things for the time being.”
    For the time being .
    I had another sleepless night. Lying on my back. Staring at the ceiling. I’ve got her. I’ve got her.
    Are we being naughty now?
    The next day, I caught someone watching me. White guy in a sweatshirt and jeans, baseball cap and headset. Trying to look like just-a-dude, but a sinewy bone-crusher beneath the costume. Professional talent.
    A friend of the department had agreed to loan us his upper Fifth Avenue apartment while he was in California for the winter. It made a convincing address for a rich guy like I was supposed to be. I hadn’t been spending my nights there—I’d been staying at my place in Jackson Heights—but I decided to stop there in the morning to drop off some clothes and equipment before heading in to the cop shop for the daily tactical meeting.
    I spotted the thug as I approached the front awning. I managed to turn back before he saw me. I went around the corner and assessed the situation. I hadn’t been expecting to meet with Emory today and wasn’t dressed for the part. Just wearing a leather bomber jacket and jeans, carrying my DARed clothes in a suitcase. I’d parked my Harley in a nearby garage. I could go back and get it and blow before the thug saw me. But then I’d lose him. Better to get inside and watch him from there.
    Quickly, I thought up a cover story to explain the suitcase. I’d stayed with a girlfriend last night. We were in the process