Boldt Read Online Free

different tunes in a different key to the ones on the background tapes. We cross the wide open spaces until we’re beyond the ticket windows and then we flash our badges at the barrier and start to walk along the platform immediately in front of us.
    As we wander along Murdock asks, “What happens when the train draws in? The usual Panavision smiling?”
    â€œYeah, the arrival’ll be covered. But Bolan will have taken care of that. Nobody’ll be on the platform he won’t know about. Nor in the station building. And there’s no way from beyond the other side of the train a man could get a clear target. I guess it would have to be pretty stupid for the guy to figure this was the best place in the world for what he plans to do.”
    â€œIf he was a bomber, it wouldn’t be so difficult.”
    â€œYeah, but he’d never get out again.”
    Murdock shrugs. “Some of them don’t want to.”
    â€œHe’d still have to get in with whatever he planned to use, past Bolan’s security.”
    â€œWell,” says Murdock, “that’s true, but I wouldn’t write off this place yet.”
    â€œThe only time I write anything off is when my brother leaves Blyth Field for Washington. I don’t want his boyish charm telling me I told you so in front of the T.V. cameras.”
    We walk around the station platforms for a quarter of an hour or so, then we go back through the main hall and cross the road and approach the station’s twin block. In the center of the development is the Chandler Hotel flanked on the left by a would-be high class apartment building called the Chandler Arms. At floor level, on either side of the two buildings, are the shops with four stories of apartments, going right and left to each end of the block. And beyond each end of this desirable lump of real estate are the humming, clanking fringes of the industrial area.
    We walk into the lobby of the Chandler Hotel and it’s not exactly as if they’ve got three conventions going on at the same time. A couple of old birds are sitting together on a long low divan, suitcases stacked in front of them, staring straight ahead, straight-backed, as though somehow it wouldn’t have been seemly for them to relax and enjoy the plush comfort of the divan. Over at the reception desk, a tall guy in a flecked suit and dove grey shoes is trying to talk his wife out of making the most of a dispute with the clerk over some details on the bill and the clerk is getting to the point where he’s pissed off enough to hand it over to the manager. So I say to Murdock, “The bar. We got to check it out. Maybe even a sniper’s got to drink.”
    â€œThe bar,” Murdock agrees, and we go to the bar.
    The bar is not quite as lively as the lobby. The air conditioning is pretty rowdy and the noise we make on the thick piled carpet as we cross to the bar is quite spectacular. The bartender shifts from one elbow to the other as we approach. The bar is all dark stained paneling and green leather, so that if the guys who drop into the bar want to, they can pretend for an hour or two that they’re the Lord of the Manor with a couple of lurchers stretched out in front of the fake log gas fire. Even at this hour of the day, the bar has an after-dinner atmosphere, with its dimmed candelabras and mounted tartan cloths centered on the wood paneling. We slide onto the stools and the bartender strolls toward us at just the right pace to allow us to make our minds up about what we’re going to have. Murdock decides on scotch whisky—which isn’t much of a decision because he never drinks anything else. I ask for a vodka (?) rocks with lemon and the bartender, even though he knows we’re cops, is polite and good and quick with the drinks. He’s in his mid-forties, tall, a little overweight, but he moves like a dancer, well-groomed, the kind of guy who always looks as though