Red Hook Read Online Free

nails were bright pink. “Clara Fuentes,” she said.
    â€œYeah, thanks,” I said and introduced myself. “Not this year, but thanks.”
    â€œYou’re taken, right? I’m not surprised. Sure,” she said, then got a card out of her pocket, scribbled her home number and her cell on it, handed it to me, and added, “If ever.”
    â€œThanks.” I started to turn away.
    â€œHey.”
    I turned around.
    â€œTake it easy,” she said.
    *
    I walked along the inlet away from the corpse to where a few small boats were tied up. I didn’t like boats much. All the times I had gone fishing, I loved it, but I was always scared, so I drank plenty of beer and concentrated on the fish. Also, I was a lousy swimmer. I almost drowned off Coney Island when a girl—a sad Russian girl trying to make a life and failing—walked into the waves and I couldn’t save her.
    Trouble was that I loved being near the water. I loved the city waterfront. It was one of the things that had seduced me about New York from the beginning. But boats scared me.
    All the time I was waiting, I could see the guys down in the water now, trying to free the corpse, still setting up to chop off the dead guy’s arms, but hesitant.
    It came back to me, the little girl who was murdered out by Sheepshead Bay on a case I did. Everyone thought it was a copycat at first, a repeat of an old cold case where another little girl got cut into pieces by a monster who was still out there. I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t related.
    For maybe the sixth time in half an hour, I tried Sid’s phone and tried not to listen to the sound of the saw. Saw on flesh, on bone. A small whirring noise in the quiet morning when the only other sound was a lone tug that hooted out on the sun-drenched river.
    â€œArtie? It’s Artie, right?” It was Clara Fuentes, the detective, and she was yanking my arm. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but you obviously got an interest, and I heard someone who was down in the water say it definitely was a black guy, and also aboutsixty years old, maybe seventy, far as they can tell, I just heard, one of the guys went down under the pier and said best he could see was he’d been in the water, the black guy that is, a while, hours anyhow. Can’t tell if he just sucked up water, or there was booze or drugs.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œYeah.”
    I said, “Anyone been around this morning? You notice anyone passing by? Locals?”
    She shook her head. “I’ve been here all the time; except for the guy with the dog, and a couple of other residents we all know, not a lot of people coming out, and if they did we kept them way back. Who did you have in mind?”
    I thought about Sid. “It doesn’t matter. What else?”
    â€œYou look like shit. You need to sit down? You think you knew this guy?”
    My hands were shaking. “Yeah, something like that,” I said, sure now that it was Sid. He was dead. He had called me. I didn’t go.
    â€œIt’s the stink, you know?” she said. “Even when you can’t smell it you think you can, right?”
    I nodded and dug out my cigarettes. The pack was empty.
    I went to the deli over on Van Brunt Street where I bought a fresh pack, cracked it open, held one in my fingers while I ordered some coffee, then stood and drank it staring at bags of pork rinds and potato chips andboxes of cookies with labels in Spanish. I tried to keep calm, keep focused.
    Over the counter were a couple of signs offering specials on “Swis Chez samwiches” and “Hot Kanish”. New York English had become a different language, and I laughed, thinking of the foodies who, driven by nostalgia, thronged East Houston Street on weekends for a real knish at Yonah Schimmel’s. Me, I couldn’t stand any kind of knish.
    New York had the biggest immigrant population since the