Rough Justice Read Online Free Page A

Rough Justice
Book: Rough Justice Read Online Free
Author: Andrew Klavan
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Her name was Emma Walsh.
    She was standing at her window when I came in. The window looked out over Vanderbilt Avenue. She turned to me when I closed the door. She stood framed against the silver of the Pan Am Building.
    She smiled. “John Wells,” she said. Her lips were very full, her lipstick very red. She was about my age—forty-six—but the skin of her round face was smooth, and her gray eyes glittered. She wore her brown hair long down her back like a girl. She was compact and full-figured. Her breasts made her red sweater swell. Her hips pressed against her gray skirt.
    She held her hand out and took a stride toward me. I met her, shook her hand. A small, soft hand.
    â€œI wanted to meet you as soon as I could,” she said. “Seeing as I have a mandate to crush you.”
    â€œSo I hear.”
    She smiled again. She had to draw her hand back to get it away from me. I managed to hold her eyes another second before she turned away. Then I watched her gray skirt sway as she walked behind her desk. She sat down, gestured me to the seat in front of her.
    â€œYou can smoke if you want.”
    â€œThanks.” I lit up.
    â€œI understand that’s been something of a sore point. Smoking.”
    â€œCambridge thought it was bad for my health. He was only thinking of me.”
    She sat back in her swivel chair. It was the big kind with the high back, the executive kind. The office was the executive model, too. Spacious, with a solid oak desk. Two leather chairs in front of it. A sofa against the opposite wall. There were no pictures. Cambridge had never hung any. It sped things up when he cleaned the place out, anyway.
    â€œI understand there’ve been a lot of sore points around here,” she said.
    â€œA few.”
    â€œCambridge and you didn’t get along.”
    I waved my cigarette in the air. “We had some differences of opinion.”
    â€œLike Hitler and Churchill?”
    â€œThat would be a fair comparison, yeah.”
    â€œOkay.” She motioned at me. “What’s your version?”
    I let out a breath of smoke, sat back in the chair. I eyed her. She eyed me back, steadily.
    â€œHe wanted me to learn the computers,” I said after a while. “I like my typewriter. He didn’t want me to put my feet on my desk. I wanted to.”
    Emma Walsh pursed her red lips. She did not look happy. I tried again.
    â€œAlso, he wanted to save the front page for beauty pageants and rock stars, and I kept writing stuff about crooks on the public payroll, politicians with organized-crime connections, that kind of thing. He was a thirty-year-old executive. I’m forty-six, and still covering the street. He thought he must know something to be dressed so well. Finally, I turned down a chance to break a sex scandal on a Senate candidate, and we got scooped. He bet his reputation he could make me look bad for it.” I shrugged. “He lost.”
    There was a long silence. She brushed her hair back with her hand. I watched her do it. Her hair looked very soft. “So why do they hate you?” she asked. “The People Upstairs.”
    I shrugged again. “They hired an idiot. I made him look like an idiot.”
    â€œAnd now they’ve hired someone from an advertising firm.”
    â€œAt least you’ve heard of Winston Churchill.”
    She startled me with a laugh. It was a rich, high, musical sound. Her gray eyes grew even brighter. She nodded. “Poor Mr. Cambridge. I pity him. I do.” She had just the softest trace of a southern accent. You had to listen for it. “All right, let me tell you what I’ve been hearing this past week or so.”
    I took a deep breath. “Go ahead.”
    â€œYou’ll be relieved to know: I haven’t been brought here like Cambridge was, to make the Star relatable.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œOr zingy like Perelman.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œOr even to give it
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