Slow Burn Read Online Free

anymore.
    Loomis’s biggest problem was that he was a loner and always had been. He had no use for partners in general, or for me in particular. He knew the rap against me and bought it hook, line and sinker. He thought I was nothing more than a dried out hack, running out my string until my pension kicked in. And I hadn’t worked too hard to change his mind.
    The bosses told us we had to work together, but no one said we had to like it. And neither of us did.
    I fished out my pack of Luckies from my pocket. I would’ve offered Loomis one, but he already had one going. “Get anything from the canvass?” I figured he hadn’t, but I had to ask.
    Loomis shook his head as he let out a long plume of smoke from his nose. “Nothing but a bad stink I can’t shake.” The cigarette in the corner of his mouth bobbed as he talked. “I like a pull on the jug as much as the next guy, but Jesus, there’s some sad cases in there.”
    I thumbed a match and lit my cigarette. Prohibition was still the law of the land, but that didn’t stop people from finding as much booze as they wanted whenever they wanted it. “Imagine what it’ll be like after Repeal.”
    “Happy days,” Loomis said. “Get anything on the girl?”
    “Nothing. Stark naked, throat cut, cleaned up and no sign of her clothes. Every inch of the place scrubbed clean, too. I bet the dust boys won’t find a print anywhere. Not a single clue in the whole damned room.”
    “Except for the girl,” Loomis said. He knew I hated it when he corrected me. He did it anyway. We both knew he was the better homicide detective. Every once in a while, he liked to remind me.
    Neither of us said anything for a while after that because there really wasn’t much to say. The two of us just stood there, together but alone in the thick air of a late August morning in New York City. It was just past four-thirty, and Twenty-eighth and Ninth wasn’t exactly busting with activity.
    The heat had made it tough to sleep and a few people were already out on the street, heading to work before it got even worse. The lucky stiffs. With the Depression on, working men and women seemed to be a dying breed in this town. Hell, they seemed to be a dying breed everywhere. In any other neighborhood in the city, police cars on the corner would’ve brought out a hell of a crowd. But Chelsea wasn’t any other neighborhood.
    The working-class Micks regarded cops with a hatred normally reserved for British royalty. I caught a few old harpies peering down at us from the fire escapes and open windows of surrounding buildings. They were curious, but kept their distance all the same. I knew the neighborhood rumor mill would be going at full blast in a few hours, making it that much harder for us to get a line on whoever killed the girl upstairs.
    I watched a couple of drunks across the street linking each other home from God knows where. One of them looked pretty banged up, either from a bar fight or a mugging or something in between. Hacks cruised Ninth Avenue looking for stray fares. An old nag loped a milk truck eastbound along Twenty-eighth Street. The driver looked as tired as the horse did. The heat was hard on everyone.
    Loomis broke the silence first. “Think the victim was a good time girl?”
    I decided to use some of Hancock’s wisdom, with a little of my own work thrown in. “She’s in too good a shape to be a pro. Expensive make up and hairdo.”
    Loomis shrugged. “Could be a high-class call girl.”
    “Not in a place like this. Besides, a pro wouldn’t have let a guy get behind her like that without a fight. Her nails were still intact. No sign of a struggle.”
    Loomis grinned. “You get all that from Hancock?”
    “Fuck you, Floyd.”
    Loomis shrugged that off, too. He took a final drag on his cigarette, then flicked it into the gutter. “If she’s not a call girl, then this case just got a whole lot more complicated, didn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it did.” I flicked my cigarette