The Waiting Game (Garvey Fields) Read Online Free

custom on us. Now what should I add?”
    “From hence forth I am to be cast into the wilderness, a scourge…”
    “Enough of that,” he snapped.
    “I’m fired?”
    “Very good, I bid you goodnight.”
    He turned and walked to the elevators and the lift attendant took him up to his apartment.
    I looked at Quinn.
    “McKinley, really?” I said.  “From what I know of the man he’s not stupid enough to think this place and the Hummingbird would get the same kind of customers. Do you think Carter actually asked Marley One to come here?”
    “Guess so,” said Quinn.
    “Then why not put his dumb ass and buddies up in the clouds with a whole roof terrace to fuck about on.  He’d pay more, be as loud as he wanted, and call up a gang of whores. It makes no sense putting him on a floor with residents and people with flights in the morning. And why in god’s name did Hobart let those girls get so close to him if he knew the score?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well it’s my last night,” I said. “Wonder how much trouble I can get into before I leave. Imagine that, losing a decent job because I wouldn’t let someone shoot me and I put the hotels reputation first. I’ll miss these happy times.”
    “We’ll miss you too,” said Quinn.
    “Ah shooks, you're goanna make me well up,” I said playfully.
    “Well I’ll miss you in a week; my brother has a lodge up in Monticello.”
    “You never mentioned any siblings before.”
    “Yeah, he doesn’t do New York often, used to think he was going to be heavy weight champion of the world.”
    I nodded, “well I’ve only got five hours of the shift left, might as well make sure this place is secure before I wonder off into the great beyond.”
    “I’m off in the next thirty minutes, anything you need before I go?”
    “Yeah, put the gun in the safe and call the cops about it when you get back, tell them security found it and you assumed they had called it in already. The last thing you want to do hold a gun that’s killed someone.”
    Quinn took the gun and locked it away.
    I looked at the receipt I’d taken from the bag in the girl’s room; it was made out to Gloria Jefferson, Apt 69, Dodell Apartments, 227 67th Avenue in Pomonok.
    “What you got there?” said Quinn on his return.
    “Gloria Jefferson, one of the girls on the eighth came to party with the Marley One.”
    “Party?”
    “Well more like set his ass up on some kind of rape charge, twisted fuck would probably over obliged though.”
    “Why so?”
    “Drugged the other girl and was going to get all medieval and shit on her.”
    “You goanna look into it.”
    “Why?”
    “In case they try it elsewhere?”
    “What do I care?”
    “The hotel will pay you.”
    “Under what guise?”
    “You know technically speaking you get a months’ notice?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well I’ll write a termination of contract letter with your notice period and advance you your holiday pay which is an extra month wages because you never take any.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “Aren’t you a private detective?”
    “Business has been slow…”
    “What else you got to do?”
    “Nothing…”
    “So why not pass the time while you’re trying to drum up business.”
    “Fair enough.”
    I tucked it into my wallet and looked around the lobby. I’d miss this place but it looked like I had a new job, if that’s what I could call it.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    PART ONE
     
    NIGHT CAP
     
     
    1
     
     
    Sometimes principles are too expensive. They can cost you money, dignity and pride. But being true to one’s self isn’t something you can put a price on, being free from the metaphorical master’s whip means setting the pace of you own work and rewards.
    After leaving the college I’d had dreams of becoming Spenser, Marlowe or Easy Rawlins, solving people’s problems for money, but I needed my P.I license first, so that’s why I found myself at the Mayflower Hotel not too far from JFK, as the chief of