361 - Donald E. Westlake [1]
Copyright © 1962 by Donald E. Westlake
Cover painting copyright © 2005 by R.B. Farrell
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-303-8
E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-101-2
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To Fred and Joanne and Nedra
.361 (Destruction of life; violent death.) Killing.
ROGET’S THESAURUS OF WORDS AND PHRASES
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
One
I got off the plane at Maguire, and sent a telegram to my dad from the terminal before they loaded us into buses. Two days later, the Air Force made me a civilian, and I walked toward the gate in my own clothes, a suitcase in each hand.
I was a mess. A twenty-three-year-old bum with mixed-up German and English in his head, two suitcases full of garbage, no plans. It felt fine.
I was at Manhattan Beach Air Force Station. That’s in Brooklyn, southeast end, not far from Coney Island. Farther than hell from Manhattan.
I went through the gate and the snowtops didn’t look twice, and then I wasn’t in Manhattan Beach Air Force Station any more, I was on Oriental Avenue. Ahead to my left there was an asphalt oval by a field, where the buses turned around. There was a bus standing there, green. I went over and got aboard and asked the driver to let me off by a subway stop, I wanted to go to Manhattan. He said he would, and I sat in the sideways seat right behind him.
There were two airman thirds aboard, toward the back, and a Negro nurse, that’s all. Then another guy with two suitcases came on, and he and I kind of avoided looking at one another. I’d never seen him before, but he was another new civvy. We acted like we’d both just been circumcised, and if we talked to each other everybody would know.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and July hot. It was only the twelfth, and my discharge date wasn’t till the twenty-third, but the Air Force just gets you back the right month and lets it go at that. Outside, the blacktop was baking. You could see footprints, and in the distance there were rising shimmers. Car chrome gleamed for miles. The field between the bus and the Atlantic Ocean looked like dry brown hair.
After a while, the driver put his News away and started the bus. He swung the rest of the way around the oval, his arms moving as he turned the wheel, and his gray shirt was black with perspiration in circles below his shoulders. When he straightened the bus out and headed into the shimmer, a small breeze came in the open part of the window beside his elbow.
At one stop, he said, “There’s your subway, over there,” and pointed at steps going up to an el.
I thanked him, and toted the suitcases off. He called, “Good luck, soldier.”
I smiled, but I didn’t like him. I wasn’t a soldier,