Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [47]
“All of us?”
“Without exception.”
“I actually like the Yankees.”
“Okay. With one exception.”
She gave him a different kind of smile this time. Kind of slow and lazy. It made her look even older. He liked that. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “It’s too fucking noisy.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
She widened her smile. “Yeah. I know what you were thinking.”
“I got a call from the high school,” Laura told Roger when he phoned from the office at Broadwing Mutual, where he sold all kinds of insurance over the phone and managed outstanding policies. Laura wasn’t sure exactly what his job entailed, but he earned enough to support the family in reasonably good style—if they watched their pennies. “Davy’s skipped his afternoon classes again.”
“A habit.”
“The school’s concerned.”
“He’s a senior. He’ll go away to college next year.”
“If he graduates.”
“He’ll graduate, the tuition we pay the place.”
“He’s got to attend some classes.”
“And he does attend some. Davy will always do at least enough to get by. That’s the kind of kid he is. You worry too much, Laura.”
Or not enough.“He probably won’t be home in time for dinner, either. That seems to be the pattern.”
“So he’s out someplace having fun. He’s a young man now. You want me to talk to him?”
“No.” She knew her husband was bluffing. He wouldn’t talk to their son even if she insisted. She’d known for years the kind of relationship Roger and Davy shared. The late night trips down the hall when Roger assumed she was asleep. The faint squeal of the hinge on Davy’s bedroom door and—
“Laura?”
“I don’t see any reason to talk to him,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t help, anyway.”
“Davy’ll be all right. I can just about guarantee it.”
“Okay, I’ll accept that guarantee.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Will you be home for supper?”
“No, I’ve gotta work late. Be about 9 o’clock, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”
“Don’t worry, Laura. Promise?”
“Sure,” she said, and hung up the phone.
She hadn’t mentioned the stained shirt to Roger. What would be the point?
They sat in the pocket park that was squeezed between two buildings on East 51st Street. The more they talked to each other, the more she thought they had a lot in common. Enough, anyway.
He was young, all right; Holly could see that even in the dim light from cars passing in the nearby street. But there was something about him, a deep sort of confidence despite his age, as if he’d been around. Maybe more than she had.
“Mind if I ask how old you are?”
He gave her a slow smile that got to her. “Sure, I mind. You afraid I’m jailbait?”
“No. Women don’t think that way. Besides, you’ve got old eyes.”
“You trust me to be old enough and I’ll trust you.”
“To do what?”
“To be gentle with me.”
Holly laughed. “Listen, I’ve got nothing but booze at my place.”
“We don’t even need that.”
She grinned. “C’mon, David. I might not even have that, but you can help me look.”
“I’m good at finding things,” he said, standing up from the bench. “Like, I found you.”
Less than an hour later he slid the long blade of one of her kitchen knives in at the base of her sternum, then up at a sharp angle to the heart. He’d worked out that method from books and basic medical research on the Internet. When he withdrew the blade, it made a muffled scraping sound on her rib cage. It was a sound he liked and made a point to remember.
Holly died quickly on the kitchen floor, not even aware of falling. The last two years, her friends, her lovers, her neat but small apartment near the college, all of it slipped away from her so, so fast, somewhere in the darkness beneath her pain.
The last thing she saw as the light faded was David, nude, standing near the sink, removing objects from the drawer where she kept the knives. More knives. There was a kind of studied purpose about the forward lean of his young body and his intense concentration, as if he were just beginning something rather than ending it.
“Another girl’s been murdered and carved up down in the Village,” Roger said, reading the folded Times as he sat