Ceremony by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

young ad men in Gucci loafers. Some of the old red brick row houses had been sandblasted and festooned with hanging plants, so that they looked like the kind of restaurant where they serve carafe wine and quiche. Others had been left in their natural state and in them people slept four and five to the bed.
    Three Eighteen and a half Chandler was not upscale. The door to the foyer was warped, so it wouldn't close. I pushed it open, and Hawk and I stepped into the foyer. It was empty except for a crumbled Nissen's bread wrapper and a long-dead starling. There were brass mailboxes along the left-hand wall. The fronts of all of them had been torn off and there was no mail in any of them. There were doorbell buttons with name tag slots beside them. All the slots were empty. The glass inner door had been broken and patched with plywood. Graffiti was spray painted all over the plywood in intricate curves.
    Hawk pushed at the inner door. It swung open. The doorjamb where the latch tongue fitted was torn away as if a strong person had kicked it in. We went in. The floor inside was small octagonal tiles that must have been white when they were put down but now seemed a brownish gray. Stairs went up the right wall. ,
    Hawk said, "I think I rather get laid in an MG."
    "It would be discouraging to have your date bring you here," I said.
    We started up the stairs. The walls were plaster that had been painted and repainted so that the surface was now lumpy and thick with the layers. The color was about the same as the floor. On the second-floor landing was an empty bottle. LIME FLAVORED VODKA, the label said. There were three doors on the third floor. A ceiling fixture glared, shadeless, down on us.
    There were no numbers on the doors. In the tiny hallway under the ugly light surrounded by blank doors I felt a little disengaged, remote from Susan, from open water, from baseball. I put my ear against the door nearest me. No sound. Hawk listened at the next door and I moved on to the third. Nothing.
    "B should be the middle one," I said, "counting from either direction."
    Hawk nodded and rapped on the middle door. No one answered. He rapped again. No one. He tried the knob. The door didn't open.
    "Gimme room," I said. Hawk stepped out of the way. I kicked the door. And in we went. There were two people on a mattress on the floor. One was a young black woman, the other was a middle-aged white man with a roll around his middle. He was trying to scramble into his pants. He had them on and pulled up but not yet buttoned when we went in. The girl was naked and made no attempt to cover herself. She sat with her back against the wall, her legs out straight in front of her. She had the same look on her face that the dancers did in The Slipper. Nobody said anything. The man continued to struggle with his pants.
    "Don't worry," I said. "This isn't trouble. We're looking for a young woman named April Kyle."
    "She ain't here," the girl said.
    "We were told she was," I said. "Apartment Three B."
    "This Three C," the girl said.
    "Elementary, my dear Holmes," Hawk said.
    I ignored him. "Which is B? I said.
    The man had his pants buckled and was working on his shoes. They were boots, actually-black, with a zipper on the side-and he struggled to ram his foot in from his half-sprawled position with obsessive intensity.
    "Other end of the hall."
    "Do you know April Kyle?" I said.
    She shook her head. The harsh light spilling in from the hall was nearly theatrical, making shadows under her cheekbones and breasts. I held out April's picture. "How about her-ever see her?"
    The girl didn't bother to look. She kept shaking her head.
    "Take a look," I said.
    She kept shaking her head. Her dark eyes were empty. Her shoulders were hunched a little by the way she rested her hands, palm flat on the mattress. Her partner had one boot on and bent his every effort on the other one. His fat hairy upper body bent nearly double over his thighs as he struggled with the