CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) by S.J. Rozan Read Free Book Online Page A

cup to the windows, to lean and drink and watch.
    Golden sunlight outlined each leaf on the parking-lot birches. I thought of the maples on the hillside above my cabin, wondered if they’d turned yet. I felt the coffee warm my chest, caught the gentle jolt in my brain as it kicked in.
    A flash of sunlight bounced across the parking lot as the back door opened. Dr. Madsen, medical bag in hand, strode briskly through the lot and down the hill. That was curious, I thought. The subway was the other way; if he drove to work, his car would be in the lot. Maybe he was picking up a sandwich at the bodega, but then why take his bag?
    These were interesting questions, but my musing on them was interrupted by a silken, angry voice.
    “Mr. Smith!” Mrs. Wyckoff stood rigid in the doorway. “You’re paid to patrol these grounds, not to hide from your work in rooms where you don’t belong!”
    “Union gives me a fifteen-minute break twice a day.” I finished my coffee. “To take care of bodily functions. My body needs caffeine to function.”
    “This room is for professional staff only.” She wouldn’t be mollified. “Possibly you didn’t know that, but you know it now.”
    “Mrs. Wyckoff,” I said, rinsing my cup, setting it on the counter, “we seem to have started off badly. If it was my fault I’m sorry. I’m only trying to do my job—”
    “Then I suggest you get back to it.” She interrupted my apology, held the door open for me. It was too bad. I’d been about to say something nice about Helping Hands’ good name; she might have liked that.
    At four, when my shift ended, I left my tie and uniform jacket in my locker, changed into a windbreaker of my own. I took the car and headed north and west across the Bronx to Kingsbridge, to meet Hank Lindfors at a place of his choosing, the way Bobby had set it up.
    I drove the full length of the Concourse this time, curving with it as the apartment buildings gave way to short bursts of bustle at Fordham and again at Kingsbridge Road. I waited for a stoplight beside Poe Park, where the trees blazed red and gold in the long low sunlight.
    Where the Concourse ended I swung west, worked my way down to Broadway. A block over I found the place I was looking for: Ehring’s Tavern, a corner bar. I circled for a place to park. The neighborhood was small apartment buildings, one-story stores, a library, a couple of churches. Paper pumpkins and black cats hung in the window of the candy store where I stopped for cigarettes; the granite bank had a show of third graders’ artwork in the lobby.
    North of here lay the vastness of Van Cortlandt Park, and then Yonkers, Westchester, and the rest of the world; south was Manhattan. East, where I’d come from, the Bronx faded through tired and shabby to desolate and desperate. And to the west, up the hill, was Riverdale, the high ground where the money in the Bronx had retreated so it wouldn’t get its feet dirty.
    Across the street from Ehring’s I found a phone in one of those perforated metal enclosures that pass for phone booths now. I punched in Bobby’s number, lit a cigarette while I listened to the ring. I waited longer than I usually have the patience for, but sometimes it took Bobby time to get to the phone.
    The seventh ring was cut off by a sharp growl. “Moran!”
    “Smith,” I countered.
    “Ah, Jesus!” Bobby growled some more. “Where the hell are you? Are you all right?”
    “Never felt better.”
    “Al Dayton says you’re a mess.”
    “He exaggerates.”
    “Al Dayton,” Bobby said pointedly, “had to give up fishing because he couldn’t lie. He’s a regular George Washington. You, on the other hand—”
    “I’m at a pay phone. If you’re going to critique my character I’ll have to get more change.”
    “Forget it. You can’t afford it. What happened?”
    I told him about the fight.
    “You made some enemies,” he said, when I was through.
    “And a friend. Listen, Bobby, there are a few things