Manhattan Nocturne by Colin Harrison Read Free Book Online Page B

that, curious idiot that I am, I’d be willing to listen to whatever it is I’m about to hear?”
    â€œYes.” She watched me.
    â€œI see.”
    â€œI believe in spontaneity.” There she stood, the light falling on her head and shoulders and breasts.
    â€œYou better tell me what you have to tell me.”
    â€œFine. But before the tell comes the show.”
    â€œI’m going to get a show?”
    She drifted toward the fireplace, her back turned. “Don’t you want one?”
    â€œI want one very badly.”
    â€œGood. That means that despite your recent drinking you’ll be attentive.” She took two large manila envelopes off the mantel and held them before her. Then she looked toward the window. Before her stretched the snowy dark box of the park and, beyond, the lights of the West Side. “You know nothing about me, right?” she announced, to the night before her as much as to me.
    â€œNothing,” I agreed. “You’re about twenty-eight, you have a few million dollars, you wear nice peach gowns to parties, you don’t like my picture in the newspaper, your fiancé plays tennis and knows almost nothing about suffering and grief, and Napoleon Bonaparte, your doorman, is gladdened by your existence but not by mine. Other than that, nothing.”
    â€œIt must be paralyzingly fun to be as clever as you are.”
    â€œHey,” I told her, “I’m here.”
    She was silent, and for a moment I wondered if the whole strange interaction was now about to collapse; if that was true, I’d catch a cab downstairs, try to forget about it, and put the taxi receipt on my monthly business expenses. But then she
moved away from the window and handed the envelopes to me. I chose the thinner one first and set the other aside. I unwound the red string that held the flap and shook out two dozen eight-by-ten color photographs. The first showed what seemed to be a male body in dirty clothes facedown in rubble. I flipped through a few more, variously taken from ten feet and five feet and two feet and, most unhappily, from twelve inches.
    â€œOkay.” I coughed. “So this is what we’re talking about.”
    â€œYes, this is where we start.”
    â€œThis is where we start?”
    â€œYes.” She stood over me and I could smell her. “Another drink?”
    â€œWhy not?” I muttered.
    â€œWas it scotch or vodka?”
    â€œGin.”
    Back to the color photos: The damage to the body was complete; it looked as if nearly every major bone in the body had been crushed, including the skull, which resembled a pumpkin left on a front porch through the winter. One shot showed what remained of the face: a half-open eye staring into infinity, oblivious to its own seeping decay. The streaked putrefaction of the body was also evident where the shirt was pulled up. One of the photos showed an expanse of mutilated flesh impossible to identify. The picture was labeled TORSO, ANTERIOR. The next was a close-up of a gnawed wrist. I flipped through the photos quickly; I’d seen a number of after-the-fact examples of human butchery, but most of them were the result of guns and knives. This was worse, and had involved great physical forces. I slipped the pictures back into the envelope.- Someone had died an ignoble death: a lot filled with rubble, a body, the attention of flies.
    â€œTo help you through the gates of hell.” Caroline presented a drink on a silver tray. I took the glass, sipped it. She stood over me smoking another rolled cigarette. “Look at the next envelope.”
    I did. Inside was a complete copy of a police file of an unsolved death in a lot at 537 East Eleventh Street in the
department’s Ninth Precinct, which covers the Lower East Side. I’d seen such files a few times before, though the detectives who’d shown them to me would never have admitted to helping a reporter. I flipped through a