Murder Without Pity by Steve Haberman Read Free Book Online Page B

please leave? They were closing in three minutes, and she gestured at her wristwatch for emphasis. He could no longer remain in that refuge, he realized. Other police might lurk outside as the elderly, as prostitutes in darkened doorways, as patrons in cafés. Life was risk, he thought. One had to gamble sometimes. So he pushed out into the mist, happy movement brought release from his tension, and hurried across an intersection.
    Now past an Indonesian restaurant, relieved the chairs around the sidewalk tables remained empty. Next, onto Boulevard du Montparnasse. A police van seemed to float past in a sea of fog. Its revolving light threw a bluish hue over deserted cafés and restaurants as it vanished through the mist toward the east.
    He rushed across another street, then faster down the sidewalk. That phone booth, where was it? He glanced around, panicky for its sight. He had passed it. He hadn’t walked far enough. It stood on the other side of the boulevard. No, there it was, just beyond the Tea and Chocolate Salon. Thank God.
    “ The witness thinks the deceased might have shouted a name .” Recalling the judge’s voice made him forget caution. He didn’t care if the police followed. He must find out who had called him that evening at his apartment. Lenny? Or that investigator? Fear pushed him recklessly past a youth in a jacket and calf-high boots, hair greased into green spikes, who lunged toward the same cabin.
    Boucher stepped inside. He yanked the phone off its hook. Right foot in next, he banged shut the door and shoved his telephone card into the slot as soon as he heard the dial tone.
    The youth spit a blob of phlegm onto the glass door. “Bastard,” he screamed.
    Boucher jerked away and realized in his haste he had inserted the wrong side of the card. He flipped it over, almost dropped it, then saw he hadn’t removed his gloves.
    “You shit!”
    Oh shut up, you trash. With one yank Boucher ripped his right glove off, gripped the card by its sides, pushed it in, punched in the numbers. Three rings. Four. Five. He hung up, swept away cigarette butts on the metal counter, and waited. His phone didn’t ring back.
    He thrust his hand into his inside overcoat pocket and snatched out a piece of stationery with Lenny’s number on it. He had dialed the ten digits correctly.
    He punched in the same numbers. Again he waited. Lenny’s got to be there, he thought. He must have seen my Mercedes on the street as a contact signal. But Lenny didn’t call.
    Boucher pounded the numbers in again, this time with such urgency his fingers almost slipped from the “2” to the “4” on the panel. Five, six, eight times he let the phone ring, forgetting the contact code, begging for a connection until finally after the twelfth ring he accepted Lenny wasn’t there. The receiver slipped from his grip. It dropped like a stone and swung back and forth from its cord.
    He slumped against the booth’s glass side. Tomorrow was the tenth; he must try again, see if Lenny had called that night, or if that judge had. The youth shot an obscene gesture at him as he slammed open his own booth’s door and kicked it shut. Boucher closed his eyes, praying for peace. Yet even in the darkness of his mind, he couldn’t flee. A witness might have overheard his name shouted, and that examining magistrate might investigate him deeper. For the first time in years Boucher was frightened, and his phone rang on and on and on.

CHAPTER 9
    A NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN
    Stanislas collapsed his umbrella into his satchel and squeezed between arguing commuters in the metro’s aisle. He moved past rows of empty seats with a quick swing of his right leg, eager to reach the furthest limit of the carriage. He’d face enough bickering at work.
    He took out Tuesday morning’s newspaper from his bag and glanced through the front pages with an occasional grunt of disbelief over the mess of things, of societies imploding, and of nationalists rushing in. The