Night Train by Martin Amis Read Free Book Online

'Mrs. Rolfe, did Jennifer seem depressed ever?'
           'Jennifer? She was always cheerful. Always cheerful.'
           Trader, Jennifer, Mrs. Rolfe: They were neighborly. Jennifer ran errands for her. If she needed something heavy shifted, Trader would move it. They kept a spare key for her. She kept a spare key for them. She still had that spare key, used to gain access on the night of March fourth. I say I'll take that key, thank you, ma'am, and log it with Evidence Control. Left her my card, in case she needed anything. I could see myself looking in on her here, as I still do for several elderly parties in the Southern. I could see myself developing an obligation.
           On the floor below: The door to Jennifer's apartment is sashed with orange crime-scene tape. I slipped inside for a second. My first reaction, in the bedroom, was strictly police. I thought: What a beautiful crime scene. Totally undeteriorated. Not only the blood spatter on the wall but the sheets on the bed have the exact same pattern that I remember.
           I sat on the chair with my.38 on my lap, trying to imagine. But I kept thinking about Jennifer the way she used to be. As gifted as she was, in body and mind, she never glassed herself off from you. If you ran into her, at a party, say, or downtown, she wouldn't say hi and move on. She'd always be particular with you. She'd always leave you with something.
           Jennifer would always leave you with something.
     
     
     
    March 12
     
    Today my shift was noon to eight. Sitting there smoking cigarettes and changing tapes, changing tapes—audio, visual, audiovisual. We're casing the new hotel in Quantro, because we know the Outfit has money in it. I finally got the visual fix I was looking for: Two guys in the atrium, standing in the shadows back of the fountain. When we say the Outfit or the Mob, in this city, we don't mean the Colombians or the Cubans, the Yakuza, the Jake posses, the El Ruks, the Crips and the Bloods. We mean Italians. So I watched these two greasers in blue suits that cost five grand, gesturing at each other, very formal. Men of honor, worthy of respect. Wise guys had long before stopped behaving that way, but then some movies came along that reminded them that their grandparents used to do that shit, with the honor, and so they started doing it, all over again.
           Incidentally: We want that hotel.
           I feel grateful for quiet workloads on days such as this, days of lethargy and faint but persistent nausea which have to do with my time of life, and my liver. More my liver than my unused womb. My only way around this is a transplant, a full organ transplant, which is possible, and expensive. But the precarious-ness—the risk of hepatic collapse—keeps me honest. If I bought a new liver, I'd just trash that one too.
           Early afternoon Colonel Tom buzzed me and asked if I'd come up to his office on the twenty-third.
           He is shrinking. His desk is big anyway but now it looks like an aircraft carrier. And his face like a little gun turret, with its two red panic buttons. He isn't getting better.
           I told him the move I planned for Trader.
           You'll go in hard, he said. Like I know you can.
           Like you know I can, Colonel Tom.
           Freestyle, Mike, he said. Flake him. I don't care if he spills and walks. I just want to hear him say it.
           To hear him say it, Colonel Tom?
           I just want to hear him say it.
           With Silvera or Overmars, you could always tell when a case was beating them down: They started shaving every other day. That, plus the usual symptoms of being wide awake for a month. Pretty soon they're like the guys gathered around the braziers in the stockyards sidings—ghosts of a Depression section gang, lit by the flares... Colonel Tom's cheeks were smooth. His cheeks were smooth. But he couldn't take a razor to the brown