Night Work by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online

apparently took care of some rich family’s house and garden to pay the bills. It was hard to match up their training schedules, but they needed each other, because nobody else was good enough for serious sparring.
    “Thanks for the advice,” I said. “Yes, I did call her. I’ll think about the flowers.”
    “No, you can’t think,” Maurice said. “You think, you lose.”
    “I got it.”
    “I’m just looking out for you, Joe.”
    Truth was, I thought he still probably felt guilty about what he did to my eyebrow. Not that it was his fault. I was the one who convinced Anderson to let me try sparring with him, when Rolando wasn’t around one day. “Come on,” I said. “I’m getting good enoughnow. Just let me go a couple rounds with him. I’ll be careful.”
    Careful, my ass. Two minutes into it, I surprised him with a quick double jab, snapping them just like Anderson had been trying to teach me. He came right back at me, probably without even thinking about it. For a man who supposedly hadn’t found his big punch yet, I sure as hell took one from him. Funny how you can be standing up one second, then flat on your back the next, looking up at the ceiling and wondering why there’s blood running into your left eye, thinking, oh yeah, this must be what it feels like when an outclassed fighter gets laid out on the canvas like a Christmas turkey. Ever since then, he’d been going out of his way to do things for me. He’d probably serve as my chauffeur if I let him.
    “Seriously,” Anderson said. “We need a few more details. You went out to dinner. Then what?”
    “Then we had a nice time.”
    “I said details, Trumbull. Paint us a picture with words.”
    “We had a
very
nice time. Now if you’ll excuse me …”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’m going to work.”
    “It’s Sunday.”
    “Yeah?
You’re
working. Why can’t I?”
    Before he could think of an answer to that one, I got the hell out of there. I heard him yelling at Rolandoand Maurice to get back to their sparring as I closed the door behind me.
    T he office is about half a mile up Broadway. Most nice days I’ll walk it, and this day certainly qualified. Not too hot for an August day in the Hudson Valley, not too humid. But with all the good reasons to walk—the chance to clear my head, to loosen up my body, to smell the Dunkin’ Donuts shop on the way—somehow it didn’t add up today. Suddenly, I wanted to be in the office. I wanted to be sitting at my desk, the one place where everything made sense. I didn’t want to wait another minute.
    I got in my black Volkswagen. I turned on some more Ayler while I drove up Broadway. It was an Ayler kind of day all around, that mixture of joy and sadness in everything he played. That’s how I felt today. But I only had a minute or two to enjoy it before I turned into the parking lot.
    I got out and went into the Ulster County Probation building. Five years ago, we were working in a converted funeral home up on Pearl Street. Then we moved down here on Broadway, to this new building where everything about the place told you there would be no nonsense allowed. On weekdays, there’d be two county deputies stationed by the front door. You’d have to sign in and then walk through a metal detector. In the old building, you just walked right in and sat in the common waiting room. You might havehad a sixty-year-old sex offender in the same room with a fifteen-year-old girl. But no longer. Now you enter one of two completely separate worlds, the left side of the building for adults, the right for juveniles, with no chance of contact.
    We don’t do appointments on Sundays, so there were no deputies waiting in the lobby. I opened the front door with my key and locked it behind me, walking through the dead metal detector into the juvenile section.
    We have enclosed offices on this side, unlike the adult side, where everything’s wide-open cubicles. There’s a high priority for privacy here, and a