Richard Montanari by The Echo Man Read Free Book Online

this case
they were. Robles should never have gotten back on the street.
        Slippage.
        On
the day Robles was arrested, Byrne visited Lina Laskaris's grandmother. Anna
Laskaris was a Greek immigrant in her early seventies. She had raised Lina
alone. Byrne told the woman that the man responsible for Lina's death was being
brought to justice. He remembered the woman's tears, how she held him, how her
hair smelled of cinnamon. She was making pantespani.
        What
Byrne remembered most was that Anna Laskaris had trusted him, and he had let
her down.
        Byrne
now caught a glimpse of himself in the filmy mirror behind the bar. He wore a
ball cap, and the glasses he had been forced to start wearing lately. If Robles
had not been drinking he might have recognized Byrne. But Byrne was probably
just a blur in the near distance to Robles, as well as to everyone else in the
bar. This was no upscale Center City watering hole. This place was for hard
drinkers, for hard men.
        At
12:30 Robles stumbled out of the bar. He got into his car and drove down
Frankford Avenue. When Robles reached York Street he turned east, drove a few
blocks, parked.
        Byrne
sat in his car across the street, and watched. Robles got out of his car,
stopped twice to talk to people. He was looking to score. Within minutes a man
approached.
        Robles
and the other man walked, a little unsteadily, down the alley. A moment later
Byrne saw light flare against the dirty brick wall of the alley. Robles was
hitting the rock.
        Byrne
got out of his car, looked both ways up the street. Deserted. They were alone.
Philadelphia was once again sliding into slumber, except for those who moved
silently through the harbor of night.
        Byrne
stepped into shadow. From somewhere, perhaps deep inside him, a long-forgotten
melody began to play.
        It
sounded like a requiem.

 
        

Chapter 6
        
        Monday,
October 25
        
        The
early morning run through Pennypack Park had become a sacrament, one that Jessica
was not quite ready to relinquish. The people she saw every morning were not
just part of the landscape but part of her life.
        There
was the older woman, always meticulously turned out in 1960s pillbox chic, who
walked her four Jack Russell terriers every morning, the dogs in possession of
a wardrobe more extensive and seasonal than Jessica's. There was the tai chi group who, rain or shine, performed their morning rituals on the baseball
diamond near Holme Avenue. Then there were her buddies, the two Russians,
half-brothers, both named Ivan. They were well into their sixties, but
incredibly fit, as well as shockingly hirsute, given to jogging in their
matching lime- green Speedos in summer. For half-brothers they looked almost
identically alike. At times Jessica could not tell them apart, but it didn't
really matter. When she saw one of them she simply said, 'Good morning, Ivan.'
She always got a smile.
        When
she and Vincent and Sophie moved to South Philly there would still be a few
places for her to jog, but it would be a long time before Jessica could run
again without caution, like she could here.
        Here,
where her route and path were well worn, she could sort things out. It was this
she would miss most of all.
        She
rounded the bend, ran up the incline, thought about Marcia Kimmelman, and what
had been done to her. She thought about Lucas Anthony Thompson, and the
startled look in his eyes when he'd realized it was over, the moment the cuffs
clicked shut on his wrists and he was yanked to his feet, dirt and gravel on
his face, his clothing. Jessica had to admit she liked the dirt-and-gravel
part, always had. Mud, weather permitting, was even better.
        With
this comforting image in mind she turned the corner, onto her street, and saw
someone standing at the end of her driveway. A man in a dark suit. It was
Dennis Stansfield.
        Jessica
let her