The Lemur by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online Page A

space. The espresso machine behind the bar began to hiss like an industrial boiler and he had to raise his voice to be heard. “My problem is, Mr. Glass, somebody shot this Dylan Riley, which means somebody had a reason to shoot him, and I don’t know what that reason might be. He was a researcher, you say, but from the look of the inside of that warehouse of his he was a lot more than that, or aspired to be.” He picked up his empty cup and peered into it regretfully, as if there would never be another drink of coffee to be had. His eyes were hooded. “Secrets, Mr. Glass,” he said. “Dangerous things.”
    Another silence followed. The policeman kept his eyes downcast and seemed to be pondering the woes of the world.
    “I don’t think,” Glass said, measuring his words, “that I can help you, Captain. I didn’t know Dylan Riley, not in any real sense.”
    Those olive-dark lids shot up and the eyes fixed him, wet-brown and shining. “But you met him.” It was not a question.
    “Yes, I—he—that is, he came to my office, to discuss the possibility of his working with me on the book. Nothing was agreed.”
    The policeman was still watching him. “What kind of research would you have wanted him to do, if ‘something’ had been ‘agreed’?”
    Glass’s nerves were thrumming for the want of a cigarette. “Just … general. Dates, places, people Mr. Mulholland met, where, when. That kind of thing.”
    The captain flipped open the lid of the lighter but did not ignite the flame. Glass caught a faint whiff of gas from the pinprick nozzle, or imagined that he did, and his craving nerves stretched another notch.
    “Mr. Mulholland,” the captain said, “is a pretty interesting man. That’s to say, he’s led a pretty interesting life. Must be some things in his past you won’t be able to write about.”
    “There are things in all our pasts that wouldn’t bear the light of day.”
    The policeman gave a low, deprecating laugh. “But that’s not the same thing, is it. What I mean is, Mr. Mulholland is likely to have secrets that wouldn’t be allowed to see the light of day. Given his line of work before he set up Mulholland Cable.”
    “Then I’m wasting my time.”
    That seemed to require no comment, and again a silence fell between the two men, uneasy, and faintly rancorous. Glass was calculating the number of lies he had told the policeman so far today. Or not lies, perhaps, in the strict sense, the sense the Jesuits of Saint Peter’s in Jersey City would have insisted on, but shifted emphases, strategic withholdings. What was the phrase? Sins of omission? That was it. Yet it was no task of his to incriminate himself. He paused on that thought. Incriminate himself in what? He had not shot Dylan Riley. All he was doing was trying to cover up the possibility, the distinct possibility, that what the Lemur had unearthed was the fact of Glass’s affair with Alison O’Keeffe, and that he had been out to blackmail Glass by threatening to reveal the affair to his wife and her father. What man, what husband, no matter how far estranged from his wife, would not want to suppress such a revelation and preserve the arrangement that had been suiting everyone for so long? And then, deny the thought though he might, there was that million dollars …
    “I read that thing you wrote,” the captain said, “that thing in one of the magazines, about the Menendez brothers.” Glass stared, and the captain rolled his scarecrow’s shoulders in a parody of prideful shyness. “Shucks, yeah, I read, don’t even move my lips.” He stirred his coffee again. “It was a good piece. Lyle and Erik. Sweet guys. You meet them?”
    “I did.”
    “And?”
    “Sweet guys.”
    The captain chuckled, and pushed aside his cup and stood up. Together they went toward the door. Glass brought out his wallet but the policeman lifted a hand. “We don’t pay here,” he said with stony emphasis. “Graft. Don’t you know about New York