The Nicholas Linnear Novels by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online Page B

than the color of that around them. His broad nose had been broken once, perhaps in some nighttime street fight in the South Bronx, where he had been born and raised. His hair was salt and pepper but his mustache was jet black. He looked, in short, like a most formidable opponent—which he was, as the mayor and several members of the city’s fiscal control board could easily attest.
    “Morning, Vincent,” he called.
    “Morning, Nate.” He hurried across the room to the high metal dome of the coffee machine standing like a doge’s palace amid the clutter. Hold the sugar, hold the half-and-half, he thought gloomily. I need my caffeine straight this morning.
    “Stay a minute, Vincent,” Graumann said, as the assignment meeting broke up.
    Vincent sat in a green chair across from the littered desk and handed over the cases he had picked out when Graumann asked to see them.
    They were friends, away from their labors here, but those times had seemed to shrink over the years. Graumann had been deputy M.E. when Vincent had first arrived here and, it seemed, there had been more time then. Or perhaps it was just that there had been more money. Their workloads increased as the fiscal crunch fell like the side of a mountain upon them. The city had much larger problems than worrying about the people who were daily bludgeoned, knifed, strangled, drowned, asphyxiated, shot, mangled and blown apart on the city’s streets or in the bodies of water throughout its environs. Eighty thousand people die each year in New York City and we get thirty thousand of them, he thought.
    “What d’you have on at the moment?” Graumann said.
    “Uhm. The Morway thing,” Vincent said, his brow furrowing in thought, “and the Holloway knifing—I’m due in court on that any moment. The Principal case is about closed—just a few odds and ends left to tie up for the D.A.—the blood analysis should be in this afternoon. And then, oh yeah, Marshall.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Came in late yesterday afternoon. McCabe said it couldn’t wait so I began working on it right away. Drowning in the reservoir. McCabe thinks he might have had his head held under. They’re holding someone on suspicion, that’s why she needs the goods right away.”
    Graumann nodded. “Full load, huh?”
    “More than.”
    “I want you to go out to the Island for a couple of days.”
    “What? In the middle of all this?”
    “If it weren’t important I wouldn’t be asking,” he said patiently, “would I?”
    “But what about—?”
    “I’ll look after your cases in progress personally. And these”—he picked up the two manila folders, tapping their bottoms on the desk top several times as if straightening them out—“I’ll give to Michaelson.”
    “Michaelson is an idiot,” Vincent retorted hotly.
    Graumann regarded him placidly. “He goes by the book, Vincent. He’s steady and dependable.”
    “But he’s so slow,” Vincent moaned.
    “Speed is not everything,” Graumann reminded him.
    “Tell that to McCabe. She’s got the whole office on our case, lately. All those goddamn assistant D.A.s wheedling their way in here mucking things up.”
    “It’s what they’re paid to do, I’m afraid.”
    “So what am I doing out on the Island?”
    “Paul Deerforth called late yesterday,” Graumann said. “You remember him?”
    “Sure. We met last year when I came out to visit you for a couple of days. West Bay Bridge, right?”
    “Uhm hmm.” Graumann sat forward. “He’s apparently got a problem that’s over his head. He has ancillary ties to the Suffolk County M.E.’s office.” He looked down at his steepled nails, back up to Vincent’s face. “He asked for you specifically.”
    There was a great fish tank along the left-hand brick wall of the living room of Nicholas’ house. It was, he estimated, big enough to hold fifty gallons of water. But its denizens were no ordinary guppies or gouramis, for the owners had left to him, the summer’s