The Wrong Man by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online Page B

idle second or two who the man was. He shrugged. He didn’t really care. He didn’t even need to know his name. Within an hour or two, the only possible thing that conceivably connected him to the man he’d left in the alleyway was asleep in her own apartment, unaware of anything that had taken place that night. And when she did become aware, she might go to the police. He doubted it, but the chance, even if slight, existed. But what could she say? In his pocket was a ticket stub for a movie theater. It wasn’t much of an alibi, but it covered the time when the kiss had taken place and would be enough for any policeman who wouldn’t believe her in the first place, especially after the wallet or the credit cards showed up all the way across town.
    He leaned his head back, listening to the sound of the subway train, a curious kind of music hidden in the unrelenting noise of metal against metal.
             
    It was a little before five in the morning when Michael O’Connell made his next-to-last stop. He picked a station more or less at random and rose up out into the last darkness of the night into the area around Chinatown, near the downtown financial district. Most of the stores were shuttered and closed, and the sidewalk was empty. It did not take him long to find a pay phone that was operating, and he shivered against the chill. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, giving him an anonymous, monklike appearance. He worked fast. He didn’t want a lazy patrol car making a last sweep through the narrow streets to spot him, stop, and ask questions.
    O’Connell deposited fifty cents and dialed Ashley’s number.
    The telephone rang five times before he heard her sleep-groggy voice.
    “Hello?”
    He paused, just to give her a second or two to fully awaken.
    “Hello?” she asked a second time. “Who is it?”
    He remembered a cheap, white portable phone by the side of her bed. No caller ID, not that it would make a difference.
    “You know who it is,” he said softly.
    She did not reply.
    “I told you. I love you, Ashley. We are meant for each other. No one can come between us.”
    “Michael, stop calling me. I want you to leave me alone.”
    “I don’t need to call you. I’m always with you.”
    Then he hung up the phone, before she had a chance to. The best sort of threat, he thought, wasn’t stated, but imagined.
             
    It was almost dawn when he finally made it back to his apartment.
    Perhaps a half dozen of his neighbor’s cats were milling about in the hallway, mewling and making other annoying sounds. One of them hissed when he approached. The old lady who lived across from him owned somewhere more than twelve cats, perhaps as many as twenty, called them all by a variety of names, and set out food dishes for the occasional stray that happened by. Owned, he thought, was a relative term. They seemed to come and go pretty much as they pleased. She’d even put an extra litter box in a corner of the hallway to accommodate their needs, which gave the corridor a thick, unpleasant smell. The cats knew Michael O’Connell and he knew the cats, and he didn’t get along with any of them any better than he did with their owner. He considered them strays, a step above vermin. They made him sneeze, and his eyes water, and were forever watching him with feline wariness whenever he entered the building. He didn’t like it when anyone or anything paid any attention to his comings and goings.
    O’Connell aimed a kick at a calico who strayed within his reach, but missed. Getting sluggish, he told himself. The result of a long but exciting night. The calico and companions skittered away as he unlocked his apartment door. He looked down and saw that one, a black-and-white with an orange streak, lingered momentarily near the food dish. It must be new or else stupid not to take its cue from the others, who kept their distance from him. The old woman wouldn’t be up for an hour, maybe