Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online

prayer for help he knew he didn’t deserve.
    Then he made a noise of angry dismissal, pushed off his knees, and stood. He slung the laptop under his arm. Trudged wearily up the stairs. He hoped he was tired enough to sleep at last.
    And he did sleep, eventually. But first he lay beside his wife for some unknowable eternity, breathing that mysterious air that came off her, that atmosphere that was weirdly like a memory, but like a memory of something better than he’d ever actually known. He lay there and yearned for her touch and love and comfort. But he would not wake her. So he lay alone and wallowed in a looping replay of that irretrievable split second of decision: Margo against the wall, her blouse off, her legs around him, him grunting in her, stupid, predictable, clownish, a human punchline in the Great Running Joke of the World.
    Ridiculous. It was all so ridiculous.
    But it had ruined everything.

4
    REBECCA ABRAHAM-HARTWELL
    N ext morning, Goulart slapped Zach on the shoulder. “The Bitch Goddess wants an update on Paz.”
    By the Bitch Goddess, he meant Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. She was the director of Extraordinary Crimes, their boss. Goulart hated her. She’d come up through the ranks as a lawyer, not a cop. That was one strike against her, in his book. Plus she was a woman—that was the other two.
    Zach was at his gunmetal desk in Task Force Zero’s New York squad room. It was the usual broad common room of desks and cinderblock walls, corkboards covered thick with fliers and venetian blinds striped with a view of some side street. Zach was at his computer, searching Stumpf . Finding Stumpf the philosopher. Stumpf the banker. A couple of guys in the law-enforcement databases named Stumpf. A con man. A chop-shop guy. All of it garbage. Dead ends. Nothing.
    He sighed and rolled his chair back. Stood.
    â€œWaste of time,” Goulart was muttering—about their meeting with the director, not about Stumpf.
    He looked especially sharp today, did Goulart. Light blue suit, white shirt, red striped tie, black hair combed to a fare-thee-well. A slick hook-up artist, was the thought that flashed through Zach’s mind. He reflected morosely that his partner’s marriage had ended in the typical cop-style divorce, complete with rage, hatred, guilt, recriminations, and one night when Goulart had waved his gun around so that an NYPD domestic incident report had to be discreetly shredded. With droll self-pity, Zach congratulated himself that, if Margo Heatherton had her way, he and Goulart would soon be able to sit around bars together trading ex-wife stories. Something to look forward to, ha ha ha.
    â€œAbraham-fucking-Hartwell,” Goulart sighed as he and Zach walked together down the shabby-tiled hall to the elevators. “What is that, anyway? Abraham-Hartwell? Is she Abraham or Hartwell? I mean, make up your mind, right?”
    â€œHartwell’s her husband’s name.”
    â€œSome high-priced mouthpiece for Wall Street dickheads,” said Goulart, stabbing the elevator button with a stiff index finger. “Hartwell,” he said, drawing out the ‘a’ to make it sound hoity-toity. He and Zach waited there, shoulder to shoulder. “What, she doesn’t want a Jewish name anymore? Hey, I’m not passing judgment, but make up your mind. You wanna pass for WASP, dump the Abraham. Just be Rebecca Hartwell. You wanna assimilate, I say: go for it. Am I right?”
    Zach looked down at him. Goulart was broader and thicker, but Zach was taller. “‘Are you right?’” he said. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
    Goulart silent-laughed. Which was one of the things—along with his being a great cop—that made it impossible for Zach not to like him: he’d laugh at himself the same as at anyone. “Hartwell,” he said again. “What the hell is he thinking? I’d rather get a blow job from a rattler than