29The telephone woke me. I fought my way out of sleep like an underwater swimmer coming ...

30Around mid-morning I went home to shower and shave and put on my best suit.

31We left the converted firehouse with me in the back seat and Chance wearing a chauffeur’s cap.

32Around ten-thirty that night I walked in and out of Poogan’s Pub on West Seventy-second Street.

33The LL train starts at Eighth Avenue, crosses Manhattan along Fourteenth Street, and winds up ...

34In my room I put the two pounds of coffee on the dresser, then went and made sure nobody ...

About the Author

Other Books by Lawrence Block

Enter the World of Matthew Scudder

Praise for Lawrence Block

Copyright

About the Publisher

Epigraph

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

—EDGAR ALLAN POE

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I saw her entrance. It would have been hard to miss. She had blonde hair that was close to white, the sort that’s called towhead when it belongs to a child. Hers was plaited in heavy braids that she’d wrapped around her head and secured with pins. She had a high smooth forehead and prominent cheekbones and a mouth that was just a little too wide. In her western-style boots she must have run to six feet, most of her length in her legs. She was wearing designer jeans the color of burgundy and a short fur jacket the color of champagne. It had been raining on and off all day, and she wasn’t carrying an umbrella or wearing anything on her head. Beads of water glinted like diamonds on her plaited hair.

She stood for a moment in the doorway getting her bearings. It was around three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, which is about as slow as it gets at Armstrong’s. The lunch crowd was long gone and it was too early for the after-work people. In another fifteen minutes a couple of schoolteachers would stop in for a quick one, and then some nurses from Roosevelt Hospital whose shift ended at four, but for the moment there were three or four people at the bar and one couple finishing a carafe of wine at a front table and that was it. Except for me, of course, at my usual table in the rear.

She made me right away, and I caught the blue of her eyes all the way across the room. But she stopped at the bar to make sure before making her way between the tables to where I was sitting.

She said, “Mr. Scudder? I’m Kim Dakkinen. I’m a friend of Elaine Mardell’s.”

“She called me. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.”