Garden of Beasts [antikvár]

Chapter One As soon as he stepped into the dim apartment he knew he was dead. He wiped sweat off his palm, looking around the place, which was quiet as a morgue, except for the faint sounds of Hell's Kitchen traffic late at night and the ripple of the greasy shade when the swiveling Monkey Ward fan turned its hot breath toward the window. The whole scene was off. Out of kilter. . . Malone was supposed to be here, smoked on booze, sleeping off a binge. But he wasn't. No bottles of com anywhere, not even the smell of bourbon, the punk's only drink. And it looked like he hadn't been around for a while. The New York Sun on the table was two days old. It sat next to a cold ashtray and a glass with a blue halo of dried milk halfway up the side. He clicked the light on. Well, there was a side door, like he'd noted yesterday from the hallway, looking over the place. But it was nailed shut. And the window that let onto the fire escape? Brother, sealed nice and tight with chicken wire he hadn't been able to see from the alley. The other window was open but was also forty feet above cobblestones. No way out. . . And where was Malone? Paul Schumann wondered. Malone was on the lam, Malone was drinking beer in Jersey Malone was a statue on a concrete base underneath a Red Hook pier. Didn't matter. Whatever'd happened to the boozehound, Paul realized, the punk had been nothing more than bait, and the wire that he'd be here tonight was pure bunk.