Don't Ever Look Back by Daniel Friedman

Author:Daniel Friedman [Friedman, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Police Procedurals, Thrillers & Suspense, Suspense, Jewish American
Amazon: B00FUWKMBK
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2014-04-21T12:00:00+00:00

22

1965

I left Greenfield’s office through its heavy wood double doors, passed the desks of his two busy secretaries, and then I was standing in front of the elevator bank; he had taken a whole wing of the office suite for himself, and then knocked most of the walls out to make one big sunny cathedral in which to worship himself. Must have been nice.

I pushed the button to take me down to the bank’s grand lobby on the ground floor; a vast, shimmering cavern full of pink limestone columns running from the pink limestone floor to the arched, vaulted pink-limestone ceiling.

As I exited the elevator, the brass tellers’ cages were to my left, and, to my right was a reception area for clients awaiting appointments with loan officers and other upstairs officials.

And of course, that’s where Elijah was; sitting in a leather chair, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

I glanced around the lobby; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. A few people were conducting business with the tellers, but the place was mostly empty. As Greenfield had told me, the nearby strike had scared away most of the bank’s business.

I didn’t hear any alarms, and I didn’t see any of Elijah’s beefy henchmen, and I didn’t see any Jewish criminals waving guns at the tellers. But that didn’t mean the robbery wasn’t happening right in front of me.

I went and sat in the chair next to Elijah’s.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He showed me his Auschwitz smile. “Would you believe me if I told you I was applying for a small business loan?”

The nerve of this guy.

“You’re under arrest,” I said. “We’re gonna stand up, and we’re going to walk out of here. If you attempt to resist, I will subdue you with force.”

He sucked his lips around the broken stubs of his teeth. “Not sure that’s a good idea,” he said. “You don’t know what’s waiting for you outside.”

The only public entrance to the bank was a single set of revolving glass doors. I’d never seen Elijah without his oversized accomplices before, and it stood to reason that if they weren’t in here, they might be out there. There was a good chance I hadn’t just coincidentally run into Elijah in the lobby of the bank he was planning to rob. If he had set this encounter up, he doubtless had his exit planned, and he had the advantage.

“I’d be walking face-first into a buzz saw,” I said.

“I actually didn’t arrange for there to be a buzz saw, but you’d definitely be riddled with bullets on the sidewalk.” He was chirping now, and I didn’t appreciate it.

This was a chess game, and my adversary had the next several moves planned out. What could I do?

I considered the loading door. I could potentially bundle him out that way and sneak past his crew.

“I derive a great deal of amusement from the way your face looks when you’re thinking really hard,” Elijah said. “Right now, you’re wondering whether you can take me out through the loading door.

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