Firebreak by Donald E. Westlake & Richard Stark

Author:Donald E. Westlake & Richard Stark [Westlake, Donald E. & Stark, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: mystery, noir, crime
ISBN: 9780446678247
Amazon: 1847244475
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 2002-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

2

Pam Saugherty carried the ice cream and the milk in a plastic bag. D'Agostino's would deliver the rest of the groceries in half an hour or so. She crossed Abingdon Square, turned right onto Bleecker Street, and did one of those sidewalk dances with a man coming the other way, both of them moving to her left, then both reversing, then he stopping dead so she could choose for herself how to go around him.

"Excuse me," she murmured, with an embarrassed smile, knowing it was her fault. He nodded, not quite looking at her, and walked on.

She'd gone another five or six steps when his face became familiar. She'd seen that face before, bony, large, the eyes cold and uninterested, the jawline like a rock. She looked back and he was crossing the street at a diagonal, tall, big-boned, dressed in black, moving with a determined stride that made her surprised now he hadn't merely walked on over her when she'd gotten in his way. He strode around the corner into Bank Street, and out of sight, and Pam turned back toward home, frowning, weighed down much more by the elusive memory than by the plastic sack.

She knew that face. Reaching 414, she unlocked the street door, then paused to look back, across the street, at that corner of Bank Street. Something menacing in the memory, something frightening.

The mail had been delivered while she was out, pushed through the slot in the outer door onto the floor inside. Letting the door snick shut, she stooped to pick up the mail, mostly bills and catalogues, then unlocked the inner door.

It was the sight of the wheelchair that brought him back. The wheelchair to the left of the staircase that Matt so seldom used these days, the track for the riding chair built into the right side of the stairs for those rare trips Matt did take to the outside world. Seeing them both reminded her at last of the man, and the only time she'd ever seen him before, a time she usually managed not to think about at all.

Years ago, a hundred years it seemed, in another life, another world. The kids had still just been kids then, Bob, the oldest, only ten. She'd been married to Ed Saugherty, who had a good white-collar job with a computer company in Philadelphia, and they'd lived in a good brick house in a green suburb west of the city.

But Ed had a wild friend from his high school days, a man named George Uhl, who had brought trouble into the house, in himself and in a suitcase that had to have had something valuable in it, though nobody would ever find it now. Because Uhl was dead, and these other two, Paul Brock and Matt Rosenstein, had invaded the house, looking for the suitcase.

Matt intended to rape her, soon after they broke in, and when Ed tried to stop him Matt turned on him, beating him with a cold violence that was terrifying.

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