Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Short Stories by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver [Deaver, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-20T19:01:52+00:00

Nocturne

Late night on the West Side of Manhattan. The young cop walked past Central Park, through the misty spring air, wondering

where was the downpour the Channel 9 meteorologist had promised. Patrol Officer Anthony Vincenzo turned west. He crossed Columbus then Broadway, half listening to the static from the speaker/mike of his Motorola Handi-Talkie pinned to the shoulder of his uniform blouse, under the black rain slicker.

He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven p.m. “Hell,” he snapped and walked faster. He was in a bad mood because he’d spent most of his tour at the precinct house, typing up an arrest report and then accompanying the perp—a young chain snatcher— down to Bellevue because he’d OD’ed after he’d been collared. He’d probably swallowed his whole stash before Tony ran him down so the DA wouldn’t add a drug count to the larceny. Now, he’d not only go down for the smack or rock but he’d had a tube suck his gut clean. Some people. Man. Anyway, the collar made the cop miss the best part of his beat. Every night for the last hour of his tour Tony Vincenzo would coincidentally on purpose find himself circling a block in the West Seventies, which just happened to be the site of the New York Concert Hall, a dark brown auditorium dating from the last century. The building was not well soundproofed. So, if he got close to a window, he could easily hear the performances. Tony

considered this a perk of the job. And he felt entitled to it; he’d wanted to be a cop since he was a kid, but not just any cop—a detective. The problem was he was only in his mid-twenties and it was hard as hell for a youngster like that to get a gold shield these days. He’d have another four or five years of boring Patrol to get through before he’d even be considered for Detective Division.

So as long as he was forced to walk a beat, he was going to walk a beat his way. With a perk or two. Forget free doughnuts and coffee; he wanted music. Which he loved almost as much as he loved being a cop. Any kind of music. He had Squirrel Nut Zippers CDs. He had Tony Bennett LPs from the fifties and Django Reinhardt disks from the forties. He had Diana Ross on 45s and Fats Waller on 78s. He had the Beatles’ White Album in every format known to man: CD, LP, eight-track, cassette, reel to reel. If they’d sold it on piano roll he’d have one of those too.

Tony even loved classical music and had since he’d been a kid. Which, if you grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, was risky business and could get you pounded bad in the parking lot after school if you admitted it to anybody. But listen to it he did, and admit it he did. He came by this love from his parents. His mother had been a funeral parlor organist before she got pregnant with the first of Tony’s three older brothers.

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