Out on the Cutting Edge: A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Series - Lawrence Block, Crime
ISBN: 9780380709939
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1989-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

On the street he lit a cigarette and said, "My father went every morning before work."

"So you said."

"It was in Latin then. They took the mystery out when they put it in English. He went every morning. I wonder what he got out of it."

"What do you get out of it?"

"I don't know. I don't go that often. Maybe ten or twenty times in a year. I'll go three days in a row and then I'll stay away for a month or two." He took another drag on his cigarette and threw the butt into the street. "I don't go to confession, I don't take communion, I don't pray. Do you believe in God?"

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes. Good enough." He took my arm. "Come on," he said. "The car's all right where it is. Twomey won't let them tow it or ticket it. He knows me, and he knows the car."

"I know it, too."

"How's that?"

"I saw it last night. I copied the plate number, I was going to run it through Motor Vehicles today. Now I won't have to."

"You wouldn't have learned much," he said. "I'm not the owner. There's another name on the registration."

"There's another name on the license at Grogan's."

"There is. Where did you see the car?"

"On Fiftieth Street a little after one. Neil Tillman got into it and you drove away."

"Where were you?"

"Across the street."

"Keeping an eye out?"

"That's right."

We were walking west on Fourteenth. We crossed Hudson and Greenwich and I asked where we were going. "I was up all night," he said. "I need a drink. After a butchers' mass where would you go but a butchers' bar?" He looked over at me, and something glinted in his green eyes. "You'll likely be the only man there in a suit. Salesmen come in there, but not this early. But you'll be all right. Meatcutters are a broadminded lot. Nobody'll hold it against you."

"I'm glad to hear that."

We were in the meat district now. Markets and packing houses lined both sides of the street and men in aprons like Ballou's unloaded carcasses from big trucks and hooked them up onto the overhead racks. The raw stink of the dead meat hung in the air like smoke, overriding the burnt reek of the trucks' exhaust. Beyond, at the end of the street, you could see dark clouds lowering over the Hudson, and high-rise apartments on the Jersey side. But for these last, the whole scene looked as though it had sprung from an earlier time. The trucks should have been horse-drawn; then you'd have sworn you were in the nineteenth century.

The bar he took me to was on Washington Street at the corner of Thirteenth. The sign said bar, and if it had more of a name than that they were keeping it a secret. It was a small room, its board floor liberally strewn with sawdust. There was a sandwich menu posted, and a pot of coffee made. I was glad to see that. It was a little early in the day for Coca-Cola.

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