The Sour Lemon Score by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake [Westlake, Donald E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminals, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Crime, Fiction, Suspense fiction, Suspense, General, Parker (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780226771106
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

P12 The Sour Lemon Score

One

The mirror reflected Parker’s pencil flashlight. He stood inside the door he’d just jimmied and moved the flashlight and saw that the mirror ran the length of the room and all the way up the wall, maybe twelve feet high. A huge mirror facing a bare, wood-floored room. A piano in a far corner of the room, a piano far away in a room corner in the mirror. Portable phonographs on wooden tables, real and image. A few chairs along the wall opposite the mirror facing the chairs far away against the back wall inside the mirror.

The door was closed as far as it would go. Parker moved away from it, crossing the room in front of the mirror, ignoring the distracting image of himself and the echo of the flashlight next to him. He came to a curtained doorway and clicked off the light and then carefully moved the curtain an inch out of the way.

Darkness. No light anywhere, no sound anywhere. He stepped through, the curtain brushing against him, smelling dusty, and when the curtain had fallen into place behind him again he hit the flashlight button briefly, just long enough to see where he was.

A living room, small and crowded, full of spindly-looking Danish modern. An archway opposite, with a small dining room beyond it.

There was no obstruction between here and the dining room. Parker moved slowly through the blackness, and when he thought he was to the archway he flicked on the light again.

Formica-topped dining room table in a wood grain effect. Six chairs with red seats. Sideboard on the right, windows on the left. Left side of the opposite wall a doorway to what looked like a hall.

He turned left in darkness, moved to the wall, traveled along it. When he felt the glass of the first window he stopped and tried to look out, but the blackness outside was unbroken. An air shaft, probably. He moved on and reached the doorway. He stopped and flicked the light again.

A hallway, fairly long, with linoleum flooring. Two doorways on the right, both doors open, a bathroom visible through the first, the second one too far away to see anything. What looked like a kitchen at the far end of the hall.

Darkness again. He moved down the hall, touching both walls till he came to the emptiness of the second doorway. He stood in that doorway and he could see the vague outlines of heavily draped windows across the way. He listened and heard nothing and flashed light again.

Somebody in bed.

In the after-image, when the light was out again, he frowned at what he’d seen. A woman in bed, asleep, covers up to her neck, lying on her back. But there was something wrong with it, something wrong with the picture.

He moved around the wall, around a chair, around a dresser, stopped when he knew he was near the bed. He listened.

No sound. No breathing. Nothing.

He leaned far over, straining in the darkness, listening.

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