The pusher by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural
ISBN: 9789985842591
Publisher: Katariina
Published: 2000-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

The lions were really kicking it up.

Maybe they're hungry, Carella thought. Maybe they'd like a nice fat detective for dinner. It's a pity I'm not a fat detective, but maybe they're not very choosy lions, maybe they'll settle for a lean detective.

I am certainly a lean detective.

I have been leaning against this stupid cage since 2:00 P.M., and waiting for a man named Gonzo whom I have never seen in my life. I have been leaning and leaning, and the lions are roaring inside the building, and it is now 4:37, and my good friend Gonzo or anything resembling my good friend Gonzo has still not appeared.

And even when he does appear, he may not be very important at all. Except for the fact that he's a pusher, and it's always nice to grab another pusher. But he may not be important in the Hernandez case, even though he seems to have inherited at least some of the boy's customers. God, the girl! God, the job somebody did on that poor girl! Was it because of her brother?

What, what?

What is it? What's behind such a fishy goddamn suicide? It looks like a suicide setup, but it's obviously not a suicide setup, and whoever killed that boy knew that, whoever killed that boy wanted us to know it was not a suicide! He wanted us to dig deeper, and he wanted us to come up with a homicide, but why? And whose fingerprints are on that syringe? Do they belong to this Gonzo character I'm now waiting for, a nice grubby pusher who hasn't got a record? Are they his prints and will we find out what this whole goddamn mess is about the minute we get him? And is he the one who slashed the girl to ribbons or was that something separate and apart, something that just happened to a prostitute, an occupational hazard, something not at all connected with the earlier death of her brother?

Will Gonzo know the answers?

And if you know the answers, Mr. Gonzo, or Gonzo Mr., because I don't know whether Gonzo is your first name or your last name, you certainly have kept yourself well hidden in this precinct, you certainly have operated on a small quiet scale, but if you know the answers where the hell are you now?

Have you been operating before this, Gonzo?

Or did you suddenly inherit a nice business the night you knocked off Aníbal Hernandez? Was that why you killed him?

But what kind of a business did the kid have, when you really examined it closely? Kling beat that whole neighborhood with his feet, and he scared up a handful of Hernandez' erstwhile customers. A mule, pure and simple, shoving only enough stuff to keep him in the junk himself. So is a business of such miniscule size a reason for murder? Do people kill for a handful of pennies?

Well, yes, people do kill for a handful of pennies sometimes.

But usually the pennies are in plain sight, and the pennies are the temptation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.