A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

Author:Dennis Lehane [Lehane, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9781846327971
Amazon: 0061998842
Barnesnoble: 0061998842
Goodreads: 21685
Publisher: Clipper
Published: 1994-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

20

I took the subway to Downtown Crossing, climbed up some steps that hadn’t been hosed down since the Nixon years, and stepped onto Washington Street. Downtown Crossing is the old shopping district, before there were malls and shopping plazas, back when stores were stores and not boutiques. It was refurbished in the late seventies and early eighties like most of the city, and after they opened a few boutiques, business came back. Mostly younger business—kids who were bored with the malls, or too cool or too urban to be caught dead in the suburbs.

Washington Street is blocked off to auto traffic for three blocks where most of the shops are, so the sidewalks and streets teem with people—people going to shop, people returning from shopping, and most of all, people hanging out. The sidewalk in front of Filene’s was lined with merchant carts and packed with teenage girls and boys, black and white, leaning against display windows, goofing on adult passersby; a few couples French-kissed with the desperation of those who don’t share a bed yet. Across the street, in front of The Corner—a minimall with shops like The Limited and Urban Outfitters, plus a large food court where three or four brawls break out a day—a pack of black kids manned a radio. Chuck D and Public Enemy pounded “Fear of a Black Planet” from speakers the size of car tires, and the kids settled back and watched people walk around them. I looked at all the black faces in the massive crowd and tried to guess which ones were Socia’s crew, but I couldn’t tell. A lot of the black kids were part of the coming-from-shopping or going-to-shop crowd, but just as many were packed together in gangs, and some had that lazy, lethal look of street predators. There were plenty of white kids strewn throughout the crowd who looked similar, but worrying about them wasn’t a concern now. I didn’t know much about Socia, but I doubted he was an equal opportunity employer.

I saw immediately why Socia had picked this location. A person could be dead ten minutes, lying facedown on the street, before someone paused to wonder what he was stepping on. Crowds are only slightly safer meeting places than abandoned warehouses, and in abandoned warehouses, you sometimes have room to move.

I looked across the street, past The Corner, my eyes bouncing along the heads in the crowd like sheet music, slowing as they reached Barnes and Noble. The crowd thinned somewhat here, a few less teenagers. Guess book-stores aren’t ideal places to pick up babes. I was ten minutes early and I figured Socia and his crew had gotten here twenty minutes before me. I didn’t see him, but then I didn’t expect to. I had the feeling he would suddenly appear an inch away from me, a gun between my shoulder blades.

It didn’t come between my shoulder blades. It came between my left hip and the bottom of my rib cage. It was a big .

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