Pulse by Michael Harvey

Author:Michael Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

25

SHE WAS standing on the corner of Washington and Essex, wearing a short yellow jacket with tassels, a tight blue skirt, and a floppy hat that hid one side of her face. A skinny Asian kid squatted on a box in front of her, working polish into her stiletto heels and buffing them to a high shine. The kid wore thin wool gloves with the fingers cut out and talked nonstop as he worked. The woman checked her makeup in a compact while keeping one eye on the street. Daniel slouched past, invisible to both of them.

Grace was waiting at the King of Pizza. It was a storefront shop set up in the heart of the Combat Zone with maybe the best slices in the city. Grace was parked at a counter by the front window, sipping a Coke.

“How did you know I’d come?” Daniel said.

“I didn’t.”

She’d taped a note to his locker telling him to meet her after he got done with Keating. She was right. Going into school today had been a bad idea. So he’d stuck the note in his pocket and headed out to meet her.

“You want something?” Grace pointed to a couple slices of pepperoni on a paper plate.

“Not hungry.”

She pushed across a slice and Daniel took a bite.

“What did they want?” Grace plucked a pepperoni off the other slice, then picked it up and nibbled.

“They just wanted to talk about Harry. Make sure I was all right.”

Outside the woman in the hat had finished getting her shoes shined and was talking to a tall man wrapped in a camel hair coat with a roll of dark fur around the neck. Daniel couldn’t make out the words, but he could tell the woman was angry. She stood on the corner with her hip cocked and finger raised, waving it in the man’s face then jabbing it in his chest. The man didn’t seem to notice the woman until he did, catching her flush on the jaw with the back of his hand. She bounced off the side of a building that housed fifty-cent peep shows and would have fallen into the gutter, but the tall man caught her by the elbow, holding her up so he could plant a platform heel in the small of her back. The woman skidded on her hands and knees, snapping a stiletto and banging off the side of a parked car. The tall man followed her into the street, taking off his belt and wrapping it around his knuckles. A cab flashed past, swerving around the two of them and laying on the horn. The kid with the shine box materialized out of nowhere, slipping between man and woman, laughing and joking, forcing the man to make eye contact while the woman struggled to her feet and wobbled toward the King of Pizza. She stopped in front of the window and put on her shoe with the broken heel, then walked lopsided to the far end of the block.

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