Uncollected Crimes by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg

Author:Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg [Pronzini, Bill & Greenberg, Martin H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Detective and Mystery
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2015-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

The rest of the day disappeared at the bottom of a glass. Of many glasses.

At half-past ten the next morning Lonergan walked out of Charlie Sheffield’s office on the twelfth floor. Sheffield’s secretary, a pretty ash blonde with a fashionable British accent, gave him a friendly nod.

“Terribly sorry I had to disturb you at home this morning, Mr. Lonergan. I hadn’t realized you weren’t coming in. But Mr. Sheffield did wish—”

“That’s all right, Miss Poole.” Lonergan waved vaguely. “We—had a few things to talk over.” Lonergan found he was revolving his hat brim nervously in both hands. Across the reception area, bright green ivy spilled out of a brass planter. The ivy was plastic. Its unnaturally bright color sickened him. It was garish, like a scream of taunting laughter.

Coughing, Lonergan moved toward the elevators. He walked briskly even though he had nowhere to go now.

Miss Poole’s phone call had come at nine-thirty that morning, as he was swimming up out of the empty-stomached delirium left by yesterday’s binge. He had shaken with fright before he answered and discovered who it was.

When Miss Poole reported that Charlie Sheffield urgently wished to see him, Lonergan had suspected something bad. A stiff reprimand, certainly. Perhaps even an insistence upon medical help. At the extreme, a leave of absence ordered.

But now he was completely out.

Though Sheffield hadn’t said as much, or showed it this morning, plainly he had been murderously embarrassed and angered by the exhibition yesterday. Now Lonergan stood in a clutch of secretaries waiting for the down car. He thought he heard his name whispered. He even thought he caught the word crazy.

It was probably all over the shop now. They knew.

Facing Sheffield, Lonergan had tried to begin an explanation but had found himself unable to continue after a few incoherent sentences. How could he explain that he had been responsible for Sally’s death? How could he explain that she had come back from the dead to haunt and accuse him?

He felt light-headed as he stepped into the car. He wiped his forehead with his fingers. They came away cold and slick. Of course Sally hadn’t come back. That was impossible. As a rational man, he knew it was impossible. Yet he had seen her.

Perhaps he wasn’t a rational man any longer.

As the car descended, Lonergan felt himself on some kind of shifting border line. On one side lay the normal world. On the other was a similar world, but with slight differences. Shadows out of place. Lights discolored. Voices off-key. Street signs wrong. In that world Sally walked, and he was slipping over into it.

Clearly Sheffield had believed as much, because he had requested Lonergan to—as the expression went—look around. The process did not need to be rushed, of course. The shop would allow a minimum of six months for Lonergan to find a new position. In extreme circumstances, they would suffer him to go a year. But for practical purposes his career at D & S had ended in Sheffield’s office.

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