Jeffery Deaver
Manhattan Is My Beat
The first book in the Rune series, 1988
The land of faery:
where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
– William Butler Yeats
CHAPTER ONE
He believed he was safe.
For the first time in six months.
Two identities and three residences behind him, he finally believed he was safe.
An odd feeling came over him-comfort, he finally decided. Yeah, that was it. A feeling he hadn't experienced for a long time, and he sat on the bed in this fair-to-middling hotel, overlooking that weird silver arch that crowned the riverfront in St. Louis. Smelling the mid-western spring air.
An old movie was on television. He loved old movies. This was Touch of Evil. Orson Welles directing. Charlton Heston playing a Mexican. The actor didn't look like a Mexican. But then, he probably didn't look like Moses either.
Arnold Gittleman laughed to himself at his little joke and told it to a sullen man sitting nearby, reading a Guns & Ammo magazine. The man glanced at the screen.
"Mexican?" he asked. Stared at the screen for a minute. "Oh." He went back to his magazine.
Gittleman lay back in the bed, thinking that it was damn well about time he had some funny thoughts like the one about Heston. Frivolous thoughts. Amount-to-nothing thoughts. He wanted to think about gardening or painting lawn furniture or taking his grandson to a ball game. About taking his daughter and her husband to his wife's grave-a place he'd been too afraid to visit for over six months.
"So," the sullen man said, looking up from the magazine, "what's it gonna be? We gonna do deli tonight?"