Bloody London (41 page)

Keir and Iz Cleary came over from London with their kids to have Thanksgiving with us, and Isobel told me Jack Cotton, like me, quit being a cop and went
private. Geoffrey Gilchrist seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, though his club reported his bills were still paid on time.

In London, in spite of the weather and the beating the town took from the flood, in spite of global rumors of terrorism, the bad land deals, the volatile stock market, the homeless riots in New York notwithstanding, real estate went up everywhere; it went sky-high. The creeps made a mistake about that. They sold too soon. People bought apartments and houses and agonized about the mortgage and what color to paint the walls, Decorator White or Gardenia, like they always did. In my loft, my floors cleaned up good as new. Phillip Frye was honored for his work with the homeless and the Life Bubble was patented. One day I'd make Phillip Frye weep.

There was a memorial service for Frankie Pascoe. Lily never forgave her and didn't come, but I went. Leo Mishkin sat alone in the last row. His face was wet. I let him be. The kid, the son, wasn't even there.

Lily said it freed her up though, Phillip Frye out of her life, the Pascoes dead. It cut her loose from the past, she said. The next day, I sent Lily a box of Cracker Jacks with a message inside; I wished it was a huge diamond ring in there; I once read that Frank Sinatra put a diamond in the Cracker Jacks when he proposed.

Anyhow, Lily said she ate it all, and we figured maybe we'd get married around Christmas. I said to her over a beer that night, “Honeymoon in London?” and she laughed.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW

Red Hook

Reggie Nadelson

It's a late summer Sunday in downtown New York City, and Artie Cohen is getting married. Watching the sun rising over the East River, he's content.

A message comes in from an old friend, Sid McKay, asking Artie to come out to Red Hook in Brooklyn. It's his wedding day, but Artie owes Sid, so he goes. On arriving he finds a dead man spread-eagled in the water off the old docks. When Sid eventually shows up, he's scared, edgy and evasive, Artie suspects he's holding something back.

Even at his own wedding party, later that day, Artie can't stop thinking about Sid. Why has the death of a vagrant spooked him so much? It's not his case, but the more he digs, the more it drags him in, implicating – and threatening – his closest friends …

‘It's rare that crime writing should so passionately and precisely examine its own time. Its also reassuring to find a writer who is so magnificently up to the job.'
Literary Review
, Book of The Month

‘Artie Cohen is the detective New York deserves: smart, wounded, emotional, haunted, and not as tough as he thinks. Reggie Nadelson's Cohen books get better and better'
Salman Rushdie

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