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Автор Эд Лейси

Enter Without Desire

Ed Lacy

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

All characters, names, places, and incidents in this novel are purely fictional. No part of this novel is based on actual incidents or real persons—which is unfortunate: in real life I would very much like to meet an Elma.

E. L.

I sat there, waiting in this dull Bronx back yard, the gun in my right pocket, safety off. It was simple... wait till he was on top of me, one shot in the heart... then run across the lot to the car. Sid had an ordinary looking heap; nobody would notice it, or the license number. The license number—that was one of the chances I had to take—one of the too-many chances.

But this would work, if my luck held out. IF... IF... Damn, I hoped to hell he didn't have a wife and kids, looked too young for that, but even if he did—I had a wife and kid, too. God knows I didn't want to kill this detective, but I was caught in this web,

had

to do it.

Had

to...

No point in thinking about that—more important to think of some way of disposing of the gun. Couldn't pull the same gag about losing it on Tony again. Well, have to work that out, somehow. Sloppy thinking on my part not to plan... . Hell with plans, no time for it. Not like the other one.

Marshal Jameson, the promising young sculptor, sitting on his butt in a strange Bronx back yard on a sunny afternoon... carefully planning his second murder.

I grinned, a sour, nervous grin—I was damn near bawling. Me, who'd never hurt a fly, waiting with a gun for a...

I heard a car stop in front of the house. It was five to three. The dick was on time. I stood up and peered around the corner of the alley. He was alone.

I waited: no running from this, no backing out. Or was killing the easy way out for me?

CHAPTER ONE

ON NEW YEAR'S EVE day I couldn't take it any longer. Nothing special happened, the same old rut. But just as there's a boiling point, there's a breaking point, and I sure had reached it You can only go so far without a victory, even a little victory. And I was simply sick of the loneliness, the damp cold, of being hungry, of being a flop. I tried getting high on some homemade raisin wine, nipping at a quart of it during the day, but that didn't help.

New Year's Eve really didn't mean a damn to me, but somehow I felt entirely lost this time. And the wine wasn't doing a thing for me. I had exactly eighty cents in cash. And seven bucks in the postal savings but the p. o. was shut. It was six o'clock, getting dull-dark: and I looked at the stinking kerosene lamp, at the can of beans and hunk of fish I was going to have for supper, and thought... I can't stand this any longer. I'm going to New York.

Now there wasn't a thing waiting for me in New York, and I'm the guy who knows how lonely a big city can be, but right at that second all I wanted was to be with people, with all the milling impersonal people of Times Square on New Year's Eve. I wanted to see smiles, hear noise, even lots of drunken noise.