CONTENTS
Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights.
It was a perfect summer evening, the last Monday in July. The Hollanders...
Their daughter Kristin found the bodies. She’d spent the evening with friends in Chelsea...
It must have been a very grand house in its day, a country estate of fieldstone and half-timbered stucco...
Mike ordered a Heineken’s and I said I’d have a glass of Coke. The bartender asked if Pepsi would be all right...
Late Saturday morning I was drinking a second cup of coffee and looking at the TV listings, planning my day...
Years ago, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, there were two artists, husband and wife, whose popular success...
Cost aside, Elaine and I never even considered buying a house. We both preferred apartment living...
You’d think Coney Island Avenue would run to if not through Coney Island, but it doesn’t.
He gets in the car and starts driving, with no destination in mind. He just feels like a drive, that’s all.
Over the next several days I talked to ten or a dozen people, some on the phone...
I called Iverson in the morning and left a message, and around eleven he called me back...
The ground-floor antique shop looked to be open. The lights were on, the window gates drawn back.
Bierman was never in the house, I told her. Never on West Seventy-fourth Street, never anywhere near Manhattan...
When I stopped talking she sat for a while, back straight, eyes lowered. I was starting to wonder if I’d unwittingly...
“I started to tell her she’d have trouble finding anybody to take her case,” I told Elaine...
He is five feet eleven inches tall, and his weight has remained between 165 and 170 pounds for the last fifteen...
“So we got us a client,” TJ said. “Damn! We on the clock, Doc.”
I should know better, but I tend to form mental images of people I haven’t met. I’ll hear a voice over the phone...
It was drizzling when I left Nadler’s office, but not enough to make me sorry I’d left the umbrella home.
I’d told him I wanted to sleep on it, but I didn’t get all that much sleep. Elaine and I were up talking until late
As before, she checked me out through the peephole before she opened the door. This time, though...
He sits in his car across the street from the house. The living room drapes are drawn. So are the curtains...
On the street I said, “I hope I was right.”
“ ’Bout her not needin’ a will?”
Lia!
He is on the street in front of the coffee shop...
If I’d gone straight home I might have been there when she called, but maybe not. It’s hard to say.
Half an hour later the doorman called upstairs to announce a Mr. Wentworth. I said to send him up, and was waiting...
I was shaving when the call came. An Officer Tillis from the Twenty-sixth Precinct, and could I come in so...
He sits, watching the lights of the city go on and off, on and off. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but on his computer...
“Let’s go over it again,” Wentworth said. “Doc’s name is Nadler?”
“Peter,” he says, beaming, stepping back from the doorway. “Come in, come in. You’re right on time.”
“What’d be nice,” Ira Wentworth said, “is a shred of evidence. Something I could take to a judge and come back...”
I called Wentworth as soon as I got home, and was assured that he’d get the message. I don’t know when he got it...
The woman is driving him crazy.
She is the type of patient he ought to cultivate.
I had a dream that night, an awful one. I dreamed I was asleep and Michael called...
Smile in place, he emerges from the little room, saying, “Bye-bye, see you soon,” as he draws the door shut.
I said, “Here we are. Adam Breit,” and spelled it. I’d been looking for Bright, as in bright as day...
Harold Fischer’s phone was listed, his Central Park West address the same as...
It’s not difficult to buy a hunting knife in New York City.
It’s very difficult, prohibitively so, to buy a gun.
When Wentworth called I was back home watching a ball game. Elaine was getting dinner ready...
On Saturday Mostly Mozart had its final concert of the season. I went with Elaine...
There is so much to learn!
Take knives, for example. For the longest time all he knew...
Matthew Scudder by Lawrence
Block
The author offers some snapshots of the hero