Harlan Coben - Deal Breaker

“No. I go inside. You wait here.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You were the one who didn’t want to scare anyone away,” he continued. “If this guy has something to do with your sister, how do you think he’ll react to seeing you?”

She folded her arms across her chest and fumed. She knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. “Go,” she said.

He got out of the car. It was one of those no-variety neighborhoods, each house cookie-cut from the same mold-split-levels on three-quarters of an acre. Sometimes the house was backward, the kitchen on the right instead of the left. Most had aluminum siding. The street reeked of middle class.

Myron knocked. The thin man opened the door.

“Jerry?”

Slim’s face registered confusion. Up close he was better looking, his face more brooding than freakish. Give him a cigarette and a black turtleneck, and he could be reading poetry in a village café. “May I help you?”

“Jerry, I’m-”

“You must have the wrong house. My name isn’t Jerry.”

“You look like Jerry.”

Something dark crossed his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, closing the door. “I really don’t have time right now.”

“Sure about that, Jer?”

“I already told you-”

“Do you know Kathy Culver?”

It was a sneak attack. And it drew blood. “Wha-what’s this all about?” he snapped.

“I think you know.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Myron Bolitar.”

“Am I supposed to know you?”

“Well, if you’re a big basketball fan… actually, no. But I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I have nothing to say.”

Ace of spades time. Myron pulled out the magazine. “Sure about that, Jerry?”

The whites of Slim’s eyes grew tenfold, looking like Wedgwood china on the elongated face. “You have me mixed up with someone else. Good-bye.”

He slammed the door.

Myron shrugged, headed back to the car.

“Well?” Jessica asked.

“We shook him,” Myron said. “Let’s see what falls out.”

The neighborhood newsstand.

Win remembered a time when the phrase conjured up nostalgia and Rockwellian images of real America. No more. Any street, any corner, any hickville town was the same. Candy, newspapers, greeting cards-and porno mags. Kids could pick up a Snickers bar and get an eyeful, all in one. Porno had become a staple of American life. Hardcore porn. The kind of porn that made Penthouse look like Highlights magazine.

Win approached the man behind the lottery ticket dispenser. “Pardon me,” Win said.

“Yeah?”

“Would you be able to tell me if you have the most recent issues of Climaxx, Jiz, Orgasm Today, Licks, Quim, and Nips ?”

An elderly woman gasped and gave him an icy stare. Win smiled at her. “Let me guess,” he said. “Playmate of the Month, June 1926?”

She made a harumph noise and turned away.

“Check over there,” the man said. “Between the comic books and Disney videos.”

“Thank you.”

Win found three of them- Climaxx, Orgasm Today , and Quim . He tried three other newsstands and was able to pick up Lick , but there was no sign of Jiz or Nips. He finally found copies of them at a hardcore shop on Forty-second Street called King David’s Smut Palace. They had a big sign out front that said OPEN 24 HOURS. How very convenient. Win considered himself fairly worldly, but the items and photographs in the “palace” proved that both his life experiences and his imagination had at best been limited.

It was almost noon when he exited the palace. A productive and quasi-educational morning.

With a total of eight magazines lodged under his arm, Win caught a taxi to midtown. He skimmed through a few in the backseat.

“So far so good,” he said out loud.

The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror, shrugged, looked back to the road.

When Win arrived at his office, he spread the magazines across the vast breadth of his desk. He studied them closely, comparing them. Incredible. His suspicion had been sound. It was just as he thought.

Five minutes later, Win put the magazines in his desk drawer. Then he buzzed Esperanza.

“Kindly send Myron to my office as soon as he comes in.”

“I have a confession,” Jessica said.

They were coming out of the Kinney garage on Fifty-second Street, the smell of fumes and urine dissipating as they hit the relatively fresh air on the sidewalk. They turned down Fifth Avenue. The line for passports stretched past the statue of Atlas. A black man with long dreadlocks sneezed repeatedly, his hair flapping about like dozens of snakes. A woman behind him tsk-tsked a complaint. Many of the people waiting faced St. Patrick’s across the street as though pleading for divine intervention, their faces lined with anguish. Japanese tourists took pictures of both the statue and the line.

“I’m listening,” Myron replied.

They kept walking. Jessica did not face him, her gaze fixed on nothing straight ahead. “We weren’t close anymore. In fact, Kathy and I barely spoke.”

Myron was surprised. “Since when?”

“The last three years or so.”

“What happened?”

She shook her head, but she still did not look at him. “I don’t know exactly. She changed. Or maybe she just grew up and I couldn’t handle it. We just drifted apart. When we saw each other, it was as if she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s no big thing. Except Kathy called me the night she disappeared. First time in I don’t know how long.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t know. I was on my way out the door. I rushed her off.”

They fell into silence the rest of the way to Myron’s office.

When they got off the elevator, Esperanza handed him a sheet of paper and said, “Win wants to see you right away.” She glared at Jessica the way a linebacker might glare at a limping quarterback on a blindside blitz.

“Otto Burke or Larry Hanson call?” Myron asked.

She swerved her glare toward Myron. “No. Win wants to see you right away.”

“I heard you the first time. Tell him I’ll be up in five minutes.”

They moved into Myron’s office. He closed the door and skimmed over the sheet. Jessica sat in front of him. She crossed her legs the way few women could, turning an ordinary event into a moment of sexual intrigue. Myron tried not to stare. He also tried not to remember the luscious feel of those legs in bed. He was unsuccessful in both endeavors.

“What’s it say?” she asked.

He snapped to. “Our slim friend on Kenmore Street in Glen Rock is named Gary Grady.”

Jessica squinted. “The name sounds familiar.” She shook her head. “But I can’t place it.”

“He’s been married seven years, wife Allison. No kids. Has a $110,000 mortgage on that house, pays it on time. Nothing else yet. We should know more in a little while.” He put the paper on his desk. “I think we have to start attacking this on a few different fronts.”

“How?”

“We have to go back to the night your sister disappeared. Start with that, and move forward. The whole case needs to be reinvestigated. The same with your father’s murder. I’m not saying the cops weren’t thorough. They probably were. But we now know some things they don’t.”

“The magazine,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“How can I help?” she asked.

“Start finding out all you can about what she was up to when she disappeared. Talk to her friends, roommates, sorority sisters, fellow cheerleaders-anyone.”