Алан Баттерсби (Alan Battersby)CHAPTER ONE
The client
It was seven-thirty on a cold wet December evening, six days before Christmas. As usual, I was in McFadden's Bar, on the corner of East 42nd Street and Second Avenue. Most of the early evening Christmas shoppers had gone home, and the people left in the bar weren't the types who had nice homes and families to go to. Maybe that was why they were still drinking. But I liked it there. It was somewhere to relax with a few beers after a long day in the office doing nothing in particular.
My office is just around the corner from McFadden's Bar on East 43rd Street and just a block away from the Chrysler Building. If I ever make a success of my business, that's where I'd like to have an office. Seventy-seven stories of the most beautiful skyscraper in New York City. New York isn't all skyscrapers, though. 220 East 43rd Street is just eight floors and nothing much to look at.
The sign on the door looks important: «Nathan Marley — Licensed Private Investigator,» but it didn't make me feel any more important right then in McFadden's Bar.
I didn't feel like talking to people that evening and nobody tried to talk to me. That suited me fine. I looked around. There was a new face in the bar. Someone very different from the usual tired office workers. An expensive — looking woman. People turned and stared as she walked to the bar. She ordered a bourbon, then took off her coat. She was wearing a short black dress which showed a lot of leg.
Not the legs you normally see in McFadden's. Thirty something, with long wavy blonde hair and cold blue eyes. Around her neck was a diamond necklace — the diamonds looked like the real thing. So did the matching earrings. She was dressed as if she was going to a party. But this lady wasn't enjoying herself.
She ordered another bourbon and took out a pack of Marlboro Lites. I could feel the coldness in her voice from where I was sitting. Nobody offered to light her cigarette. She looked in my direction. I thought for a moment that she was trying to catch my eye. But then she turned away with a bored expression on her face. Why should a woman like her give a second look to an overweight bald guy in his mid-forties?