Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) (25 page)

“She is a nice girl,” I said. “She just had a lousy job.”

“And Miranda, too. How do these girls end up doing something like that?”

“How did I end up doing what I do?”

“That’s completely different. You help people.”

“That’s what I used to think,” I said.

“Do you really mean to give it up?”

I drank some more of her hazelnut coffee and thought about how much can change in a week. I nodded.

“Leo will be awfully disappointed.”

I thought about it. He would be. I remembered him warning me to be careful when this whole thing started.
I’m too old to start again with some other kid.
And he was. But I just couldn’t do it any more.

“He’ll manage,” I said.

“Well, you have to decide what’s best for you, John. I just don’t know, going back to school at your age... “

“I’m twenty-nine,” I said. “I think I’ve got a few years left in me.”

“What are you going to study? Poetry again?”

“I don’t know yet. I just need to do something other than what I’ve been doing.”

“Have you told Leo yet?” she asked

I shook my head. “You’re the first.”

Was it a good decision? I thought about it as I rode down in the elevator. Maybe not. I wasn’t sure what I’d study, or what I’d do afterwards. In spite of what Miranda had said, I didn’t see myself as a professor, and God knows I didn’t have the stomach for politics. But there would be something for me, and whatever it was, it would more or less have to be a step up.

It was a sunny morning, but a cold one, the kind where the wind rushes through you, burning every pore. Outside my mother’s building, a week’s worth of accumulated trash was stacked for pick-up at the curb, most of it in heavy black plastic bags cinched with wire, but some of it just lying out in the open. There was an upended mattress and next to it a narrow bookcase. There were a few stacks of paperback books that looked like they’d been rummaged through. I saw the cardboard hatboxes from Mrs. Knechtel’s apartment and one of the framed posters, and that’s when I realized what I was looking at. They must have finished cleaning her apartment out over the weekend. This was the accumulated stuff of a life, left out for any scavenger who saw something he liked and for the garbage trucks that would cart away the rest.

I walked past the pile, then stopped and came back. I’d only seen it out of the corner of my eye, sitting on top of a rolled-up carpet, half hidden behind one of the garbage bags. I wasn’t even sure that I had seen it. It seemed impossible. But yes, there it was, still in its dusty, wretched cage, plastic beak and wire feet and all, looking much the same as it had ten years earlier when I’d left it on the rim of the sink in the garbage room. The decade hadn’t left a mark on it. I stared at it, dumbfounded.

How... ? Mrs. Knechtel, I thought. Maybe she’d been the one who threw it out in the first place, and when she saw it again ten years later, sitting on the edge of the sink, she couldn’t just leave it there. There is such a thing as loyalty, after all, and nostalgia for better times, and a sense of duty to the things of your past, even if they’re not quite as beautiful as you remember.

We stared at each other for a good long while, the bird and I. I felt ridiculous picking it up off the carpet. I didn’t care. I took it home.

The Story of LITTLE GIRL LOST Continues In the Shamus Award-Winning Novel...

by
RICHARD ALEAS

Three years ago, detective John Blake solved a mystery that changed his life forever — and left a woman he loved dead. Now Blake is back, to investigate the apparent suicide of Dorothy Louise Burke, a beautiful college student with a double life. The secrets Blake uncovers could blow the lid off New York City’s sex trade... if they don’t kill him first.

Richard Aleas’ first novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST, was among the most celebrated crime novels of the year, nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus Awards.
But nothing in John Blake’s first case could prepare you for the shocking conclusion of his second...

R
AVES FOR
SONGS OF INNOCENCE:

“An instant classic.”

—The Washington Post

“The best thing Hard Case is publishing right now.”

—The San Francisco Chronicle

“His powerful conclusion will drop jaws.”

—Publishers Weekly

“So sharp [it’ll] slice your finger as you flip the pages.”

—Playboy

Available now at your favorite bookstore. For more information, visit
www.HardCaseCrime.com

From the Edgar Award-Winning Author of LITTLE GIRL LOST and SONGS OF INNOCENCE–The First Novel to Appear Under His Real Name!

by
CHARLES ARDAI

Written to celebrate the publication of Hard Case Crime’s 50th book, FIFTY-TO-ONE imagines what it would have been like if Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction.

A fellow like that might make a few enemies — especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of of a heist at a Mobrun nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl with dreams of writing for
The New Yorker
.

With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them...

A
CCLAIM FOR
CHARLES ARDAI:

“A very smart and very cool fellow.”

—Stephen King

“Charles Ardai... will be the next me but, I hope, less peculiar.”

—Isaac Asimov

“[Ardai] has done a fine job of capturing both the style and the spirit of the classic detective novel.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

Available now at your favorite bookstore. For more information, visit
www.HardCaseCrime.com

Sexy Suspense From an MWA Grandmaster

The Girl With the

by
LAWRENCE BLOCK

SHE WAS EVERY MAN’S DREAM — AND ONE MAN’S NIGHTMARE

Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work.

Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman’s secretary, his lover — and his worst enemy. Gunderman promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she’s ready to make him pay...

A
CCLAIM FOR
LAWRENCE BLOCK:

“The narrative is layered with detail, the action is handled with Block’s distinctive clarity of style and the ending is a stunning tour de force.”

—New York Times

“Block is awfully good, with an ear for dialogue, an eye for lowlife types and a gift for fast and effortless storytelling that bear comparison to Elmore Leonard.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Wonderful.”

—USA Today

“Lawrence Block is a master of entertainment.”

—Washington Post Book World

Available now at your favorite bookstore. For more information, visit
www.HardCaseCrime.com