Read The Final Detail: A Myron Bolitar Novel for Free Online

already gone, but he’d scribbled a note that he’d meet up with Myron at the courthouse at nine. Myron grabbed a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, discerned with a digging left hand that Win had already extracted the free toy inside, showered, dressed, checked his watch. Eight o’clock. Plenty of time to reach the courthouse in time.
    He took the elevator down and crossed the famed Dakotacourtyard. He had just reached the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West when he spotted the three familiar figures. Myron felt his pulse quicken. FJ, short for Frank Junior, was bookended by two huge guys. The two huge guys looked like lab experiments gone very wrong, as if someone had potently mixed genetic glandular excess with anabolic steroids. They wore tank tops and those drawstring weightlifting pants that looked suspiciously like ugly pajama bottoms.
    Young FJ silently smiled at Myron with thin lips. He sported a purple-blue suit so shiny it looked like someone had sprayed it with a sealant. FJ didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just smiled at Myron with unblinking eyes and those thin lips.
    Today’s word, boys and girls, is
reptilian.
    FJ finally took a step forward. “Heard you were back in town, Myron.”
    Myron bit back a rejoinder—it wasn’t a very cutting one, something about the nice welcoming party—and kept his mouth shut.
    “Remember our last conversation?” FJ continued.
    “Vaguely.”
    “I mentioned something about killing you, right?”
    “It might have come up,” Myron said. “I don’t remember. So many tough guys, so many threats.”
    The Bookends tried to scowl, but even their faces were overmuscled, and the movement took too much effort. They settled back into the steady frowns and lowered the eyebrows a bit.
    “Actually, I was going to carry through with it,” FJ continued. “About a month ago. I followed you out to some graveyard in New Jersey. I even sneaked up behind you with my gun out. Funny thing, no?”
    Myron nodded. “Like Henny Youngman wrote it.”
    FJ tilted his head. “Don’t you want to know why I didn’t kill you?”
    “Because of Win.”
    The sound of his name was like a cold glass of water in the faces of both Bookends. The two giants actually stepped back but recovered quickly with a few flexes. FJ remained unruffled. “Win doesn’t scare me,” he said.
    “Even the dumbest animal,” Myron said, “has an innate survival mechanism.”
    FJ’s eyes met Myron’s. Myron tried to maintain contact, but it was hard. There was nothing behind FJ’s eyes but rot and decay; it was like staring into the broken windows of an abandoned building. “Sticks and stones, Myron. Sticks and stones. I didn’t kill you because, well, you already looked so miserable. It was as though—how to put this?—as though killing you would have been an act of mercy. Like I said before, funny, right?”
    “You should consider stand-up,” Myron agreed.
    FJ chuckled and waved a well-manicured hand at nothing in particular. “Anyway, bygones. My father and uncle like you, and yes, we see no reason to antagonize Win unnecessarily. They don’t want you dead, so neither do I.”
    His father and uncle were Frank and Herman Ache, two of New York’s legendary leading leg breakers. The elder Aches had grown up on the streets, slaughtered more people than the next guy, moved up the ladder. Herman, the older brother and big cheese, was in his sixties now and liked to pretend he wasn’t scum by surrounding himself with the finer things in life: restricted clubs that didn’t want him, nouveau-riche art exhibits, well-coiffed charities, midtown French maître d’s who treated anyone who tipped with less than a Jackson like something they couldn’t scrape off the soles of their shoes. In other words, a higher-income scum. Herman’s younger brother, Frank,the psycho who had produced the equally psycho offspring who now stood in front of Myron, remained what he had always been: an ugly hatchet