Free The Triumph of Evil by Lawrence Block Page A

one side of Central Pink West on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, on the other side on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Accordingly, several tenants had provided one of the doormen with keys to their cars and had arranged that he move their cars as the regulations dictated. This occupied the doorman for almost an hour each morning, during which time a porter took over his duties.
    The building was several stories taller than either of the structures adjoining it.
    Karnvofsky’s apartment was on the tenth floor. He had occupied it without interruption since before the war and remained there after the departure of his children and the death, five years ago, of his wife. A Negro named William Tompkins lived in the apartment and served us Karnofsky’s chauffeur, valet, and body guard. A woman—Dorn did notlearn her name—came three times a week to clean the apartment.
    Karnofsky was a diabetic, The disease had manifested itself in his late fifties and was controlled with diet and insulin. He had suffered a mild coronary thrombosis in 1957 and had made a complete recover. He had since given up whiskey and cigars, although he occasionally drank a small cognac before retiring. This he rarely did before two in the morning, spending late hours reading on a wide range of subjects, including the political history of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution, a topic on which he was an acknowledged authoiity. He was an early riser, he had been notoriously faithful to his wife during her lifetime and had remained celibate since her death. Every Sunday he was visited by all or some of his grandchildren.
    William Tompkins had been with Karnofsky for almost twelve years. For the past fifteen months he had been having an affair with a woman who lived on West 85th Street near Riverside Drive. The woman was married but separated from her husband. She had two small children. Tompkins visited her only during the day, at an hour when Karnofsky was in his office in the Kent-Walker building and the woman’s children were at school. On Tuesday nights he played bridge in Greenwich Village, returning around midnight before his employer was ready to retire. Every Thursday night he visited his widowed mother in Astoria, leaving in time to have dinner with her and returning around 11 o’clock.
    None of this was particularly hard for Dorn to learn.
    At various times while he was in New Yoik, Dorn read the following items in the Times while ruling breakfast:
    “Calling for ‘a spirit of unity and trust In a time of grave division,’ the President repeated his appeal for a suspension of political extremism as a memorial to J. Lowell Drury. ‘He was a man who knew full well the folly of implacable extremism,’ he said of the late senator, ‘and if we are to honor his memory …’”
    “… sharply criticized Vice President Henry M. Theodore’s recent diatribe on campus dissent and demanded that the White House immediately repudiate the Vice President’s rhetoric …”
    “… said that ‘Even a man like Drury would be safe in Louisiana. We do things different down here.’ He added cryptically, ‘I wouldn’t be the first person to say something about chickens coming home to roost.’ Pressed for further elucidation, he remarked that ‘People in this part of the country know what I’m talking about, and the rest of them …’”
    “… thunderous applause from a crowd that filled the auditorium to capacity and overflowed into the street. ‘I cannot be a spectator at the crucifixion of the world’s mightiest nation on a cross of riot and anarchy. I will not, and you true Americans will not, stand idly by while the Statue of Liberty is fitted for a crown of throns by the serpents nestled in her own bosom. John Lowell Drury attempted to make peace with those very vipers of the left. But men of good will cannot make peace with the Devil. John Lowell Drury played with the vipers of the left. John Lowell Drury learned too late that