Small Town - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Lawrence Block (author ’s note) #1

Lawrence Block Small Town

THIS ONE’S FOR THE RABBIT

New York City, the incomparable, the brilliant star city of cities, the forty-ninth state, a law unto itself, the Cyclopean paradox, the inferno with no out-of-bounds, the supreme expression of both the miseries and the splendors of contemporary civilization, the Macedonis of the United States. It meets the most severe test that may be applied to definition of a metropolis — it stays up all night. But it also becomes a small town when it rains.

— John Gunther

The city exulted, all in flowers.

Soon it will end: a fashion, a phase, the epoch, life.

The mirror and sweetness of a final dissolution.

Let the first bombs fall without delay.

— Czeslaw Milosz, “The City”

author’s note

Once again, it’s my great pleasure to thank the Ragdale Foundation, of Lake Forest, Illinois, where this book was written.

Between the time my last book was published and this one completed, I lost three dear old friends, and list them now in the order of their passing: Dave Van Ronk, Jimmy Armstrong, and John B. Keane, to whom Hope to Die was dedicated. One of my early books was dedicated to Dave. I never got around to dedicating one to Jimmy. I miss them all.

Earlier, I lost my mother, who came to the end of a good long life two weeks and two days after the twin towers fell. Like my wife and daughters, she read each of my books in manuscript. Thus she had a chance to read Hope to Die, although she died before it was published. This book, then, is the first she won’t get to read.