Read The First Law for Free Online

cabinet. Enough with maudlin. He’d better get finished here or he’d get soaked on the way to the bank. He considered that maybe this should be the year he and Sadie pack up and buy a condo like the ones they’d looked at last summer in Palm Springs. Maybe even Scottsdale.
    Although when they’d gone there in the summer a few years back, it had been way too hot. And leaving his friends here, and his synagogue—did they really want to do that? What did he think he was going to do in Palm Springs without the company of Nat Glitsky, a brother to him all these years? And Nat, with a new baby grandchild, wasn’t going anywhere. Sam loved Sadie, but she was a reader—a very solitary and passionate reader—not a games person. Nat, on the other hand, loved all kinds of games—backgammon, dominoes, Scrabble, anything to do with cards. They had tournaments, for God’s sake, with trophies. No, Sam didn’t really want to move. He just wanted the days to be longer again.
    “Fart-knocker,” he said aloud to himself, shaking his head. In the back room, he went to a knee, worked the combination, swung open the door to the safe. Lifting out the old maroon leather pouch, he was struck again by the thickness of it. He unzipped the top and ran his thumb over the top edges of the bills, nearly twenty-two thousand dollars in all, more than two months’ worth of the shop’s earnings, even if he included what he made on his poker fees. It would be the largest deposit he’d made in years.
    He zipped it back up and placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket. A last check of the shop, then he grabbed his fedora off the hat rack, pushing it down hard over his crown against the wind he’d encounter when he got outside. He turned out the lights and retraced his steps down the center aisle. Stopping a last time, he looked both ways up the street and saw nothing suspicious.
    He reached for the door and pulled it open.
    The plan was a simple one. Speed and efficiency. They wore heavy coats, latex gloves, and ski masks to thwart identification. None of them was to say one word before they knocked Silverman out.
    The old man was holding his hat down securely on his head with one hand, pulling the door to behind him when the three men came out of hiding in the doorways on either side of his shop windows and, pulling their masks down over their faces, fell upon him. The biggest guy got the door while the other two grabbed him by the arms, covered his mouth, and manhandled him inside and back up the aisle.
    In the back room, they turned the light on. But the old man had gotten his mouth free and was starting to make noise now, yelling at them, maybe getting up the nerve to give them some kind of fight, as though he had any kind of chance. But delay would mean a hassle.
    And since hassle wasn’t part of the plan, the big man pulled a revolver from his pocket. The old geezer was actually making a decent show of resistance, struggling, manipulating his shoulders from side to side, grunting and swearing with the exertion. Because of all the lateral movement, the first swing with the gun glanced off the side of the man’s head, but it was enough to stop him, stunned by the blow. The instant was long enough.
    The next swing connected with Silverman’s skull and dropped him cold. He slumped into dead weight and they lowered him to the ground, where he lay unmoving.
    The big man knew just what he was looking for and where it would be. In two seconds, he’d unplugged the surveillance video mounted over the office door. Five seconds later, he had the maroon leather pouch in his hands and was back on his feet. He pulled his ski mask off and threw it to the floor. His accomplices removed theirs and put them in their coat pockets. “Okay,” the big man said.
    “Vámonos.”
    Leading the way, he doused the shop lights again. He was at the front door, halfway out. Somebody called out, “Guys, wait up.”
    The gunman stopped and turned. Waiting up