Rude Promenade

Excerpts from “Rude Promenade”

      “…Owens was saving all her breath… for those seventy-five stairs. She took careful… steps as she crossed the brick-paved promenade. She came to the foot of the stairs. She paused and eyed the climb. She took a deep breath. With the small plastic bag holding milk and bread in her right hand and her black purse hanging from her left wrist, she began the ascent. Her fatty left arm clutched the black, rusted pipe railing. The purse scraped along the pipe. Owens’ tiny legs wobbled… It would take here a long time to reach the top. She rested at each of the five landings along the way

       She was slow. However, she was observant, an attentive spectator of the entire promenade and what it had to offer.

      At times, that would include murder.”

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      “Detectives Joe MacLean and Hal Sweeney found themselves working on an old case still unsolved. If only people would help the police with any kind of a lead, Joe had thought often how too many neighborhoods closed their eyes and plugged their ears to violence. The collective shame from the Kitty Genovese murder in March 1964 had long faded like a page in old book.”

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      “As the taxi plodded along the narrow streets of Las Palmas, Grand Canaria, the old city came into view. Flowers were everywhere, reaching colorfully far beyond the open spaces and parks. Flowers and plants hung spider-like from iron-railed Andalusian-style balconies of the many white stucco Moorish-style apartments. Saffron, pink, mauve, violet, light blue, purple, yellow, cream-colored, and white were just a sampling of the colors. Fragrance filled the taxi as air rushed through the cab’s four open windows.

      Angela had arrived on islands famous for flowers.”

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       “The plane for Barcelona would leave at 7:45 Thursday morning, September 11. Rodrigo Vicario Sarova of the Spanish National Police would meet Joe and Hal at the airport.

        The chief’s final words could not have been more explicit, ‘I want this guy collared by NYPD.’

       For Joe, especially, the chief’s emphasis would become an albatross”