His ID badge hung on a chain over the shirt. The boys in the room, in uniform, wore purple and white polo shirts, and khaki pants. In Leo’s hand was a slim Avon paperback of a novel called The Hunter. Its author credit read “Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.” The cover art collage featured a red scarf, red pills spilling out of a vial, playing cards and chips, and a stainless steel .38 revolver with wooden grips. “Okay,” said Leo. “When we first meet Parker, who I’ll call the antihero of this book, he’s walking across the George Washington Bridge. This is from the first page: Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. What does that tell you, in shorthand?” “The ladies want to do him,” said a boy. “Yes, women do find him attractive,” said Leo. “But not in a boy-next-door kinda way.”
