This particular Punch-Worthy-shorthand for any guy deserving a fist to the face-had committed a classic punch-worthy sin. She just wanted to be here, to feel her father’s presence, to-corny as it sounded-gather strength from it.īut the douche bags wouldn’t let her be, would they? Kat still came and tried to sit quietly on her father’s old stool with the ghosts, especially tonight, with her father’s murder haunting her anew. The others now went home after their shifts, or to AA meetings. Sure, the old console TVs had been replaced by a host of flat- screens showing too wide a variety of games-who cared about how the Edmonton Oilers did?-but outside of that, O’Malley had kept the cop feel and that was what had appealed to these posers, the faux authenticity, moving in and pushing out what had made the place hum, turning it into some Disney Epcot version of what it had once been. “See him?” Stacy asked.ĭ�cor-wise, O’Malley’s hadn’t really changed much over the years. Kat swiveled to the right to take a peek. Stacy’s eyes started darting around the bar. They smirked a lot, these soft men, their hair moussed to the point of overcoif, and ordered Ketel One instead of Grey Goose because they watched some TV ad telling them that was what real men drink. Now it had been turned into a yuppie, preppy, master-of- the-universe, poser asshat bar, loaded up with guys who sported crisp white shirts under black suits, two-day stubble, manscaped to the max to look un- manscaped. So had her father and their fellow NYPD col- leagues. O’Malley’s used to be an old-school cop bar.

Kat Donovan spun off her father’s old stool, readying to leave O’Malley’s Pub, when Stacy said, “You’re not going to like what I did.”

Missing you by harlan coben