Pokrewne

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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
[heft] Perry Rhodan 0713 Roboter lugen nicht

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.Something like that, as far as Hoke knew, had never happened.Perhaps it had happened once or twice, and then they had put in the law to prevent it from happening again.All the same, it was a foolish law.But tonight, no one was fishing from the bridge.Hoke watched the bridge lights dance and shimmy on the water for a few minutes, and walked back to the 7-Eleven store in the square.The night manager was cutting the strings of The Miami Herald for Friday morning.The bundle had just been delivered.Hoke wandered aimlessly around the store, but there was nothing he needed.He picked up a copy of the Herald, however, and put a dollar bill on the counter.The manager, a bald, middle-aged man in an orange 7-Eleven shirt, made change."When I was a kid," Hoke said, "there used to be a grocery store over on Division Street where you could buy cigarettes for a penny apiece.The owner kept them loose in a water glass on the counter.He couldn't sell you a pack if you were under eighteen, you see, but he'd sell you one cigarette for a penny.That way he beat the law.You can't sell cigarettes to a kid under eighteen, but one cigarette is singular, not plural, so he figured he wasn't really breaking the law."The bald man shook his head and smiled."He was breaking the spirit of the law, and he knew that no cop would bust him and do all the paperwork for only selling one cigarette.""That's right, " Hoke nodded, "he was never busted.A cop would've felt like an asshole, busting a man for selling just one cigarette to a minor.""Today," the bald man reflected, "he'd have to sell a single cigarette for seven cents if he wanted to make a profit.""I'm trying to quit.If I bought a full pack, I'd probably smoke the whole thing.""Here," the night manager said, taking a package of king-sized Kools out of his shirt pocket."Have one of mine.""Thanks." Hoke took a cigarette from the pack."Need a light?""No.I'll just save it for now, and maybe I'll smoke it later.In fact, I may not smoke it at all.""If you do, you'll probably be back up a pack a day by tomorrow.Anyway, give me seven cents."Hoke put two nickels on the counter."Keep the change."The manager pushed the coins back toward Poke."I don't want your money.I was only kidding, for Christ's sake."Hoke shook his head and slipped the cigarette into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit.He left the store and headed back toward the lights of the shopping center.He tossed the Miami Herald into a trash can at the corner of the parking lot.The sodium vapor street lights that encircled the shopping center made it a small island on another island in the dark night.When Hoke reached his duplex, there was a teenaged girl sitting on a suitcase alongside the narrow stairway leading up to his apartment.She was wearing headphones and she held a tiny Sony Walkman primly in her lap.She was wearing jeans, open-toed high-heeled pumps, and a light blue T-shirt.There were black palm trees imprinted on her cotton shirt, with white lettering between them that read, FORT 'LUDERDALE.She was blocking Hoke's way to the stairs.He looked down at her."If you're waiting for the bus back into town, it stops on the other side of the center, in front of the arcade."She looked up at Hoke and smiled.She removed the headphones and clicked off the tape-player.She gave Hoke a long luminous brown-eyed stare.Her eyes reminded Hoke of Patricia Neal's hot-eyed look in the movie, Hud, in the scene where she was raped by Paul Newman."Hello, Daddy," she said.She stood up, wrapped her arms around Hoke's waist, and managed to kiss him on the chin as he pulled his head back.Hoke didn't recognize the girl, but he didn't doubt for a single second that this was one of his daughters.She had his eyes.The last time Hoke had seen his daughters, one had been six, and the other four.He didn't know whether this girl was Sue Ellen, the sixteen-year-old, or Aileen, the fourteen-year-old.In Florida, girls developed early, and Hoke could rarely tell the difference between a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old girl, even though he saw them every day on the beach."Where's your sister?" Hoke said, disengaging her arms from his waist."She went to Grandpa's house.Aileen was afraid you wouldn't take us in."Sue Ellen began to cry."Hey, hey," Hoke said."Come on upstairs.I'll get you settled in, and then I'll drive over and get her."Hoke picked up the suitcase, and Sue Ellen, wiping her eyes with the backs of her fingers, followed him upstairs.Hoke unlocked the door, flipped on the light in the galley, and turned on the reading lamp by the sling chair.Sue Ellen, calmer now, put her Sony on the counter and climbed onto one of the stools.She took a package of Lucky Strikes out of her leather drawstring purse, and lit a cigarette with a Bic disposable lighter."Let me borrow your lighter," Hoke said.He took the crumpled Kool out of his breast pocket and lit it with his oldest daughter's lighter.Hoke's first long drag, after not smoking for almost two months, made him a trifle dizzy, but nothing had ever tasted better, and he knew that he was going to start smoking again.CHAPTER THREEHoke had tried two or three times to see his daughters after the divorce, but he had to admit that he hadn't tried very hard.He had merely made token gestures.One of the reasons Patsy left him in the first place, she said, was because he spent so little time at home with the children.But the two little girls made Hoke nervous and when he hung around the house with nothing much to do, he soon got into an argument of some kind with his wife.She had been a quiet studious girl in high school, and a more or less dutiful wife in Riviera Beach, but after they moved to Miami her character had changed radically.After she joined a neighborhood "consciousness raising" group, she had started to have "opinions."Hoke was studying for the sergeant's examination at the time they separated and it was difficult to concentrate on his books at home with two boisterous little girls running around screaming.He was relieved, in a way, when Patsy had packed up and left for Vero Beach.Perhaps, if the girls had been boys instead of girls he could have established some kind of rapport with them, but they were girl girls, not even tomboys.When he had tried to play with them a few times, one or the other would get hurt and start crying.He spent as much time at the police station as he could, and took overtime and off-duty assignments every time they became available.During the football season, he had worked crowd control at the Orange Bowl every weekend until he finally got out of uniform and became a detective.At any rate, the personal insults that Hoke and Patsy had hurled at each other during the last three months or so before she left for good had been too vitriolic and nasty for either one of them to ever forgive.There was absolutely no chance of reconciliation.Even so, they hadn't filed for a no-fault divorce for three years after the separation, although Patsy lived in Vero Beach, and Hoke remained in Miami [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]