Charlotte Carter [Nanette Hay Rhode Island Red (retail) (epub

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.You have to put on dozens.For some reason, the sheer number of them cancels out their essential tackiness.I lit one of Sig’s cigarettes and sat down to look at my mail, all those bills I had no way of paying now that Walt and his salary were gone.I had a second smoke and polished off the lousy chardonnay.He reappeared twenty minutes or so later—calm, clean, hair slicked back and glistening, torso bared—and a nice torso it was—thin but basically flawless.One of my extravagant white Fieldcrest bath towels was knotted low on his hips, and inside it, where stomach meets thigh, was a little palm tree.He looked at me while I looked at him.“Ah,” I said, and kept looking.He smiled slyly.“I am your slave,” he pronounced.“Ah,” I said.“Where’s the bedroom?”“Mine?” I asked after a minute.“Or yours?”“Ah,” he said sadly, and shrugged.Yes, thank God he was older and more sensible than he looked.We took the old futon out of the hall closet and rolled it out on the living room floor.“Listen, Sig,” I told him as I turned out the light, “coffee’s at seven-thirty.Then out you go.”“But I’m your slave—”“Hey, Siggy? Being a person of color, that is not my favorite word in the English language.”I took his laugh as a sign that he was finally giving up.“Gets pretty cool in here at night,” I said.“Summer’s over, you know.”“Guess I better put on my pants then.”“Guess you better.”Around 3 A.M.I woke up achy and shivering.I felt the cold air creeping around the corners of my room like a wild cat prowling a canyon.I wondered if that fool had gone during the night and left the apartment door open.Furious, I walked into the kitchen.Sure enough, the door was wide open.I banged it shut … then banged it a second time, because the lock wouldn’t catch.I flipped on the light, all sorts of wild things in my mind—he’d robbed the shit out of me; he’d gone out for pizza and decided not to return, so someone else had robbed the shit out of me …But no.He was right there.On the floor.With a blade sticking out of his throat.I did the corny silent scream as my legs gave way and I began to sink.It took forever for my knees to finally hit the linoleum.On the floor between us lay a small Velcro ankle holster with a blunt steel gray gun nestled inside it.On the outside of the holster was a photo ID shrink-wrapped in plastic.I pulled it closer with my foot and looked at the picture of Sig, who was in real life—or had been—Charles A.Conlin, of the New York Police Department.CHAPTER 2In walked BudTwo uniformed cops came first.They looked at the body but didn’t touch it.The EMS guys came next.They touched but didn’t move.Then along came one Detective Butko, who, to use the vernacular, took my statement.As we talked, the technicians started to file in—all looking as if they had TB.My little apartment, so private and anonymous until a few short hours ago, was swollen with city payrollers.All of them men.Loud and gross and way past the point of caring.The one slobbering all over my busted door looked ready to shed his old skin any minute.“How come you didn’t hear anything?” Butko asked me.“For the same reason,” I told him, “I wouldn’t hear it if you played a rap song in this room right now.”My hatred for rap music was so overwhelming that I had actually developed the ability to tune it out—deny that it existed.I hated violent death just as much.Yet Sig’s body was still there in my kitchen.Then, about five-thirty in the morning, the clock stopped, so to speak.The apartment was at capacity now, but it had grown strangely quiet.They were all standing around … waiting.Poor Sig/Conlin was waiting too, in his way.I wanted nothing more at the moment than a piece of paper and a pencil.I mean, I know how crass it sounds, a young guy laying there dead and all.But since there was nothing anybody could do to change that, I thought the least I could do was get off a few lines about the thing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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