Black Hornet by James Sallis

Author:James Sallis [Sallis, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780802776433
Google: JPAOSYPBQvMC
Amazon: 1433230097
Barnesnoble: 1433230097
Goodreads: 176380
Publisher: Walker
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

AS IT TURNED OUT, I DIDN’T HAVE any trouble finding the guys in berets. I just had to open the door.

I’d stopped off at the Chinaman’s on Washington to walk a shrimp po-boy and got back to the house just as the sky went black and a hard rain started down. I undressed and propped myself up in bed with the sandwich, a pint of vodka and the book Straughter had stuffed in my mailbox. Rain slammed down outside. I dripped lettuce and dressing on the covers, sipped vodka and read about Meursault. He has this nothing job and life, doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral, later on kills an Arab because the sun’s so bright, and he’s writing all this down, or telling it, while awaiting his execution, but he still doesn’t feel anything. I couldn’t make a lot of sense out of it. So once the sandwich and most of the bottle were gone, so was I. I slid down into covers, turned off the light and was asleep before the afterimage on my retinas faded.

I got in two solid hours before someone started kicking my door.

Probably they weren’t kicking the door, but that’s how it sounded. I struggled to the surface and to my feet, stumbled downstairs to the door and opened it. Not mules at all. Two guys in black shirts and berets, one’s skin as black as his shirt, the other’s the color of café au lait. The rain had stopped. Light caught on water in trees, in pools on the ground.

“You Griffin?” the darker one said.

Apparently everyone in town knew where I lived.

“Why not. Sure.” I left the door open, turned, and walked into the kitchen. “You guys want coffee or something? A beer, maybe.”

There was coffee left over in the pot. I poured it in a saucepan and set it on a burner.

“We don’t use stimulants,” Au Lait said. He pushed the door shut behind him.

“Or abuse our bodies with alcohol,” Blackie added.

“Okay. You ever use chairs?” I waved toward those around the table.

“We’ll stand.”

“Your call.”

Steam rolled above the pan. I poured coffee into a mug, added milk. Blisters of fat formed on top. I sniffed the milk in the carton. Not bad. I’d drunk worse.

“So what can I do for you gentlemen? Since you didn’t drop by for coffee or to use my chairs.”

They looked at one another.

“Gentlemen,” Blackie said.

The other cocked his head briefly to one side and back. Strange world out here.

“You’ve been asking about … an incident,” Blackie said. “Took place at Dryades and Terpsichore?”

“Yeah?”

“Best stop asking,” Au Lait told me.

“It’s a local thing.” Blackie. Conciliatory. “No one needs waves.”

I sipped coffee.

“Sorry,” I said. “Nigguh ain spose ta unnerstand all this, right? Jus spose ta do what chu say.”

Blackie stared at me a moment. “It’s complicated, Griffin.”

“Sure is.”

“Discretion’s called for.”

“I think I may still have a little bit of that tucked away at the back of my underwear drawer. Some I saved just in case. You want me to go look?”

I dumped the rest of the coffee in the sink and pulled a Jax out of the icebox.

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