Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) by Al Sarrantonio

Author:Al Sarrantonio [Sarrantonio, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-10-17T06:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

At twenty-five thousand feet in the air, with the sustained muffled scream of jet engines to lull him, Paine closed his eyes and the third bad place found him.

It was a night place. There was only darkness, the snick-snick of windshield wipers, the tarp-bright, slick blackness of wet street reflecting the colors of man-made night: dirt-yellow streetlamps, squares of dim light in rows of dead black buildings. The windows in the patrol car were down; the night smelled wet and close and dirty. Dannon was driving, and he wouldn't stop talking. He had been talking ever since they went on shift, first about his fishing trip, the Pennsylvania walleye pike he had caught in a big reservoir. Then he talked about the Yankees.

Paine felt sick. There was a constant gnaw in his belly that had risen slowly to the back of his head and settled behind the back of his eyes where it throbbed dully. His head felt like a giant squeezed fist.

"Sure you don't want to go in?" Dannon kept asking. He knew Dannon was taunting him. Good cops did their job. Good cops stuck with their partners, didn't go in sick in the middle of a shift.

"Come on, Jack," Dannon said with mock heartiness, punching him lightly in the ribs. "Want a nice bowl of chili? Maybe a greasy bucket of Chinese ribs?"

Paine groaned and Dannon laughed.

Dannon was always like this—a sour mix of paternalism and riding, suppressed brutality. Paine had given up long ago trying to figure Dannon out. He seemed to like being a cop, but there was a deep, festering resentment in him, an itch he never scratched in front of Paine. He hovered on the edge of unpredictability. At first it had seemed like camaraderie, the complaining and dissatisfaction, but Paine had learned that Dannon's resentment also held room for Paine himself. After Paine had refused to have anything to do with Dannon's small payoffs, the free hamburgers and coffees, the twenties cheerfully collected here and there, he knew he had found his way onto Dannon's crap list.

"Little high and mighty for a rookie whose old man blew his own brother's head off, don't you think?" Dannon had said one night, his joking manner layering the hostility beneath. In the locker room he subtly rode Paine all the time, doing it in such a way that, without looking cruel, he drew laughter from anyone who was around. When they were alone, he could be just as subtle and vicious, and often was.

"Sure you don't want a taco, kid?" Dannon laughed, pushing Paine with his fist in the ribs again. His voice turned mean. "Want me to bring you in, Jack? Take you to the nurse?"

"Fuck off," Paine said.

The dull yellow lights flashing off the black wet tarp were like pins stabbing into his eyes. He wanted to squeeze his head with his hands and scream.

Dannon drove without speaking, blessing Paine with the near silence of windshield wipers slapping water from the glass in front of him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.