Dizzying Heights by Bruce Ducker

Author:Bruce Ducker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Published: 2014-10-21T06:00:00+00:00

“You a cop?” Hollister asked him. A scraggly beard, and

shining through a border of long tresses, a dome whose ebony glaze seemed polished by the winter wind—the man looked more like a prophet. But Hollister’s concerns were immanent, not theologic.

The man examined a vial and swabbed out crumbs of cocaine with his pinkie. “Good smack,” he said.

“You’re either a cop or a junkie, it don’t matter to me, I’m calling my lawyer.”

“Keep snorting this, your septum will dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer in water. Septum first, then the brain.”

“You’re no cop. So why are you going through my trash?” Hollister had had this before, garbage hounds. Usually groupies, looking to scrounge a piece of mail with his name or a shopping

list. He didn’t mind—it was a good way to meet chicks.

“Too bad no one’s figured out a way to create a financial instrument backed by people,” the black man said. He wore three or four sweaters against the cold, making his thin frame top heavy. “If there were, you’d be a natural short.”

“Listen, what the fuck are you after?”

“Insulation. Your workmen threw it out.” Hollister looked down. Beneath the man’s foot were end cuts of the sheet insula-tion left over from the construction. Hollister was adding a pool cabana, after the design of the Parthenon.

“So?”

“So, I can use it. You have any objection?”

“You’re insulating?”

“I am. My holiday digs.”

“That won’t cover much space.”

“I don’t need much.”

He was adding the cabana because the last woman had proved hard to evict. He’d never again let them stay in the house. He’d stash them in the cabana. That way, he could screw when he wanted, park them out there, and Charley would evict them when he was out of town.

“Any objection?”

“No. No objection. Just keep off the personal stuff.”

Gossage looped thumb and finger into an okay. Rolled the fiberglass and began down the hill. This would do fine for his holiday place. The man went back inside.

Holidays were the problem. The rest of the time his theory of reciprocating surpluses kept him warm. Gossage had his choice of homes. He looked for a good library, a conspicuous spare key, and a back door. These houses were occupied

perhaps thirty days a year. Otherwise they stood unused, heated to keep the pipes from freezing, the only security a random check. Dozens of places fit his bill. Good reading was another matter. The average bookshelf held Robert Ludlum, The One Minute Manager, and Tom Clancy. One simply had to persevere. In the house he’d just vacated, across from Etta’s in the West End, he’d started David Copperfield. After the holidays, when the owners returned to St. Louis, he would move back. David had just headed to Dover to look for Aunt Betsey Trotwood.

When the owners had arrived, Gossage moved to Red Mountain, two doors down from Hollister. His new hosts favored experimental European fiction, not Gossage’s favorite. It was an eclectic education. The hammering and sawing on the Hollister cabana had awakened him.

Gossage needed to find digs for the oncoming Christmas week, when every vacation house was in use.

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