Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan

Author:Timothy Hallinan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-08-28T20:30:23+00:00

17

Gateway to Stardom

Despite my recent lack of sleep, I snapped bolt upright at the sound of the mouse’s xylophone, which was what my dream had turned it into, a sort of all-rodent version of the Modern Jazz Quartet with a xylophone made of tiny bones played by a mouse wearing white gloves and sunglasses. But the sound continued after I opened my eyes, and once I had pushed through a moment of yawning incomprehension the mice turned into John Prine and I saw my phone blinking on the table where the remains of the steak still sat, silhouetted against what, given the fuchsia tint of the light outside, looked like a hundred Mickey Mouses waving for rescue from the ninth circle of Hell, the Mouse Inferno.

Ronnie said something to someone in whatever dimension she was in. It sounded like cantaloupe or, I suppose, can’t elope. I cast a mental vote in favor of melon and got out of bed.

Unknown number and a text: Losing my patience.

I said out loud, “We do have something in common.” I read the text again, for no reason except that I still had one foot in the Land of Nod. Nope, I hadn’t missed anything; she was losing her patience. Just for the hell of it, I brought up Anime’s app and found myself looking down the entry hall toward the door of our apartment. The light all came from the left side of the screen, which was as it should have been; I’d left two table lamps burning in the living room.

I pulled the chair to the table, pushed the cold meat a little farther away, and watched my own front door on the bright little screen. The experience was unusual without being interesting, and after a minute or two I went to Facebook and read the latest creative slagging of the president, and a bunch of people making irate complaints about spoilers in some TV show with dragons in it, and then, with a yawn that was loud enough to make Ronnie say, “What?” in her sleep, I went to my email.

There he was: Jake. I looked at the time on the message: 4:20 a.m. About twelve minutes ago. Whatever he and Laney Profitt had been doing, it hadn’t made him sleepy. The message read, Have info. $1500 cash.

Like an idiot, I emailed him back, How could it possibly be $1500?

My phone sang. It said Jake, and I thought there should be a nightmare font a phone’s user can assign to people he doesn’t want to talk to.

“Because you’re my friend,” he said when I picked it up.

I said, “Do you know what time it is?”

“I’ve got it,” he said, “the name you wanted. I thought this was important to you.”

“At this hour? And fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of important?”

“Sliding scales,” he said. “Every value has its place on a sliding scale. And night is the same as day, except it’s darker and I look better.”

Ronnie sat up and surveyed the room. “Damn,” she said.

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