Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead by Bruce Hartman

Author:Bruce Hartman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salvo Press
Published: 2014-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

20

“Once again I saved your ass,” Bardahl boasted when we were cruising safely on the Schuylkill Expressway. I say “safely” only in relation to my pursuers, who according to Bardahl’s police radio had given up the chase. There was nothing safe about weaving through the Schuylkill traffic at eighty miles an hour with Bardahl at the wheel. Every time he spoke he turned his enormous head all the way around to face me, as if he couldn’t bear to carry on a conversation without complete eye contact.

I groped in the darkness trying to find the end of my seat belt. “Once again you set me up to walk into a trap.”

“You loved every minute of it,” he laughed. “What’d you find out? Did the bride wear black?”

“No, the bride wore a lovely white satin dress trimmed with lace. You can read about it on the society page.”

Bardahl swerved off the Expressway at Montgomery and headed back into Center City on West River Drive at the same suicidal speed. “And the grieving widow? Who was she dancing with?”

“You know damn well I wasn’t there long enough to see any dancing. I didn’t even get dinner.”

We skidded to a stop at the light by the Girard Avenue turnoff. “Listen, Cloud,” Bardahl said, “I didn’t set you up to walk into a trap. How could I know that you were going to go berserk this morning and attack Art Valunos with a shoe polisher?”

“I didn’t attack Valunos. He attacked me.”

“Whatever. The point is, he called the cops and now he’s accusing you of murdering Babylon, so can you blame my buddies for trying to pick you up? I ought to haul your ass in myself.”

“Why don’t you?”

We blasted away from the light and Bardahl took his time before responding. I looked past his walrus profile toward the river, praying that he wouldn’t think of an answer until we were stopped at the next light. But my prayers were ignored. He turned to face me just as we bolted around a curve and through the narrow underpass by the Art Museum. “Maybe I’m still hoping you’ll be able to find that surveillance tape.”

“Why are you so interested in finding it?”

“Who says I’m interested? Who says we’re even having this conversation?”

“Then you might as well just take me to the station, because I’m not spending another minute looking for that tape.”

He pulled the car over into an empty parking space along the Parkway. “If I knew I would tell you,” he said unconvincingly. “But anything I say would just be speculation, because I don’t really know anything. I’m just a lowly shmuck like you who doesn’t really know why he does anything.”

That one hit a little too close to home, but I let it pass. “All right, then,” I said. “Speculate.”

“If I was going to speculate, I’d say it could have to do with your favorite Senator.”

“How so?”

“That tape was originally in the custody of a state official, right? Maybe that state official turned it

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