Barking Man by Madison Smartt Bell

Author:Madison Smartt Bell [Bell, Madison Smartt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3545-4
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

He flinched, his teeth squeaking together, and turned the radio off. All things considered he was not particularly surprised by this development. He had had ominous dreams all night and the flics had already flipped him upside down and shaken him this morning on his way out to the breakwater, turning all his gear out onto the asphalt of the parking and leaving him to scrape it back together when they were done. They knew that he knew that they knew that he had had nothing to do with the mugging at Cap Martin, but whenever anything of that kind happened they liked to throw a little scare his way in case perhaps he might inform, though up to now he never had. Clay pushed the zip of the purse back with his thumb and spread it open across his palms.

“What do you think, uncle?” he said. “Don’t try to tell me that’s not pitiful. A guy carries around this fat old bag and nothing inside it at all but what?” He gave the purse an angry shake. “Suntan oil. Address book, okay. Pictures of babes, man, this cat knows some ugly women. Here we got a bracelet of some kind of worry rocks or something, I don’t know what. And five different kinds of credit cards, three of which I never even heard of. And not enough cash for a baby mouse to make a nest in.”

Clay shook the bag some more, jogging the contents up and down. Ton-Ton Detroit put on his fisherman’s sunglasses but the inside of the purse didn’t look any different under polarized light.

“I tell you something, uncle,” Clay said slowly. “You just about the best friend I know in this whole town. Man, I know you got to know somebody can help me move this plastic.”

“Je balance pas,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. I don’t rat. But maybe it was time he changed his policy.

“What’s that you say?” Clay said. “You know I don’t talk all that much frog.”

“I can’t help you any, son,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You might just as well be showing me a nice handful of radioactive rocks.”

“That bad?” Clay fanned the credit cards out like a hand of five-card draw and then folded them together and stuck them in his top pocket.

“You ought to get rid of that mess, boy,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “I can tell you from here it won’t bring you any happiness at all.”

“Well, you know I want to get rid of them,” Clay said. “But I was like counting on you to show me the way how. Come on, uncle, I know you know somebody.”

Ton-Ton Detroit forced out the bottom of his breath and turned himself to stone. Clay took a few nervous steps back and forth along the wall and then slapped his coat pocket and took out a box of Marlboros.

“You like one of these, uncle?” he said. “Go ahead, I owe you one.”

“I like my own brand,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You find them in that pocketbook?”

“Ah well, what if I did?” Clay said.

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