Loser's Town by Daniel Depp

Author:Daniel Depp
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Organized crime, Calif.), Hollywood (Los Angeles, Mystery & Detective, Humorous, Hard-Boiled, Fiction, General, Motion picture actors and actresses, Crime, Extortion
ISBN: 9780143171010
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2009-04-07T04:28:09+00:00

Ten

It was around ten in the morning when Allison Graff and her four-year-old son, Cody, went into Denny’s Restaurant in Sherman Oaks. The restaurant was busy but there was a small booth in the front and they snagged that one. They were regulars and, anyway, Cody liked to look out the window. A waitress came by and smiled at Cody and gave them menus.

‘I want the Grand Slam,’ said Cody. He knew the menu.

‘You won’t eat all that,’ said Allison.

‘I will,’ he said.

‘I’m hungry.’

‘You’d better eat every bite.’

The waitress went away with their orders. Cody drew on the paper place setting with crayons and Allison stared out the window at the traffic. Terry came in. A booth had just opened up behind Cody and he took that one.

This was going to be Terry’s second breakfast. He had already stopped and eaten at six o’clock that morning at a similar all-night diner in Newbury Park, where he had sat for an hour and a half wrestling with his soul and that small sliver of brain where common sense resided. The sliver lost, and not for the first time. Terry drove back to Sherman Oaks and parked around the corner from her house. He listened to Lightnin’ Hopkins on his iPod and every so often he got out of the car and looked down the street at her place or drove a circuit around the block. He did this for three hours until he saw her come out of the house with the boy and get in her car.

Terry ordered his second breakfast and Allison said to Cody, ‘You wait here, I’m going to go get a paper,’ and she stepped out of the restaurant. Cody watched his mother leave and then stood up on his knees and peered over the back of his seat at Terry. Terry smiled at him. Cody looked at him suspiciously. Terry stuck his tongue out at him. Cody turned around and sat down. Allison came back with her paper and Cody whispered something to her. Allison looked over at Terry and smiled at him.

‘Well, maybe you’re bothering him,’ she said to Cody.

Allison was reading the paper and Cody turned around again to look at Terry, this time sticking out his own tongue. Terry made a ridiculous face at him and Cody laughed.

‘What are you doing?’ she said to Cody. ‘Leave the poor man alone.’ To Terry she said, ‘Is he bothering you?’

‘It’s fine,’ Terry said to her. ‘It’s nice to have someone my own age to play with.’

Allison laughed. Perhaps Terry would have been able to walk away, if she hadn’t done that.

‘You talk funny,’ Cody said to him.

‘I’m Irish. You know where Ireland is?’

Cody shook his head.

‘Well, imagine a country where everybody talks funny and goes around making faces at strangers. That’s Ireland. You’d fit right in.’

As Terry said this, Rosie Villano came by with another girl on their way out. Rosie was a bartender at the Voodoo Room and had been working the night Terry was there.

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