Regeneration: A Pulp Thriller by Max Allan Collins & Barbara Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins & Barbara Collins [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647345600
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2021-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

“(Listen) Do You Want To Know A Secret?”

(The Beatles, #2 Billboard, 1964)

By noon the next day, the California sun had finally burned away the morning fog. Light streamed in the windows, turning everything it touched white.

Joy had spent the morning at her spacious desk in her modern, black-and-white, well-appointed office, working on the ad campaign for one of her clients, a pharmaceutical conglomerate moving into the herbal supplement market. But she couldn’t seem to get her mind to focus on echinacea or kava or even Saint-John’s-wort.

That brown-haired, quietly sarcastic private investigator kept insinuating himself into her thoughts, turning them into daydreams….

“Earth to Joy,” a female voice said.

Susan, standing in the doorway, was wearing her usual bright print dress, a sleeveless affair as perky as she was.

“You look like you could use lunch,” Susan said, brown hair bouncing of her shoulders. “I’m buying.”

The offer blindsided Joy, who had gone out for lunch with Susan only a few times—Secretary’s Day and the woman’s birthday—and, though she liked Susan, Joy didn’t particularly want noon get-togethers to become a habit. Habits had a way of becoming hard to break.

It wasn’t that Joy didn’t want to spend her lunch hour with Susan; it was that she didn’t want to spend it with anybody. This was her private time, time to recharge herself by strolling the streets, eating an apple, not stuck in a noisy restaurant ordering food she couldn’t consume, or even afford (unless she could expense-account it on a client).

She was comfortable being Joy Lerner—she even relished being Joy Lerner; but there were times when she liked to be herself, and not play the role.

“We could split a shrimp salad,” Susan coaxed.

That did sound good…. Joy hadn’t splurged like that in some while.

Screw the apple.

“You are such a bad influence,” Joy said, reaching for her purse.

Eyes bright with her boss’s acceptance, Susan said, “I know just the best place.”

They walked along Wilshire, which was bustling with noon traffic, and, like life, going by much too fast. A pleasant breeze, with a westerly hint of ocean, tousled their hair and teased the hems of their dresses.

Susan led her boss to a small café on a side street, a recently opened place Joy wasn’t familiar with, a typical, vaguely French indoor-outdoor thing; the breeze was just insistent enough that they opted to dine inside.

In the back corner at a small linen-covered table for two—the last available in the noon rush—Susan ordered the shrimp salad from a billy-goat-bearded Sean Penn wannabe, who gave them a disdainful look before he left, when Joy added, “And an extra plate” (as if he wouldn’t know what it meant to save a few dollars).

Joy leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table. “This is really a nice spot,” she said, in an attempt to get the conversation going. But what she really thought was that the restaurant was so mundane, it would be lucky to last the week.

Susan, sitting straight in her chair, like a child reprimanded by a mother, nodded as she glanced at the other tables, occupied mostly by business and professional types.

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