SHANGHAI RUBY’S by David R. Thompson

Author:David R. Thompson [David R. Thompson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books/Historia
Published: 2021-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

My stomach continued to grumble, as I tooled back north on La Cienega towards my office. I stuffed another stale sinker into my mouth and washed it down with the tepid cup of Java cradled between my legs. It was already much later than I’d planned, but said, “The hell with everybody. They’ll just have to wait.”

At least the weather had cleared, but I wouldn’t have that as an excuse. I thought about McCullen’s newspaper photo and wondered who that dish really was. If he was that confused over the looks of his Ava that still didn’t mean that DeCosta’s doll wasn’t the same one he’d been banging at the Blue Parrot Inn. Lancaster’s I.D. only proved that the one standing next to DeCosta was not the real Ava, just a body double with a similar resemblance and maybe still DeCosta’s bimbo.

I torched the last Lucky in the pack, sucked in a lungful of nicotine to quell my nerves, coughed a couple of times to smooth them out, and tossed the match out the window. I almost followed it with the crushed empty packet when I remembered I’d slid that pawnshop ticket I’d nicked at the Blue Parrot under the cellophane wrapper for safekeeping. I stuffed it into a side coat pocket with a mental note to follow it up, maybe later in the afternoon.

Glancing at the dashboard, I also noticed I was already exceeding the posted speed limit. One thing I didn’t need was a gung-ho motorcycle cop with a fresh ticket pad to slow me down. I let up on the gas pedal.

As soon as I hit Sunset Boulevard., I hung a right, ticking off a few more miles. I began tapping on the steering wheel in concert to some unknown rhythm in my head to speed things up. It wouldn’t make any difference. I continued cruising through the morning layer of smog and traffic-heavy streets surrounding the movie studios, scattered around the Hollywood neighborhoods like so many well-dressed warehouses hidden behind fancy front entrance facades. I passed several youthful starlet wanna-bees cruising the streets near Gringo Gulch trying to look dazzling and hoping to make it as an extra in anything glamorous off the sidewalks. Then again, I could have been wrong. Maybe they were just hookers trying to reel in a few early-bird suckers for a luncheon date and a quick spin in the sack before returning back to their nine-to-five’s.

Picking up Vine Street, I zipped around a few straggling pedestrians lingering in the crosswalks. Sid’s Haberdashery caught my attention with his flashy new store front sign and I stopped only long enough to drop off my smoke-infused suit for a major dry cleaning. After a couple more blocks, I finally spotted my Chrysler building, found an open spot in the alley bordering the building, and shared the elevator up to my office floor with a well-dressed older couple with a nervous leashed poodle cowering behind them.

Rhonda was seated at her desk buried behind an

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.