Torch Town Boogie by Steven Womack

Author:Steven Womack [Womack, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79542-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Something told me I’d really screwed up this time. Bending the rules was one thing; blowing hell out of them was something entirely different.

Spellman’s greatly appreciated absence gave me the chance to pull myself back together, although even that description was pushing it. I sat staring, sipping on the lukewarm tea, my thoughts a scramble of unfocused bursts of meaningless energy. But the eye-opener was that I couldn’t undo what had been done, and mistake or not, I was going to have to make the best of it.

Other thoughts kept creeping in, though. Unpleasant, destructive thoughts. My father, for instance. A straight shooter all his life, a decorated genuine war hero, a successful businessman who brought himself up through grit and intelligence and determination, who worked forty-three years for the same company before retiring to Hawaii. Forty-four years married to the same woman. A truly self-made man. I was none of that, except, I supposed, the intelligence part (and I’d begun to doubt that recently). But for all my good schooling and brains, where was I now? A marriage that hadn’t lasted a tenth as long as his, a series of unsettling career switches that had led, ultimately, to a one-room office in a roach-infested building, and now, of course, crime.

I slugged down the last of the herbal tea like a sorry imitation of Sam Spade slugging down bourbon. C’mon, I thought, stop beating on yourself. There’s too much to do. Spellman knew I had the files; he just couldn’t prove it. But it was a pretty good bet he wasn’t going to quit trying.

I had time, but not much of it. There was a damn good police detective out there trying to nail my hide, an arsonist and a murderer who was, so far, getting away with it, and a not-so-bad ex-wife who was depending on me to bail her out of a nasty jam.

For a guy who was as busted as a bad gambler the day after payday, I sure had a hell of a lot to do.

I buried myself so deeply in the files, in the work, that when I came back to reality, it was only because the sun had gone down and I was having to strain to read. I stood up, stretched, and turned on the overhead light in my office. Outside, the dusk had settled in over the tops of the office buildings, the sky a brilliant soft palette of hazy oranges and blues. I stood there in awe of the colors, trying to forget the fect that the pretty colors were there only because the air was so bloody polluted.

I turned back to my desk, which was now a jigsaw puzzle of notes. It was a mess, albeit a mess that almost made sense to me. As best as I could figure, here’s how it played out:

The six people mentioned in the Elmore letter came first. I assumed that all of Elmore’s current patients, and God knew how many off the inactive list, got copies of the letter.

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