Beautiful, Naked & Dead (Moses McGuire) Read Online Free PDF

Kelly knew it. Information is power so don’t give any out for free. I didn’t save Kelly, I guess caring for her dog was the best I could do… I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Wind whipped at my face and Angel snuggled down against my chest. I had seen death before. As a soldier in that mess they called a war, I had even caused it. Somehow this was different. She mattered more than all the rest, maybe because she wouldn’t matter to anyone else, not the cops, I knew how hard they would try for a dead cocktail waitress from a strip joint. Not the straight world, to them the women of my world were as expendable as last night’s condom. But she mattered…If only to me and the goddamn dog.
    Pounding down Highway 2 where it rose up over the 5, the Girls Girls Girls sign of Club Xtasy winked up at me from forty feet below. At seventy MPH, it would only take a flick of the handle bars to send me slamming into the low freeway wall. One quick crunch of metal and I’d be soaring out over the LA river headed for the great beyond where crap like this was all a dull memory. My knuckles went white on the hand grips. The will to survive battling it out with desire for oblivion. The pup trembled under my leather coat, it was as if she could sense how close we were to ending it all. Taking her with me wasn’t part of a deal I was willing to make. Carry your own water, leave the innocent be and if you have to step off the board do it alone. No passengers for that ride. We come in alone, we go out alone, end of story. Breathing out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding I loosened my grip. The green of Forest Lawn on my right, the brown green of Mount Washington on my left, and ahead in the distance the steep peaks of Angeles Crest. Just when you’re ready to burn it to the ground and walk away, this aging bitch we call a city can still catch you off guard with her beauty. Sure, she’s only a tarted up old whore, but when the light is right and you squint just a little, she looks young and fresh and almost hopeful.
    I pulled down an old sleeping bag and made a nest for Angel on the floor. After three or four therapeutic scotches, I curled up in bed and hoped for the noise in my head to stop. There was a thump on the foot of the bed as Angel pulled herself up. She curled up very small and didn’t look at me, like maybe I wouldn’t notice her if our eyes didn’t meet. I closed my eyes until they were only open a slit and watched her as she ever so slowly crawled forward, finally resting her head on the pillow next to mine. Only then did she fall asleep. I wasn’t so lucky. I lay for a long time in the dark haunted by my fallen friend’s face. Haunted by what I knew of her last hours, by what I should have done…She reached out to me and I had failed her. I blew her off to play the hero for Piper and collect a lap dance. While I was squirting in my jeans, some freak was raping her. She was dying while I sat at the bar fucking with Turaj. If only I had gone straight to her place… If only… if… When at last I fell asleep it was listening to the rhythmic breathing of the pup.
    In the dream rivers of blood flow down off the granite mountains into a boiling red ocean. I can taste sweet, iron and salt in my mouth. A young Lebanese woman lays in the white sand, the pulpy surf pounding her dead bullet riddled body. Beyond the breakers, where the sea grows calm, Kelly floats on her back. She cranes her neck to look back at me.
    “Come on in, the water’s fine,” she whispers, a slight smile curling up her lips. That mischievous twinkle in her eyes invites me to chuck it all and join her.
    “I fucked up, Kell.”
    “You just did what you always do.” We spoke without moving our lips.
    “You paid the price.”
    “Women always pay the price. Now come out here and join me.” I wanted to obey her. I really did. But as I watched, she slowly sank below the surface and was gone without even a ripple.
    When I woke my first thought