Big Goodbye, The Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Dixie Sherman, the only high-rise in the area, towered over all the other buildings, its form growing less defined against the darkening sky.
    “I don’t know. I felt a lot. I didn’t write anything down.”
    “Where’d you see her? What happened?”
    I told her.
    “She hired you to find out who’s following her?”
    “No, I’m doing it as a friend.”
    “When’d you two become friends?” she asked.
    “You know what I mean.”
    “No, I don’t. She asked you as a friend?”
    “No,” I said, “but by making me aware of the situation she knew what I’d do.”
    “So she didn’t ask you, but she wants you to?”
    “You saying she doesn’t?”
    “I’m not saying anything. I’m asking you. What was it she said that made you think she wanted you to follow her?”
    “She told me not to,” I said.
    In the distance, people stumbled out of a joint on the corner in a cloud of smoke, their loud voices and laughter startling in the quiet. From within, the faint, soothing sounds of the Andrews Sisters could be heard like the muffled music of a neighbor’s radio.
    “And that made you think she did?”
    “You’d have to know her,” I said. “She knew what she was doing.”
    “But do you ?”
    “She knew when she walked into my office that if she told me someone was following her I’d stop him.”
    “That may be, but I’m not concerned about her knowing what you would do as much as what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”
    I had nothing for that.
    “Is it possible she really did just think you were following her?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “You wanna save her or just be with her again?”
    I looked at her, my eyes narrowing in anger.
    “If you could,” she said, “I mean when you can again—I know you’ll be able to—would you want it to be her?”
    I didn’t want to think about any of that, didn’t want to dissect what was really wrong with me—what was physical and what was psychological.
    I glanced down at my watch. “I’ve got to go.”
    “Don’t be sore, soldier. Suppose I didn’t ask the difficult questions? What then? No one else in your life will.”
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “I’m . . . I know how it makes you feel, but I meant it as a . . . you really do seem like a . . . it just fits you, fella.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “It wasn’t a crack. Don’t let it distract from the real issue.”
    “I know what I’m doing,” I said. “Everything’ll be fine. After this, she’ll be out of my life for good.”
    “Well,” she said, her voice filled with an underlying gravity, “sounds like you’re convinced.”
    “It won’t be like before. Before . . . I carried a torch for her. I was a sap before. I can handle it now. Now, I’m nobody’s sap.”

Chapter 7
    I was dreaming about her when she knocked on my door.
    I was in my room in the Cove Hotel at Wilson Avenue and Cherry Street. It was a two-story Spanish-style hotel, surrounded by an Edenic landscaping of trees and flowers, with a dock and dive platform out into the bay. My room, which I could not have afforded otherwise, was part of my pay for being the house detective.
    In the dream, we were lying in between sand dunes looking up at the stars, listening to the unseen waves of the Gulf caress the shore. Beneath us, the sand was cool, above us, the sky was dark and clear and dotted with stars, and around us, the beach was empty for miles.
    Harry was at his weekly poker game, and we were whiling away the time as if we had it in such abundance we could never exhaust our endless supply.
    Things were too good, too intense, and I needed her too much not to try to sabotage it all somehow.
    “How long you think this’ll last?” I asked.
    “Don’t,” she said. “Not tonight.”
    “Every affair ends.”
    “I’m not going to let you spoil this. It’s too perfect.”
    “I’m not trying to spoil it. I just—”
    “Listen, soldier,” she said. She called me Solider before I was wounded and