Big Mango (9786167611037) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to keep him in line. Crap like
that. I figured it would pass, so I ignored it. I let him piss all
over me. Tried not to think about it too much.”
    Eddie could see the memory of it working in
Wuntz’s face.
    “That was a long time ago, but nothing’s
changed. He still thinks his old man’s nothing but a fat jerk.”
Wuntz chewed on his lip a moment and then the corners of his mouth
slipped down into a shrug. “He doesn’t know a fucking thing about
me. That’s my fault, I guess, mostly. But it’s too late. I don’t
see him much anymore.”
    Wuntz’s outburst left Eddie momentarily
confounded. It was as if a cloud had passed over them as they sat
there on that hard bench at the Hall of Justice. Eddie had known
Wuntz for five or six years, but they’d never gotten all that
personal with each other before and he really wasn’t sure he wanted
to start now. What was it about the few casual words he had
exchanged with Jennifer and Michael that had popped open Wuntz’s
floodgates like that?
    Wuntz looked at the floor between his feet
while Eddie shifted his weight uneasily on the bench.
    “Kids make you look at stuff whether you want
to or not. Stuff about yourself.” Wuntz spoke so quietly that Eddie
almost missed it. Then he looked up with more hurt in his eyes than
Eddie could stand. “Do whatever you have to do. Just don’t lose
your kid like I lost mine. Once he’s gone, he’ll never fucking come
back.”
    Wuntz’s hurt stuck in Eddie, but before he
could work out exactly what to say to him, Judge Rybeck’s clerk
came out of an unmarked door carrying a pile of papers and headed
straight for him.
    “Sorry, Mr. Dare. There’s no way the judge
can take your plea today. Everything except this freaking
Carnotolli case has been put over to Monday.”
    Pissey Carnotolli was a flamboyant Italian
who owned a chain of stores around the Bay Area called Hide-A-Bed’s
Galore. A local celebrity from his late-night TV commercials in
which he wore nothing but a very large diaper, Pissey had been
charged with killing his wife and the Examiner had hinted he had
brought in hired muscle from New York to do it. Eddie figured if
Pissey had used local guys, he might never have been indicted. San
Francisco was an awfully insular place.
    “Anyway, wait a second.” The clerk pawed
around in the papers he was carrying and pulled out an envelope.
“Joshua sent this over a couple of hours ago. Said he thought you’d
want it right away.”
    It was another of those airmail envelopes
like the one in which the photograph with the red circle had come.
Eddie hesitated a moment, not sure that he wanted the damned thing,
but then took it and slowly turned it over. It was addressed to him
in the same careful printing and it had the same kind of
exotic-looking stamps.
    Eddie tore off one end and dumped a single
photograph into his palm, remembering this time to fold away the
envelope and put it in his pocket.
    Wuntz, fully recovered now from his outburst,
leaned over and took a look.
    “What the fuck’s that?”
    Eddie didn’t answer, but he knew of
course.
    It was another picture of him with the same
young marines and the same girls. This one had apparently been
taken at about the same time as the first one, but from a slightly
different angle because now the guy who had been standing behind
Eddie in the other photograph was fully visible.
    And this time it was that guy who had
a red circle around his head.
    Eddie lifted the photograph and studied it
carefully. But he didn’t really need to. He recognized the face
immediately.
    It was Winnebago.

 
     
     
Four
     
    “NO wonder I thought the
ears looked familiar.” Winnebago held the photograph in both hands,
his elbows propped on the bookstore’s counter as he shook his head
slowly back and forth. “What about the envelope?”
    Eddie took the crumpled airmail envelope from
his pocket and smoothed it out.
    “I told you those were Thai girls,” Winnebago
said as soon as it saw