Black Hornet Read Online Free PDF

were intact, many were missing entirely. One vast corner column had burst open. Tendrils of onion plants snaked out from within it.
    The slave quarters, however, were in fine repair. In the final decades of its grandness the house had been owned and occupied by the alcoholic, literarily inclined last son of an old New Orleans family. Day after day he sat drinking single-malt Scotch and punching forefingers at his father’s Smith Corona while the house crumbled without and his liver dissolved within. And while his mother finally relocated to the slave quarters out back, as though moving to another state, and went on about her life.
    Basically, I had two rooms, one stacked atop the other. Downstairs was a brief entryway with a niche for a couple of chairs to the left and closet-size bathroom to the right, then the kitchen and wooden stairs up to the living-bed-dining-room. There’d been a garden outside when I moved in, but rats had eaten everything down to stubble and memory.
    The place was cheap because no one else wanted to live there—either in the neighborhood, or behind that house. Most of those who had moved in over the years never made the second month’s rent.
    But I loved it. No one would ever find me here. It was like living in a secret fortress or on an island, cut off from the mainland by the house and high stone wall. And it was private, or had been until the house’s porch fell in and its baker’s dozen of renters all started coming and going by the back door, two yards from my front (and only) one.
    Returning from my evening as a guest of the city, I walked through a gap in the wall and along the remains of a cement path that once ran the house’s length.
    Someone stood knocking at the door of the slave quarters.
    As I said, no one could find me here. No one’s supposed to find me here.
    So what did no one want?
    Instinctively slumping to make myself look smaller, I shuffled that way, talking as I went.
    “See I’m not the only one looking for Mr. Lewis. No answer, huh? Man ain’t never home! This my third trip all the way up here. He owe you money too?”
    The man took his fist away from the door and put it in the pocket of his blazer. It had made the trip before; the cloth there was badly misshapen and the coat hung low on that side. Tan slacks, a wrinkled white cotton shirt and loose brown knit tie that all somehow had the feel of a uniform about them, as though he might wear these same clothes day after day.
    “Don’t suppose you’d have any idea where he is? Couple things I need to ask him about.”
    “Man, I don’t even know what he looks like, you know? Boss just says: We got complaints on Blah-Blah, go find him. So I do. Usually do, anyway.”
    “Possible I might be able to help you there, seeing as I have a pretty good description. Big man, usually wears a black gabardine suit, tie. Course, that could be most anyone.” He grinned. “You, for instance.”
    “Well. No way you’re the Man, black as you are.”
    He took the hand back out of his pocket and extended it. “You have to be Griffin.”
    I shook it. “I do indeed. However hard I try not to be sometimes.”
    “And you know, I bet sometimes you almost make it.”
    “Almost.”
    “Don’t we all, brother. And we just keep right on trying.” When we let go, his hand crept back to the pocket. I don’t think he even noticed anymore. “I’m Arthur Straughter, but everybody calls me Hosie. You got a few minutes?”
    I shrugged, then nodded.
    “Something I’d like to talk to you about. But not here. You ever take a drink this early in the morning?”
    “It’s been known to happen. Especially when I’ve still not been to bed. But I’d have to ask, first, what your business is with me.”
    “Fair enough. Miss Dupuy … Esmé and I …”
    He looked off at the wall. No cues written on it. His face every bit as unreadable.
    “She meant a lot to me, Griffin. We were together almost six years. And I can’t begin to tell you