Cage of Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

the old Garrett.
    He'd beefed up maybe twenty pounds and the gray eyes hinted at a ferocity now. Even the hands looked bigger somehow, more purposeful.
    "You working now?" I said.
    Shook his head. "Start tonight."
    "Bet you're excited." I smiled. "I got it. Why don't you go hassle some of the creeps that used to give us so much grief?"
    He didn't return the smile.
    In fact, he shook his head.
    "That's the one thing I learned at the academy. You can't let your feelings get in the way. Had an old cop tell me that and it made a lot of sense. He said if you let anger get in the way, then you start to bully people. And if you let greed get in the way, then you start getting corrupt. And if you let pride get in your way, then you're never able to admit that you made a mistake on a case. He said the best cops are the ones who are strictly professional. Let their heads tell them what to do, not their emotions. And that's just the way I'm going to be." Then he gave me the kid grin again. "Of course, if one of those old bullies should ever get out of line with me—"
    "—hit them a few times for me."
    "Exactly."
    He looked around the store. "This used to be some place, didn't it?"
    "Sure did."
    "I remember my mom always bringing me here at Christmas time. One year I pissed on Santa's lap."
    "Nice kid."
    "So how'd you like the Army?"
    "It was all right."
    "Your mom says you're going to the community college?"
    "Yeah, next spring."
    "Great."
    I think it was about then that we both started realizing that the old friendship wasn't quite there any more. We were different people now. Quoting Kull and talking about the old days could only take you so far.
    We fell into an uncomfortable silence and then he said, "Well, I'd better head over to the station. Got a lot of things to do before tonight."
    "It was really great seeing you, Mike."
    "Yeah, it was. We should go get a pizza sometime."
    "Right. Talk about Conan."
    "And Kull." He frowned. "My mom got rid of all my paperbacks."
    "Mine did, too," I said. "When I was away in the Army."
    "I'll bet some of those old ones with Frazetta covers are worth a lot of money today."
    "Man, they were beautiful, weren't they?" I said.
    "Yeah," he said, "yeah, they really were." And for a moment there, he sounded as sentimental as I felt at the moment. It's funny how you can get melancholy about the person you used to be, as if that person were a separate person from you.
    "Let's have that pizza," I said.
    "I'll give you a call," he said.
    And then I wanted to smile but I knew better.
    I couldn't help it.
    He still looked like a kid in that uniform, the pug nose and freckled face.
    Even with the Sam Browne and the Magnum, he looked like a kid.

CHAPTER SIX

    About twenty minutes before closing time, everybody in the store would start to get bundled up for the trip outside into early winter. Halloween had barely passed and now jolly snowmen with cocked top hats and knowing smiles kept sentry duty all over town. Yellow road graders with big yellow insect eyes roared through the night. And young people who were in love had snowball fights up and down the nighttime streets.
    After I counted the money and took it upstairs to the accounting department, I finished closing up the shoe department for the night.
    I was just pushing the fitting tools underneath their chairs, so the cleaning lady wouldn't have to bother with them when she was vacuuming, when the stout and unfriendly woman who worked in women's apparel came over to me.
    She was sixty going on thirty. When I was little she'd been the local femme fatale. She and her husband used to drive around in big ass cars like local celebrities. They still had that air about them, being special and important. She had hair that had been peroxided so much it had the dead, dry texture of a wig. She usually wore cream colored suits meant to hide her bulges. And she effected a kind of Marilyn Monroe gush when she spoke, all dramatic whispers. I managed to hate her and feel