Charley's Web Read Online Free PDF

decadence. It was lifeless, like an overexposed photograph. Just another big, empty space with a deserted wooden dance floor. About twenty tables, each seating four, were crowded together in the far right corner of the room for patrons who actually wanted to eat, while a series of high-tops, seating two, were scattered throughout the room, guarded over by towering bronze sculptures of blank-faced nude women, their elbows bent, palms facing forward, fingers pointing toward the twenty-foot-high ceiling, in gestures of abject surrender.
    “Where’s my brother?” Charley said again, her eyes returning to the bar where Glen McLaren sat perched on a tan leather stool, the morning paper, open to the sports pages, stretched out along the brown marble countertop.
    McLaren was dressed all in black. He was maybe thirty-five, tall and slim and not quite as good-looking as Charley remembered from their previous encounter. In daylight, his features were coarser, his nose broader, his brown eyes sleepier, although she could still feel them undressing her as she approached. “Miss Webb,” he acknowledged. “How nice to see you again.”
    “Where’s my brother?”
    “He’s okay.”
    “I didn’t ask you how he was. I asked where he was.”
    “Would you like a drink?” Glen asked, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Some orange juice perhaps or…”
    “I don’t want anything to drink.”
    “…a cup of coffee?”
    “I don’t want coffee. Look. You called me. You said you had my brother.”
    “And you said a lot of very unflattering things about me and my club in your column last month. Or so I understand.” He grinned. “Personally, I never read your column.”
    “Then you shouldn’t be too upset.”
    “Unfortunately, a lot of other people, including our esteemed mayor and the chief of police, don’t have my discerning taste. I’ve been getting a lot of unwanted attention these past several weeks.”
    “I’m sorry about that.”
    “Are you?”
    “Not really. What’s any of this got to do with my brother?”
    “Nothing. I’m just making conversation.”
    “I’m not interested in conversation, Mr. McLaren.”
    “Glen,” he corrected.
    “I’m not interested in conversation, Mr. McLaren,” Charley repeated, transferring her oversize beige leather handbag from one shoulder to the other. “I’m interested in finding my brother. Do you have him or don’t you?”
    “I do.” McLaren smiled sheepishly. “God, the last time I said that it cost me a fortune.” He lowered his chin and raised his eyes flirtatiously. “What—not even a little grin? I’m trying to be charming here.”
    “Why?” Charley glanced around the room, saw no one but a waiter wiping down the tables on the far side of the dance floor.
    “Why am I trying to charm you? Oh, I don’t know. Because you’re beautiful? Because you’re a reporter? Because I’m trying to get into your good graces? Or maybe because I’m just trying to get into your pants.”
    Charley’s impatient sigh filled the room. “I’m not into revenge fucking, Mr. McLaren.”
    Glen shrugged, his eyes drifting back to the sports pages of the morning paper. If he was shocked by her coarse language, he gave no indication. “Interesting, since you seem to have no trouble at all fucking people over.”
    He’s quick, Charley thought. She’d give him that. “I guess that’ll teach you not to talk to reporters.”
    “Except that, if you recall, I had no idea you were a reporter the last time we spoke. I didn’t have a clue there was such a thing as WEBB SITE. Clever title for a column, incidentally.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I was simply under the impression I was talking to a beautiful young woman, one I was trying very hard to impress.”
    “One you promptly stopped trying to impress the minute you realized she wasn’t going to sleep with you.”
    “I’m a man, Charley. I’m only interested in so much talk.”
    “Then why are we talking now?”
    Glen smiled