Constantine Read Online Free PDF Page B

pulled up in a discreet, shadowy comer of Twenty Lanes’ parking lot. He took Constantine’s bag from the trunk of the taxi, followed him toward the door of the bowling alley.
    “Ever think if you told me more now and then, maybe I could help you out?” he asked Constantine.
    “Nope,” Constantine said, without so much as a glance at Chaz, as he led the way inside.
    Anyplace else, this much noise and clatter, the sounds of things crashing down, would be a sign to take cover from a landslide. But in a bowling alley it was normal. Most of the lanes were going strong at the Twenty Lanes as Constantine and Chaz crossed the lobby, walking past the pimply young man renting shoes, past rows of the house balls in cabinets, all in bright primary colors.
    “Bowling shoes - what a scam that is,” Chaz remarked.
    “Just get me Beeman, now please,” Constantine said, looking down the lanes at somebody curving a ball in for a perfect strike. He could shoot a gun straight as Buffalo Bill, he could punch like a son of a bitch, he could summon fire sprites and wind elementals, he could trap a demon in a mirror, and he could see the astral world - but for the life of him, he couldn’t roll one of those hooks to get a strike. Bowling technique was an esoteric mystery to Constantine.
    Drive me here, get me Beeman, blow my nose, Chaz thought. Aloud he said, “Question: How much longer do I have to be your slave?”
    “You’re not my slave, Chaz, you’re my very appreciated apprentice. Like Tonto or Robin or that skinny fellow with the fat friend from the old movies.” They’d crossed the bowling alley to the exit on the far side.
    “When do I apprentice something besides driving?” And, he thought, signaling eccentrics who hide out in the back of bowling alleys?
    But Constantine had already slipped through the exit door.
    Chaz growled to himself. “No. Really. Great. We’ll do lunch.”
    He sighed, went to the ball rack for lane thirteen, as always, and ran his fingers across the house balls. Only one was bright pearly white. He held it in one hand, took a grease pencil and wrote NEW GAME on the overhead, then stepped onto the polished wood, prepping for a bowl.
    He winked at a pretty brunette girl watching from the next lane. Her buff young boyfriend didn’t like it. Chaz bowled, and the hook was perfect. The strike was a mathematical inevitability, every ball going down just when it should. The brunette grinned.
    He returned the smile and, resignedly, went back out to the cab.
    --
    Constantine’s apartment was small - but not as small as it looked. He pulled a chain hanging down the right-hand wall as he came in, and the far wall shuttered open, revealing a farther room and making the whole as long as a bowling lane-and indeed, it used to be one. The rumble of the pins came steadily from next door. At the far end from Constantine was a bed enclosed by a metal cage. Mostly to keep things out.
    On the floor along all four walls were lots and lots of big Sparklett’s bottles, each adorned with a small hand-marked cross. Holy water. It discouraged certain entities. Others didn’t give a damn.
    Constantine checked the seals on the window. No indication of invasion, material or astral.
    He grunted to himself and took a small black box from his jacket, set it carefully on a little shelf made for it, near the window. He looked around, thinking he’d settled for too little.
    “Home sweet home,” he murmured. He lit a cigarette, took off his coat, and sat down at the table to wait for Beeman. Didn’t take long. Maybe a quarter inch of cigarette.
    “New game: John?” Beeman said, coming into Constantine’s apartment without knocking.
    Constantine inhaled cigarette smoke, and almost immediately suffered a fit of coughing.
    “The big one, the mother lode - the one you’ve been waiting for?”
    Constantine managed to get his racking coughs under control. He spat blood into a tissue and said, hoarsely, “Humor me.”
    Turning