Cul-de-Sac Read Online Free PDF Page A

assumption he was the only man in the room armed.
    Each day at noon Camel came into The Ground Floor where he was well known by the owner, Eddie Neffering. They had an arrangement. If Camel ever failed to show, Eddie would go up to the fourteenth floor and check to see was Camel dead or alive.
    If he died the way he lived, alone, Camel didn’t want his body to lie undiscovered until it gassed a stench along the hallways of the high-rise where he had his office and apartment.
    Camel had been a cop twenty-seven years if you count his army tour as an MP. He’d been sent out on bad-smell calls, usually a dog or rat but sometimes a man. Camel didn’t want to be found that way, strangers standing around covering their noses and mouths, cursing his stink … though you might wonder why … if he didn’t care what people thought of him when he was alive why this concern of offending them in death.
    As soon as Camel reached the bar Eddie brought over a bottleof beer and a glass. When Camel went to drink from the bottle, Eddie said he should pour it in the glass first. “Aroma enhances taste.”
    Camel smiled like it hurt to smile then drank from the bottle “Beer’s warm.”
    “Cold kills taste.”
    “Where you all of sudden getting this gourmet beer information?”
    Eddie shook his head. “Try to educate you … Hey you do your taxes yet?”
    “When’re they due?”
    Eddie started to reply then caught on Camel was ribbing him. “You going to be one of those bozos standing in line at the post office come midnight?”
    Camel grimaced another smile.
    He and Eddie Neffering worked homicide years ago, they stayed friends … Eddie’s the one who got Camel into this building. The vacancy rate was high and Eddie was tight with the building manager, negotiated a sweetheart deal on Camel’s two-office suite.
    “This guy does my taxes, he’s a genius. I could—”
    “It’s all right, I’ll file late.”
    Neffering shook his head the way your old man might if you’re doing something stupid but now you’re too old for him to slip off his belt and teach you a lesson, all he can do is shake his head.
    Eddie was sixty to Camel’s fifty, it frustrated the older man’s sense of success that a talented guy like Teddy should’ve racked up so many failures … being cashiered out of the department a few years ago at what should’ve been the shank of his career, to name one. Camel was also bad with money, he’d sold his car last week to make expenses. And now he’s not going to file his taxes on time?
    Eddie was different, did things right. He owned the bar-restaurant on the ground floor of the high-rise, called it The Ground Floor and had his slogan printed on matchbooks and napkins: “Get in on The Ground Floor.” It was a big place, like a ballroom. Eddie tried to make it more intimate by installing shoulder-high partitions and tall-backed upholstered booths. Hewanted to keep the lighting dim but customers complained they couldn’t read their reports and memos so Eddie put lamps in the booths.
    The building was in an office complex that in turn was part of a shopping center, sixty acres of concrete marched by armies of shoppers and office workers and store clerks … they stopped in The Ground Floor for their morning coffee and bagels, came back for tuna salad sandwiches and iced tea at lunch, then in the evening after work, that’s when the lights in the booths got turned off.
    Unless he told Eddie otherwise, Camel was there every day at noon. This particular noon was Monday, April 15.
    “You gotta get organized.”
    Camel agreed.
    “You know what I’d tell you, you were my kid?”
    “How you managed to father me when you were ten years old?”
    “I’d tell you, you gotta plan your work, work your plan.”
    Eddie’s kids apparently took to heart their old man’s clichés, one son was an M.D., the daughter was a professional golfer number twenty-two last year on the tour, the other son was a real