Darwin's Blade Read Online Free PDF Page B

hood. At the moment Lawrence’s right hand was deep in the empty headlight socket, his left hand was fussing with his right wrist as if the truck had grabbed him, and he was on his cell phone—his ear pressed heavily to his shoulder so that the phone wouldn’t drop. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved safari jacket that he had sweated through in the chest area, under the arms, and down the back. Dar looked again and realized that Lawrence’s round face not only looked flushed, it looked red to the point of impending coronary.
    â€œHey, Larry,” said Dar, slamming the NSX door behind him.
    â€œGoddammit, don’t call me Larry,” rumbled the bigger man.
    Everyone called Lawrence Larry. Dar had once met Lawrence’s older brother, a writer named Dale Stewart, and Dale had said that Lawrence-Don’t-Call-Me-Larry had been fighting that losing battle over his name since he was seven years old.
    â€œOK, Larry,” agreed Dar amiably, walking over to lean on the right fender of the Isuzu, careful to keep his elbow on the work cloth and not the burning-hot metal. “What’s up?”
    Lawrence stood upright and looked around. Sweat was running down his cheeks and brow and dripping onto his safari shirt. He nodded slightly toward the plate-glass window of the diner. “See that guy on the third stool in there—No, don’t turn your head to look, damn it.”
    Dar kept his face turned toward Lawrence while he glanced at the long window of the diner. “Little guy with the Hawaiian shirt? Just about finished with…what?…scrambled eggs?”
    â€œThat’s him,” said Lawrence. “Bromley.”
    â€œAhh,” said Dar. Lawrence and Trudy had been working on a stolen-car-ring case for four months. Someone had been stealing only new rental cars from one of their corporate clients—Avis in this case—and then repainting the vehicles, shipping them across state lines, and reselling them. Charles “Chuckie” Bromley had been under surveillance for weeks as the ring’s number-one car thief. Dar had had nothing to do with the case until now.
    â€œThat purple Ford Expedition over there with the rental plates is his,” said Lawrence, still holding the phone to his shoulder by force of jowl. Dar heard squeaks coming from the cell phone and Lawrence said, “Just a minute, honey, Dar’s here.”
    â€œTrudy?” said Dar.
    Lawrence rolled his eyes. “Who else would I call honey? ”
    Dar held up both hands. “Hey, your personal life is your own, Larry.” He smiled while he said it because he knew no other couple as committed to each other and dependent upon one another as Lawrence and Trudy. Officially, Trudy owned the company, and the couple worked sixty- to eighty-hour weeks, living, breathing, talking, and evidently thinking about little other than insurance adjusting and the ever-mounting caseload they were carrying.
    â€œTake the phone,” said Lawrence.
    Dar rescued the Flip Phone from between Lawrence’s sweaty cheek and shoulder. “Hey, Trudy,” he said to the phone. To Lawrence he said, “I didn’t know Avis rented purple Expeditions.”
    Normally Trudy Stewart sounded pleasantly businesslike and very busy. Now she sounded very busy and very irritated as she said, “Can you get that idiot free?”
    â€œI can try,” said Dar, beginning to understand.
    â€œCall me back if you have to amputate,” Trudy said, and hung up.
    â€œDamn,” muttered Lawrence, glancing over at the diner where the waitress was taking Bromley’s plate away. The little man was sipping the last of his coffee. “He’s going to be leaving in a minute.”
    â€œHow’d you do that?” asked Dar, nodding at where Lawrence’s right hand disappeared into the headlight opening.
    â€œI’ve been tailing Bromley since before sunrise and I realized that I