Drumsticks Read Online Free PDF

it wasn’t the first time I’d seen something like that. Before I left Paris the previous spring, I’d seen my aunt Vivian—my own flesh and blood—in spookily similar condition, lying dead through the worst kind of violence.
    To see the same kind of horror played out all over again was just too much. It was almost unbelievable. And maybe that’s why I had no tears left for sweet Ida Williams.
    The Bad Lieutenant as much as told me he figured Ida just “caught a tough break”—that some idiot had stormed into the restaurant not intending to kill anybody but only to scare the hell out of this roomful of fat cats, but unluckily for Ida, his aim wasn’t so good.
    â€œYou should know,” he said. “You were standing up there. You saw what happened.”
    â€œI certainly did not,” I informed him, for the hundredth time. “Maybe some of the witnesses say they think they saw the policeman’s favorite citizen. But I never did.”
    â€œWhat does that mean—the policeman’s favorite citizen—what is that supposed to mean?”
    â€œThat ubiquitous black man who does everything when nobody’s looking. He kidnaps little children, he hijacks vegetable trucks, he fucks up the Internet—just causes no end of trouble for law-abiding people.”
    His face was a mask. Not a jot of appreciation for my wit. “Okay. So you didn’t see anything. As soon as you took the first step down from the bandstand, all hell broke loose. But you did hear the shots. Three of them. Two went wild and the other one killed the victim.”
    The victim. The victim . God, I wished he’d stopped using that cold, anonymous phrase. Her name was Ida Williams. But then, whenever I looked over at the figure in the black plastic bag, victim seemed an all too apt description.
    â€œSure, it’s possible,” Loveless admitted a few minutes later. “Could be the shooter did come in with murder on his mind.”
    But if so, he pointed out impatiently, “it wasn’t that woman he meant to take out. Maybe he didn’t expect to find such a huge crowd and he got spooked or something. Maybe somebody jostled him and made his shots go wild. Maybe he didn’t realize how dark it would be in here. He just missed his man, or woman, as the case may be. If somebody did this on purpose, it wasn’t that old lady who was supposed to get it. It was a mistake.”
    Why? I wanted to ask. Wasn’t Ida Williams important enough to be killed for herself?
    Loveless must have been reading my mind, or at least reading my sour expression. He asked me dutifully, “ Did she have any enemies?… Well?”
    Of course I had no answer for him. But that didn’t stop me. No, Motormouth Nan couldn’t let it go. “We’ve all got enemies,” I said tartly. “What about you, Lieutenant? Does the whole world love you?”
    His incinerating look shut me up momentarily. I knew I was mouthing off when I should’ve been playing it cool—just taking things in, observing. Besides, common sense made me concede that Loveless was probably right. Ida was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    â€œLook, missy,” he finally said with a sigh. “You seem to be telling me two opposite things here. One, you’re telling me the vic was a nice old lady who sold toys on the street, like something out of a fairy tale. You can’t imagine she would hurt a fly. But then you turn around and insinuate that I’m not taking her seriously as a candidate for a paid hit. You can see my problem with your attitude here, right?”
    I didn’t say anything. He had me there.
    That didn’t mean his view of Ida’s death as a kind of freak occurrence—a peddler who didn’t belong in a classy place like Omega anyway—was not full of maddening condescension.
    But he did have me.
    â€œYou been working here long?”