Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales Read Online Free PDF

she has an early morning, everyone at the firm is working harder in Hollis's absence and she needs her sleep.   This is crap because Hollis was absent almost as often when he was alive, but I leave.
    She doesn't answer her phone for two days after that.   When I go to the apartment her bell doesn't answer and her car isn't in the port.   I come back another night, same thing.   I lean against the building groping in my pockets, forgetting I don't smoke anymore, then Nola's old yellow Camaro swings in off Jefferson and I step back into the shadow, because there are two people in that front seat.   I watch as the lights go off and they get out.
    "If you're afraid of him, why don't you call the police?" A young male voice, belonging to a slender figure in a green tank top and torn jeans.
    "Because he is the police.   Oh, Chris, I'm terrified.   He won't stop hounding me this side of the grave."   And saying this Nola huddles next to him and hands him her keys to open the front door, which he does one-handed, his other being curled around her waist.
    They go inside, and the latch clicking behind them sounds like the coffin lid shutting in my face. Nola's got a new shark in her school. I'm the chum she's feeding him. And I know without having to think about it that I've killed this schnook Ethan Hollis for the same reason Chris is going to kill me; I've run out of uses. So for Chris, I'm now the sexual predator.
    That's why we're talking now. It's Nola or me, and I need to be somewhere else when she has her accident. I've got a feeling I'm not in the clear over Hollis. Call it cop's sense, but I've been part of the community so long I know when I've been excluded. Even Carpenter won't look me in the eye when we're talking about the flicking Pistons. I've been tagged.
    Except you're not going to kill Nola, sweetie. No, not because you're a woman; you girls have moved into every other job, why not this? You're not going to do it because you're a cop.
    Forget how I know. Say a shitter knows a shitter and leave it there. What? Sure, I noticed when you reached up under your blouse.   I thought at the time you were adjusting your bra, but–well, that was before I said I'd decided to kill Hollis, wasn't it?   I hope your crew buys it, two wires coming loose in the same cop's presence within a couple of weeks.   I'll leave first so you can go out to the van and tell them the bad news.   I live over on Howard.   Well, you know the address.   You bring the wine–no Jack and Coke–I'll cook the steaks.   I think I can finish convincing you about Nola.   Like killing a snake.

FLASH
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    M idge was glad he'd put on the electric-blue suit that day. He could use the luck.
    Mr. Wassermann didn't approve of the suit. At the beginning of their professional relationship, he'd introduced Midge to his tailor, a small man in gold-rimmed glasses who looked and dressed like Mr. Wassermann, and who gently steered the big man away from the bolts of shimmering sharkskin the concern kept in stock for its gambler clients, and taught him to appreciate the subtleties of gray worsted and fawn-colored flannel. He cut Midge's jackets to allow for the underarm Glock rather than obliging him to buy them a size too large, and made his face blush when he explained the difference between "dressing left" and "dressing right."
    The tailoring bills came out of Midge's salary, a fact for which he was more grateful than if the suits had been a gift. He was no one's charity case. The distinction was important, because he knew former fighters who stood in welfare lines and on street corners, holding signs saying they would work for food. Back when they were at the top of the bill, they had made the rounds of all the clubs with yards of gold chain around their necks, girls on both arms, and now here they were, saying they would clean out your gutters for a tuna sandwich, expecting pedestrians to feel guilty enough