Eye of the Cricket Read Online Free PDF Page B

effective shortcut. He'd used it before to help me find LaVerne's daughter.
    "And tomorrow morning I'll talk to some of the people on the streets, slide them into it. Kids especially."
    "Thanks, Richard."
    "Es nada. Speaking of which," he said, turning to Don, "the streets and kids, not nada: how's Danny doing?"
    Walsh shrugged.
    "No job yet?"
    "Jobs were rain, he'd be cactus. He did work half a day at a place on the butt end of Canal, one of those old diners that
     looks like a trailer. The manager, kid about ten years younger than him, started to show him how he was doing something wrong
     and Danny just walked out. Showed up at the house still in his apron."
    "I figured things weren't going too well when he missed our lunch last week."
    "Days go by when I hardly see him at all. Others, a block and tackle couldn't get him out of the house. What can you do?"
    "Not much, Don, Tough as it is."
    "Yeah."
    One night last year Walsh had got a call from the Coral Gables, Florida, police department. An officer there said they had
     his son in custody. The charge this time (yes, they'd had him at the station before) was burglary. Twenty-eight years old, Danny was still living with his mother,
     unemployed, the officer said, and recently, while she was away at work and he off somewhere, his mother's house had been cleaned
     out. An investigating officer tracking stolen goods came across her TV in a pawnshop and, following up on it, days later trailed
     Danny back to the self-storage facility where he'd cached his mother's property. He'd pawned a few things, given some of it
     away, but mosdy it was just sitting there, stacked up neat as a pin.
    The boy's mother now claimed that she might have kind of given him permission, or at least somehow given him the impression
     that it would be perfectly okay, to haul off the furniture, appliances and even the handles off the kitchen cabinets for chrissake.
     So, unless she decided to proceed, beyond a court-ordered commitment for observation, there wasn't a lot they were going to
     be able to do—till the next time. But his, Walsh's, name had come up during the investigation, and now Sergeant Montez was
     calling as a professional courtesy, officer to officer, because he thought Walsh might want to know what was going on, maybe
     get involved?
    The upshot being that when Danny got out from under the commitment, he decided he'd be better off living with his father.
     Well, not actually living with him, he'd just be in the same city, you know. So he came to stay with Don while he looked for
     work and a place of his own and never left.
    Big brother-like, Richard had taken him under wing, showing him the city (not that he seemed much interested), introducing
     him to a few people (in whom he seemed even less interested), meeting him for occasional lunches and coffee.
    "Tell him to give me a call," Richard said.
    "I will."
    "Anyone up for dessert?" Tammy asked. "Sam's put together a sweet potato and pecan pie that he plans on advertising as a threat
     to intelligent life on the planet."
    Most cities, they leave it up to traffic, poverty, automatic-weapons fire. Things like that. Here, they tiy to feed you to
     death.
    We declined.
    "Coffee all around, then?"
    "With a shot of bourbon and another of these." Don held up the empty Abita bottle. When Tammy brought everything on a tray,
     he drank his coffee at once, then threw back the bourbon and started in on the beer, nursing it. It was a door I'd spent a
     lot of years ducking to get through, myself.
    "So you're headed back to the hospital," Richard said.
    I nodded.
    "How about you, Don? You got anything on for tonight?"
    "Go home, see if Danny's there, see what shape the place's in. The usual."
    "I'm hitting the seven o'clock show at the Prytania, you want to come along."
    "You asking me for a date?"
    "You bet, big boy."
    "Probably some damn French thing, too. Get me in the mood."
    "Oh, I thertainly hope tho."
    "You guys want anything else? Nah,