Huckleberry Fiend Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned quickly to the woman. “Do you know him, Miss Nakamura?” He spoke so sharply she winced. A headshake was all she could manage. He turned back to me. “Beverly’s dead, dildo. Somebody offed her last night.”
    “Don’t call me dildo, shithead.”
    “I said she’s dead, asshole.”
    “No need to swear about it, fuckface.” I was walking a very fine line here. Probably if I called him one more name Blick was going to start reading me my rights, but I figured I could get that last one in. “Impolite to the lady.”
    “Mcdonald, what the fuck are you doing here?”
    I said: “Miss Nakamura, you’ll have to forgive him. He’s under stress.” She jumped as if I’d sneaked up behind her.
    “You know her? Mcdonald, how do you know these ladies?”
    How indeed? It was the very question I was struggling with. Ah, but I remembered something. “We haven’t met, but you mentioned her name yourself, Inspector.” I turned to Isami. “Miss Nakamura? Paul Mcdonald. I’m very sorry to hear about your— about Beverly.” I was playing for time, trying to think up some plausible story, and it was finally starting to come to me.
    “Mcdonald,” said Blick, “I’m runnin’ out of patience.”
    “Okay, okay. I got a message on my machine. It said, ‘This is Beverly Alexander. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of a friend.’ Something like that.”
    “What friend?”
    “The lady didn’t say.”
    “Go on.”
    “She gave me this address and asked me to meet her here this afternoon about a possible story for the Chronicle .”
    “Yeah? What story?”
    “She didn’t say.”
    “She didn’t say? Mcdonald, you so poor you come to somebody’s house you don’t know on the off-chance of making fifty, a hundred bucks?” He looked totally disgusted. “How’s your book sellin’, huh? Finally got one published after all these years. Hollywood called yet?”
    I stared at him with unadulterated hatred. This was my weak spot, this business of never knowing where Spot’s next can of Kitty Queen was coming from.
    Blick made his voice even lower and nastier. “Even you ain’t hard-up enough to do a crazy thing like that.”
    The whole thing was pissing me off— he was right, even I wasn’t. But he had me in the position of having to pretend I was even more embarrassingly poverty-stricken than I actually was. Meaning he got the best of me whether I told the truth or I lied. I lied, of course: “I was curious.”
    “When did she call, dildo?”
    “Yesterday. She was killed last night, right?”
    “How the fuck do you know that?”
    “Howard, I’m really afraid I’m going to have to ask you to watch your language. Miss Nakamura—”
    “Answer the fucking question!”
    “You said so. A minute ago.”
    “Oh, hell. Get your ass out of here, Mcdonald.”
    I was history, as the young people say, almost before he’d finished speaking. And on my way to the chic Russian Hill digs of Booker Kessler, boy burglar. If I knew Booker, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be alone— in the event he was home at all— but I was too shaken up to care.
    It was a good five minutes before he answered the door, and when he did, he was wearing only a pair of blue jeans, obviously just pulled on, which meant I could see and marvel at his skinny, freckled chest with its five or so scraggly hairs. His reddish head hair was mussed, and he looked approximately seventeen and a half. In fact, the little runt was at least twenty-six, and the scourge of San Francisco’s singles bars. Considering his thorough and phenomenal success with women, it was amazing the twerp hadn’t had a crimp put in his enthusiasm by some jealous husband or swain. In fact, the whole thing was amazing; I wished he’d answered the door naked so I could have seen whether he was hung like a Clydesdale, which would have explained things.
    “Paul, I didn’t expect you.” He was trying his best to be welcoming. “Would you like to come in?” His tone