Hush Hush Read Online Free PDF Page B

concrete and picked it up.
    “Okay, Shadetree,” Lancaster said. “But the book says the job is two units.” He started walking back toward the office at the end of the building. “That’s
half
hour. You want a coke?”
    Quinn pulled the trigger to hear the power wrench’s rolling scream. He looked over to the next parking lot, but they had pulled the Porsches inside.
    It took him the full hour, getting the feel of the tools, taking care to keep parts clean and free of dirt and grit, double checking that this moved freely or that fit the way it was supposed to. He liked the work, the feel of the tools and the grease smell and the intoxication any physical work brings, if you don’t do too much. The machine had a sort of pride in itself, an elegance of operation, and the work a sort of coherence.Things had reasons for being the way they were. The tools had their own coherence, an invented logic. Someone just made it up, like someone had just made up the law, but if a bolt was the wrong thread, there was no arguing it, and having twice as much money, or twice as much attorney, didn’t change the fact. But that wasn’t it either.
    He liked the law still, really, the arrogance of its made-up-ness, the handsome job men had done with it. It wasn’t law that had set him down on this cool concrete with the grime on his fingers and grit in his eye and idiot grin on his face. The law was all right. And the money was all right. And the clock with the big numbers, he thought. I loved that clock.
    In fact, he liked all the yuppie stuff. Toaster, fat sweatshirts, microwave, wok. He liked walking into everyone’s house and finding that same red electric wok. But the price was pretending to be someone out of
Fortune
crossed with someone out of the
Utne Reader
married to someone from
Vogue
crossed with
Bulletin of the National Anti-vivisection Society
. Pretending to know things. In almost all ways an easy, pleasant life, plus profit-sharing, except for the pretending, the sensation of walking around in an extra skin, like some weird deep sea diver who has forgotten why he came here. But it’s not the law, Quinn reminded himself. This is the way I felt in elementary school.
    He twisted the torque wrench, set at 37 ft-lbs., until it slipped internally, checked it, then tightened the other mounting bolt on the caliper. The work had taken him too long, but it had gone easily. Only once had he had to ask advice, about a rubber dust boot, and Lancaster himself had had trouble getting it in. Lancaster had left whatever he had been working on for later and done the rear brakes on the old Oldsmobile while Quinn was working on the front. He had finished sometimeearlier even though he had rebuilt the wheel cylinders as well as replacing the brake shoes. Now he was sitting on a stool by the long counter at the back, drinking vodka and coughing.
    “You done?” he said, when he saw Quinn set the black torque wrench down on the concrete. “Finally?” He raised the broad little pint of vodka, laughing, then pointed at a length of clear plastic hose and a Coke bottle standing on the counter. “Now we got to bleed them. Why don’t you get in the car and pump the pedal for me?”
    “What?” Quinn said. “Why do I get in the car? Why don’t you get in the car?” He looked at the green bottle. “That’s very technological equipment you got there.”
    Lancaster looked at him, stood up from the stool, shook his head. “Okay, Shadetree, I’ll get in the car.” He took another drink. “Here,” he said, and held out the vodka.
    Quinn took it, glanced at him, wiped the neck of the vodka on his shirt and took a drink. He wiped his lips with his sleeve and handed the bottle back, pointing with it at the driver’s door. Then he fetched the hose and the Coke bottle and sat down by the right front wheel.
    The front wheels went quickly, there was no air in the lines, but the rear took some doing. Lancaster had cleaned up the wheel cylinders,