Innocent Monster Read Online Free PDF Page B

waste my time dicking around with every schmo a missing kid’s parents want me to see? You’d be amazed at some of the clowns these people come up with. I call ‘em the psychics and psychos.”
    “Desperation makes people do desperate things.”
    “Stupid things.”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, “stupid things.”
    “Like maybe involving an old family friend in something he shouldn’t be involved in.”
    “Are you worried I’m too close to the situation to see what’s in front of me?”
    “There’s that,” he said. “There’s also that your track record, as good as it is, is old. You ain’t been in the game for a long time. Kinda tough to hit a home run as a pinch hitter when you haven’t seen a good fastball for a while. And there was that thing with your ex-wife.”
    “I can’t argue with you there, but look, I’m in the game whether you want me to be in or not. You can boo like an armchair manager or you can help me so I can help you. Anyway, I’m not a stupid man. Talking with you now, my guess is that if you had anywhere to go with finding Sashi, you wouldn’t be here, respect for my record or no respect.”
    “No, I guess you’re not stupid. We’ve hit a wall.”
    “Well, if the info in the newspapers is correct, you didn’t have much to go on.”
    Hey, a little sympathy never hurt.
    “We got some stuff to go on, but...”
    “Some stuff, like what?”
    He didn’t answer right away and spent the next few minutes eating his sandwich, so I ate mine too.
    “Look, Prager, I can’t afford you getting in the way with an ongoing investigation. Do we understand each other?”
    “Okay, Detective, you’ve given me my warning. I’ll keep out of your way and I’ll pass on anything I learn immediately. The only thing I’m interested in here is finding Sashi alive.”
    “Fair enough,” he said and handed me his card. “Those are all my numbers. I’m available 24/7. I’m taking you at your word. If you find out anything at all, I want a call.”
    The waitress came by and I took the check. “What now?”
    He stood and threw his trench coat back on. “You go on over to your store. I’ll be over in a few minutes. I gotta get some stuff outta my car.”
    I’d had much worse first dates, I thought, as he disappeared into the main dining room.
    Back in the office of RWY, I spread out the paperwork McKenna gave me on one of the desks. I knew this wasn’t all of it, maybe not even most of it, but given that I was three weeks behind the curve, it was a lot to digest. It was no mystery to me why Detective McKenna had let me in the door without making me run the gauntlet. Good detectives have the knack of being able to balance their own necessarily strong egos against the public interest. McKenna’s equation was a simple one: his goal was to find Sashi and he didn’t give a shit what it took to do the job. He wasn’t interested in who got the credit and the kudos. He’d worry about bows and curtain calls after the girl was found and the smoke had cleared. It was always the weaklings and the climbers that put themselves ahead of the case. I’d known my share of the good, the bad, and the indifferent over the years. For now, at least, McKenna rated high on the list. I felt sure the detective would get through the night without worrying over my opinion of him. He had more important things to lose sleep over. We both did.

SIX
    I set back out to Sea Cliff before sunup. I’m not exactly sure why I got such an early start. Maybe it was the buzz from working a case again or maybe it was that I wanted to travel under the cover afforded me by the veil of pre-dawn darkness. In the dark I could fool myself that I was going somewhere, anywhere other than Long Island. Long Island’s never been my favorite place. I suppose my antipathy started when I was around six or seven and some of my best friends disappeared from class and from the schoolyard; it was whispered that their parents had moved them to exotic