Loose Ends Read Online Free PDF

wheel and hit forty in the twenty-five zone in two seconds flat, twisting through the narrow car-lined streets. Unlike more modern suburbs, garages and driveways were small in this neighborhood, seldom holding more than one car, and curbside parking was the norm. “I need you to take a look at Sorkin’s landline records for the last week, incoming and outgoing. Flag repeat calls, and try to match all the numbers to names. Then cross-reference them with the ex’s. Also,” I kept my voice casual, “pull up Cole Sage’s records. Any numbers he has, including his office numbers at the Chronicle . See if anything lines up. Print those all out, will you?” If I was going to pay Mickey to hack, I might as well feed my favorite obsession. Okay, maybe second favorite, or third, after racing and poker.
    “Okay, Boss. I’ll have all this by tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”
    “That’s my boy.”
    “I wish.” Mickey hung up.
    “I heard a wistful undertone in Mickey’s words,” my dead father said in my ear. Okay, I knew he wasn’t really there. He wasn’t a ghost, I was pretty sure. He’d never told me anything I didn’t already know or reveal secrets of the Other Side. But ever since the bomb blast, he’d show up and talk to me, usually when I was driving alone.
    I couldn’t help but look over at the passenger seat. Sometimes I could see him, sometimes only hear his words. Today he sat there in his corduroy jacket and long 70s haircut, exactly like he appeared in my favorite photo of him, the one on my office wall.
    “Poor guy’s had a crush on me since I hired him for one of my first private cases,” I replied as if nothing weird was going on, refusing to allow tears to spring to my eyes. I’d found if I tried to make the hallucination go away, whatever part of my mind created it fought back harder. Better to simply roll with it, talk it out and let it fade along with the ache in my heart.
    “I wouldn’t worry. It’s a hopeless nerdy fanboy thing, like having the hots for Halle Berry because she plays superheroes and villains.”
    “I don’t worry.”
    “I hope you don’t flirt with Mickey to keep him working harder for you.”
    I shook my head. “That would be cheap. Besides, unrequited hope seems to flow like caffeine through the whole gamer crowd’s veins. I don’t have to encourage him.”
    “But you don’t dis courage him.”
    “I don’t want to crush his ego.”
    “If you did, he might get over you and find a girlfriend.”
    “I can’t do that. I’m shocked you’d even suggest it.”
    “Sometimes you have to kill the hope-monkey,” he said.
    The hope-monkey was a metaphor Dad often used. He said people were addicted to hope like a junkie to the needle. I thought about Cole, knowing I might have more in common with Mickey than I’d admit. Maybe it was the scarring that put Cole off. I massaged the damaged area around my right ear with the heel of my hand. That part always still felt like it was asleep. My thoughts turned dark as I answered my own question.
    “Your mind is wandering,” my father said.
    “It does that.”
    “You don’t look that bad. Plenty of men show interest in you.”
    “Children don’t run screaming and people don’t flinch away, you mean.” When I see myself in the mirror or a snapshot someone has taken of me I look completely normal, but what woman doesn’t obsess over her flaws?
    “Screw Cole,” Dad said. “Get a grip, girl. Plenty of fish in the sea.”
    That was proof positive this apparition was no spirit, just a hallucination. Dad never used language even that strong. He’d been a good Catholic and a crusader for social justice, unfailingly polite even when he was being tough.
    “Easier said than done, Dad.”
    I waited, but he didn’t answer. When I looked over, he was gone, thank God.
    Breaking out of the cramped neighborhood with relief, I turned off my higher brain function and floored it onto Miller Avenue, raced through the traffic as