Matryoshka Blues (The Average Joe Mysteries Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

hurt and disappointment, and the metaphoric knife twists a little more to the right.
    “Have I ever let you down?” I ask her.
    “Not even once.”
    “Damn straight.” I look at the time and grab the duffel bag. “Gotta go. Call you later.”
    “Damn straight.”
     

 
    5
    W hen you go to the beach, you wear swimwear. When you’re on a date, you wear deodorant. When you go to the part of town I’m going to, at the time of night I’m going, you wear public transportation. You don’t drive. Taxis would be okay if they were willing to venture this far crazy. But never your own car. That’s begging for trouble, and I hate to beg.
    Not that I haven’t had to in my life. I’m a guy. We beg for all sorts of shit, but it’s usually because someone’s got our balls in their grip, and we’d like them back at some point.
    God, I want another sandwich. This is why I don’t go to Maggie Jane’s much anymore. Shit’s addictive like you wouldn’t believe, and, like Tully, I’d like to keep wearing…well, not pretty dresses, that’s for sure. But certainly something a little more fashion-forward than a fucking Marlon Brando muumuu.
    Island of Dr. Moreau , anyone? No? Christ on a merry-go-round. Why do I bother?
    The exchange is in a six-story abandoned building, the kind that could have been a hotel, a movie theater, or an office building, depending on who owned it and when. It’s a gorgeous design, though: all retro and sharp angles, a wide sweeping staircase around an open-air shaft, and tall windows with decorative trim and rounded heads and frosted glass. No one designs architecture like this anymore. Everything’s composites and prefab with rounded corners everywhere you turn so you don’t hurt yourself when you pass out from all the boring.
    I’m not one of those back-in-my-day types either, for your information. I appreciate things that take effort, and I detest things that don’t. It’s that simple.
    The lobby-slash-trash receptacle reeks of excrement, pot, mildew, and age. You know what I mean by age , right? Shit wears down over time, and it starts to generate foul odors, like a zombie’s fart in a Taco Bell toilet stall.
    You know what? Don’t picture that. Forget I said anything.
    The stairs are so warped and skewed they remind me of Donkey Kong, but they hold up well enough under the weight of me and my well-stuffed duffel bag.
    I’m not fat, for the record. I’m tall, but not fat. Well, you’ve seen me without a shirt. I’m average , all the cool kids would say.
    And so we’re clear: I kick ass at Donkey Kong.
    There’s enough waning daylight coming through enough dirt-caked windows that I don’t need the miner’s light yet, but the last dim rays are sinking fast behind an unseen horizon. The building creaks and moans the higher I climb, gearing up for the soiree to come.
    It almost has to be a party, too, given the ingredients: an abandoned building at night, covert exchanges, and a mystery box sought after by a slightly less-mysterious client. It screams for Humphrey Bogart to be the epitome of badass and swagger he’s so rightfully known to be.
    I pass the second floor and see a door with a pane of glass set in its upper half. Pale daylight from an outside window behind it reveals enough faded lettering to tell me it was once home to the Chesapeake Investment Group, and my brain automatically changes it to the Cheapskate Investment Group. One, because that’s how my brain works; and two, because, let’s face it, they probably were fucking cheapskates. I never heard of the company, so I’ve no idea what befell them, but I wonder if their clients ever saw their money again, or if it all just magically disappeared one night, never to be seen again. Probably the latter.
    In case you can’t tell, I hate this shitty world sometimes. Far more than I want to.
    Sandecker’s instructions say I’m looking for the third floor, right side, fourth door on the left. In the blessed name of