Mortality Bridge Read Online Free PDF

like the real thing.
    Howard called him back a few days later. “I’ve read your little prank, Mr. Popoudopolos, and I must tell you that what Shakespeare is to the stage this contract is to law.”
    “That’s bad?”
    “Hardly. It contains some of the most effective contractual language it has been my fearful pleasure to read. I’d rather fight the law of gravity than go up against this thing. Did you know it won’t photocopy?”
    “No kidding.”
    “I tried to make a Xerox of it to show some associates. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “Me neither.” Niko closed his eyes. “So if it were real would you sign it?”
    “I personally would not wipe my ass with this thing. But it’s a masterpiece.” Howard chuckled. “Sign it hell. I’d frame it.”
     
    PHIL POINTED HIS fork at Niko’s valise. “Really, Niko-polis. I expected more from you.” He dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin. His plate now spotless. “So what exactly is the purpose of this meeting? To tell us Don’t, like Jimmy Cagney? Keep ya mitts offa my goyl?”
    “Jem has nothing to do with this. She’s not part of—”
    “Read the fine print, Niko-saurus. Section three sub a little i. Valued chattels attached.” Phil leaned back on the seat and drummed his fingers.
    “Your business is with me. Leave her alone.”
    Phil slid his shades down his nose and leaned forward and looked at Niko over the frames. Bald eyes wanting iris or pupil, eggwhite sclera redwormed and dull. “Or else what, you pusfilled maggotfeast? You’re meat, asshole. And you’ve been our meat ever since you signed on the dotted line. What part of Sell did you not understand?”
    Niko quailed beneath that cueball gaze. A look around the restaurant showed the diners tending to their own affairs. One of the oddest things here in fact was that he’d not been recognized. Nobody seemed to know him, everybody passed him by.
    Phil slid his shades back up and resumed his former velvet tone. “What you’ve got there in your dorky lawyer bag is a receipt, shitbag. With your signature guaranteeing delivery. We can run a DNA test on the ink if you want.” He smiled. “So get off your high horse and listen up, Niko-sabe.” He pointed a pinky at Niko and his tone allowed no contravention. Niko smelled burnt matches on his breath. “Our business, as you put it, is with what the philosophers like to call your irreducible self. Such as it is. And guess who’s part of that now.” The hand lowered to the table. “What, you thought you had a get out of jail free card if you didn’t marry her?” The braying laugh again. “You’re the one who fell in love, Don Juan. Maybe you should have kept your pecker in your pocket.” He moved his plate aside and slid Niko’s untouched chicken fried steak in its place. He picked up knife and fork and dug in like a dire wolf while Niko tried to think of what to say or do. Phil glanced up at Niko and held his knife and fork before him in a cross. “Here comes the whiny beggy part. I hate that as much as I hate coming up this way, so spare me before I choke on my lunch here.” The utensils turned outward with his shrug. “You signed and we delivered and now it’s your turn and you want to welsh. I’ve heard this song so many times it gives me a headache.” He chugged his coffee in one gulp again and slammed the empty cup on the table. “Every damned one of you tries to renege. You’ve even tried before.”
    “How could I have? I haven’t even seen you since—”
    “Not now, pinhead. Different times, different guises, different means. You don’t remember because that birth thing fucks you guys up something awful. And I end up meeting you in the woods or in some cheapo movie graveyard at midnight or in some artery clogging choke and puke—” he indicated at the restaurant with the knife and fork “—and I sit there listening while every one of you maggot banquets tries to cheat his way out of a binding contract freely