Mr. Hooligan Read Online Free PDF Page A

left, a few dozen yards up the road and it’s easy to miss, just a chicken-wire fence set back at an angle, a dirt path, probably leading to some shack way in the back. The little boy just stands there staring through the wire, sucking a pacifier. Riley walks up, gets close to the gate and looks down at the little boy. The boy is expressionless, staring up, sucking that pacifier. Not frightened, not curious, just a blank look. Riley raises a finger to his lips, goes ‘Shhh.’ He nods at the little boy, gets into his car and drives away.
    “He heads back to the Western Highway. He passes no other car in either direction on that dirt road and he’s thinking he just might get away with this. The child at the gate? Riley says he didn’t fear him. He looked no older than three, and there was something in his face that … well, suggested retardation. At the intersection with the Western Highway, there’s a restaurant, a two-story concrete building, unpainted, you probably know it. A couple yapping on the verandah hardly pay him any mind when he drives by. He’s thinking, good, he just might get away.”
    Roger said, “But I take it, he’s wrong.”
    “He keeps driving—”
    “Wait, one moment there, Patricia. You said that he killed someone. But it sounds like he killed two men.”
    “He killed one man. And one devil.”
    “Oh, come on, now, you don’t even believe in a deity anymore. Listen to you with this metaphysical talk. Devil?”
    Patricia rose and went to the window. She cranked open the aluminum louvers. Only a few cars in the parking lot, one with a cab driver behind the wheel reading a magazine. She watched a paper bag skitter across the dusty pavement. “What time is it, Roger?”
    “Around five thirty or so. Why?”
    “I’m supposed to meet him outside about now, and he’s usually pretty punctual.”
    “Another counseling session?”
    Patricia returned to her seat. She said, “No, he’s through with counseling. Not that he’d even call it that. More like ‘talks.’ Soon he might be through with the talks, he might be getting married. No, today he’s just meeting me to drop off something.”
    Roger inhaled deeply. “Feel that lovely breeze, so nice. That lovely Belize Breeze,” smiling at her.
    “You’re so very clever. My, I can’t get anything past that steel-trap intellect of yours, can I?”
    “Only concerned that you’re not driving.”
    “So I can’t drink anymore, but some nights I could use just a little help to take the edge off.”
    Roger raised a hand. “No excuses necessary.”
    “None given.”
    Roger cocked his head. “When Riley drove off, past the restaurant and nobody noticed, is that the end of the story? Did he get away with it?”
    “Well, that’s what he hoped. But no one really gets away, you know that. No, Roger, Riley’s problems were just beginning. The news about Red Boy and the Lebanese came over the radio the next day—remember we didn’t have TV news back then. They said that Corporal Lucius Myvette and Lebanese national Tarik El-Bani were found dead on Manatee Road, victims of multiple gunshot wounds, police were investigating and so far there were no suspects and so on and so forth. Riley said that started one of the worst weeks of his life. It was the waiting, the fear, the paranoia that any day, any minute the cops would come knocking at his door, rouse him from bed. He said he even had nightmares they busted into his bathroom while he was on the toilet. I mean, he was a physical and mental mess. Still, still—he hadn’t told anyone. He didn’t tell me until much later. And by the end of that week he thought he was home free. The radio, the papers were saying there were still no suspects and very few clues. But he’d overlooked something.
    “Remember the cash Red Boy had taken and he’d taken back from Red Boy? Well, some of the bills, he hadn’t completely wiped off all the blood. Israel Monsanto had noticed the stains, and when he