Night My Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

of River City. And quite often Johnny Nocturne could be found in the back seat.
    “O.K., Johnny, it’s been a quiet night,” Tom Harper said as he wheeled the car around a corner. “Let’s see if we can find some inspiration for you.”
    Harvey Backus paused in the act of lighting a cigarette to point out the side window. “Look! A light in the back of Blinky’s Cigar Store.”
    Tom Harper pulled the car into the curb. “That means an all-night card game. Come on, let’s give ’em a scare.”
    They hopped out of the car, and Johnny Nocturne slid out of the rear seat to follow. He paused on the sidewalk to shove the pencil and pad into his pocket and then followed them inside.
    “What’s up?” a short, balding man said from the door to the back room.
    “Just checking up, Blinky. Let’s have a look.”
    “There ain’t nothin’ here, cop, honest!”
    “Let’s look anyway.”
    Tom Harper shoved past him and threw open the door. A half-dozen men looked up from around a green felt poker table.
    “O.K.,” Harper told them. “Everybody out. And make it quick or I’ll run the whole lot of you in.”
    There was some grumbling from the table as the men pocketed their money and moved towards the door. Harvey Backus towered tall and commanding next to it, and they had to edge past his glistening badge to reach the street.
    “This is just a warning, Blinky,” Harper said. “Next time…”
    “Ah, cop, I don’t hurt anybody. Here, have a cigar.”
    Harper accepted the cigar, because that was the kind of cop he was. Then he and Harvey went back to car 52 and Johnny Nocturne trailed along. As they pulled away, Johnny saw that Blinky was dimming his lights and preparing to close up.
    “Did that inspire you, Johnny?”
    “A little,” Johnny Nocturne admitted, scribbling on his piece of paper. “A little… Perhaps in the night, when the cards are all aces… And the smoke is so thick, you can’t see their faces… Perhaps that is when… ”
    “Hold on,” Harvey Backus shouted. “What’s that up ahead?”
    “It’s a girl,” Harper said, speeding up a bit until they drew alongside. “Are you in trouble, miss?”
    The girl lifted her blonde head and looked at them with wide, glazed eyes. She was barely twenty, and Johnny wondered what she was doing alone at this time of night.
    “I…” she managed to gasp, and then she seemed to collapse in a heap.
    Tom Harper jumped out of the car and turned her over. “Damn,” he muttered. “She hasn’t got a thing on under this coat.”
    Harvey Backus was already coming around from his side of the car, and Johnny slipped out of the rear seat to join them.
    “What happened, miss?” Harper asked her.
    She coughed once and opened her eyes, gazing up at them with glazed, unseeing vision. “I… it was Cravess… Cotton Cravess…”
    And then her eyes closed and somehow they knew she was dead.
    Cotton Cravess was a big man in River City. Perhaps some day he would be a big man in Washington. Certainly he was trying hard enough, and even Johnny Nocturne’s usual casual notice of the political scene had observed Cotton Cravess in action many times.
    He was there on the front page of the paper every morning now, touring slum areas, or awarding prizes, or greeting Negro leaders or puttering in the garden with his wife. It was something different every day, but it was always page one news, possibly because Cotton Cravess owned the newspaper.
    He’d taken over when his father died some five years before, and now, at the age of forty, he was possibly the most powerful figure in the state. His chain of newspapers could sway at least 10 percent of the public on any occasion, and he’d once proved it by getting out a crowd of 15,000 to hear a poetry reading.
    Usually, a man in his position would be content as the power behind the scenes, but not Cotton Cravess. He’d seen his favorite candidates elected to Congress and the State Legislature, and after a time he’d just