Nitro Mountain Read Online Free PDF

call anybody.
    Rachel bounded onto the bed with the dog and they both covered me in kisses and paws and fingers, like we were actually lovers.
    “Food’s almost done,” she said. “Come on.” She kissed my cheek and stood up over me, her nylon nightgown opening, and on the lower cheek of her ass I saw a tattoo of lips, three little words printed under it.
    “That,” I said, and touched it.
    “Kiss my ass.”
    “Let me.”
    She stepped off the bed and said, “I gotta,” holding herself. The thought of her going in there to do that sent a rush through my groin, but I slid into my jeans and walked down the hallway to the kitchen, slowing past the bathroom to hear her pissing.
    Over eggs and bacon I told her, “They’re up to some bullshit at Misty’s.”
    “I didn’t know you were a detective.”
    “No. I mean, really.” The black coffee steamed in her bright kitchen. By the time we’d finished talking about Misty’s, what I’d seen, it was cold and untouched. “Drive me over there and I’ll prove it,” I said.
    “Don’t you think it’s best to sometimes let things be?”
    “Sometimes, yeah. I just got to pick up a couple cords.”
    “If you’ll leave it at that. I don’t want to get involved in this nonsense.”
    “You might already be.”
    “They’re not even open yet,” she said. “Not for another few hours.”
    “Hey,” I said, getting an idea. I threw the coffee back, took her to the bedroom and kicked the dog out.
    —
    The day was the kind of clean and clear that almost made the weather seem warm. The top branches of a twisting white oak caught the light as we turned onto the road to town. The bare mountainside was the color of a deer. She clicked the radio to some station playing opera. I never liked that music, didn’t understand it, but this time a man’s voice wailed out an endless lonesome cry, and I knew exactly what he was saying. He was just some lost dude, down on his luck and looking for love. All he had to his name was a busted heart. And that’s all he needed. I turned the volume up, closed my eyes and listened.
    She parked in front of the veranda, the front tires butting against a pallet.
    “Careful,” I said.
    “
You
be careful.”
    The pub door sucked shut behind me. Pine walls slick and blackened, a low dropped ceiling with fluorescent lights. “Anybody here?” I called toward the kitchen. “Just getting my shit.”
    Next to the cash register Bob’s front half lay stretched across the bar. His head rested on a folded arm while the other reached out in front of him, as if ready to take payment. The greased hairdo flopped over dead. His dentures had slid halfway out of his mouth. I walked past him and gathered my cords. Didn’t take but a second, and then I slid back to the pinball machines, past buzzers and flashing lights and into the ladies’ room and the sharp stink of urine and bleach.
    A little black thing like a clip-on microphone was stuck outside the toilet up around the back of the bowl with a kind of lens that looked like a water droplet. A thin black cable snuck down to the floor and into the wall. In case somebody was watching, I grabbed some toilet paper so I’d have an excuse and took it to the men’s room. I stood around for an ass-wiping minute and then stepped out like nothing was wrong, just a bass player come to get his usual forgottens.
    Bob was where I’d left him, but now he was on his other side, the mirror image of a minute ago. The heater hanging from the ceiling coughed a blast of dry air into my hair and poured out rolling fumes of oil heat.
    When I got back outside, I gasped as if I’d been holding my breath the whole time. The man with the tattoo was leaning against Rachel’s car. “You,” he said. “What’s everybody call you?” He was staring at the ground beside me.
    I lifted the cables in my good hand to show him why I’d been in there, but then I saw what I still held in my left hand: the roll of toilet paper.
    He