No Time to Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

and pulled the sour-smelling mattress back to check the cache: a small bag of weed and the smaller plastic bag of pills and capsules—steroids necessary for his muscle development program.
    This’ll hold me
.
    He lay down again and wondered if he should roll a joint to take his mind off the stars painting the walls. He was glad he had woken up because he was getting tired of the dream that seemed to be coming more often lately.
    In the dark, wide awake now, it came to him again. Someone was whispering, telling him how slick he was not to have gotten caught yet. And how way back, way back, he’d gotten that name Ache.
    He’d been sitting at the dinner table, eight years old and squirming in pants he’d outgrown when he was six, wearing no underwear to speak of, and itching in an old woolen sweater that hadn’t seen water in a year.
    Hazel, his mother, had slammed her fork down hard, rattling the salt and pepper shakers, and glared at him. “Every time I look at your ugly ass, you make my head ache. You give me a stomachache. Don’t need you sittin’ here givin’ me eye for eye. Make me throw up. Git outta here. You can eat in your room!”
    He had melted out of sight, knowing that she would lock him in the closet like the other times if he didn’t move fast enough. Occasionally one of her men would turn the key and let him out. But sometimes even they forgot.
    One time, when he finally heard the key turn and the door opened again, the moon was already pushing a small dim light through the open window. He had gone to his room, waited until his mother was occupied in her own bed, then crept down the fire escape on his belly, carrying a coil of rope.
    No one was around to question an eight-year-old prowling the streets after midnight. No one was there to track him through the backyards and alleys, and by dawn, he had killed seven cats and two stray puppies, left them on clotheslines stretched between sheets and socks.
    In another part of the dream, he was in a classroom again, sitting alone in the last row, silent in a class of thirty. He did not hear the teacher call his name because he’d been staring at Mercy Anne Tompkins sitting in front of him. Twelve years old and beautiful. Each day he studied her shining braids, full blouses, short skirts, and patent-leather shoes. When she moved, the scent of the fresh soap he rarely had drifted under his nose. Her large eyes were wide and beautiful even though she never looked at him.
    But she turned that day and laughed with everyone else when the teacher cut into him with his usual arsenal of wit: “You raised your hand this morning when I took attendance. Are you really here?”
    Mercy Anne with the beautiful eyes had laughed with everyone else.
    After school, he couldn’t follow her home because a car always came to pick her up. He watched it disappearin the traffic, then turned and walked fast to catch up with Natalie, a small ten-year-old, always smiling, even when no one was around to see her smile. So he caught up with her and she smiled vacantly and sang words in a baby’s voice that she herself didn’t understand and hid her broken teeth behind her small hands.
    He looked at her hair, knotted and gray with lint, her dress too small and too wrinkled, her shoe heels worn to the ground so that the toes curled up. She had no socks to cover ashy legs but she smiled and hummed as he took her hand and led her into a building a block from the school. She followed him to the roof landing, and when she stopped smiling and said she didn’t want to play anymore, he’d left her with her neck bent sideways under a discarded box spring mattress, with old paint cans, a wheelless baby stroller, and garbage-filled plastic bags piled on top.
    For weeks, he lounged on the stoop watching Natalie’s mother wander around, looking in garbage cans, alleys, backyards, crazed, crying, asking if anyone had seen her little girl.
    See what I mean, Ache? You ain’t never been caught. You