On the Nickel Read Online Free PDF

Toilets overflowed with human shit. Everyone knew they lived in some relationship to bad luck, whatever they chose to call it, and it didn’t take much to remind them of that fact. He always offered a painless and perfectly reasonable alternative.
    A fire truck siren went off nearby and Vartabedian thought of his beaten-down old man in Erciş, in eastern Turkey, all five-foot-one of him, and wondered if anybody had ever offered him a painless and reasonable alternative. He doubted anyone ever had. The elder Hagop Vartabedian had insisted that his family had lived right there on Lake Van for 3,000 years, within sight of Mount Ararat, where he told his kids that he had once found a chip of the Ark. But nothing could be painless and reasonable in eastern Turkey, not for a Christian infidel, hated by all the Turks, part of the tiny remnant population of Armenians after the genocide, hiding out now amongst the Kurds.
    The old man had played at staying invisible most of his life, evaporating before insults, until he’d finally had too much and abandoned his fifty generations in Erciş and taken his family to Fresno, California, to work amongst the second-rate grapes of his cousin Aram.
    ‘Boss,’ Thibodeaux said from the far end of the bench. The blood had congealed over his cut and no longer ran down his arm. ‘When can I use Diane?’ The small man seemed to mean his switchblade.
    Jesus Christ. Anybody who’d name a knife should be dropped by parachute into Turkey wearing a big sign saying how much he hates Mohammed. Just on general principles – to keep the gene pool uncluttered.
    It was the golden-haired McCall that Vartabedian had hired, and he wasn’t sure why the man kept this little loose cannon around. ‘No, Rice, not now. Maybe later.’
    Rice Thibodeaux snicked the clasp with a sigh, and then flipped the blade back into its housing with one of those great show-off flourishes that with a little bad luck would one day see him slicing off his own ear.
    ‘Baby, I only put you in da linen closet ‘cause we full up wit wheezers las’ PM. There a room now. A guy passed last night, pray his soul be save. You wanna sleep where some guy pass? Wasn’t no blood.’ The man’s odd pink eyes went wide.
    ‘People die everywhere. I don’t believe in ghosts.’ He wasn’t sure the man remembered. ‘Carl Roosevelt sent me.’ As far as Conor could tell the hotel was nearly empty so all this talk about lack of space was a genuine mystery.
    ‘You done tol’ me. Carl he pretty bad impair, baby. Don’t take nothin’ for granite roun’ here. You don’ wanna lean on jus’ every swingin’ dick on The Nickel says he kin help.’ Dusty Phillips was the only albino human being that Conor had ever seen in person, though he had always revered Johnny Winter and Piano Red. He thought Dusty was probably an African-American, but it was hard to tell. He tried not to stare at the pink blinking eyes, or the tightly curled bleachy hair on the old man.
    ‘And git yo’self out of the Fort as quick as you can. Ain’ fit for a nice clean boy like you, whatever your reason.’
    The manager sat in a cage with a good view of the four dilapidated and unoccupied sofas in the lobby and the TV that was murmuring away on some good-morning show.
    ‘You’ve been good to me, sir. San Diego thanks you.’
    ‘San D.? You know Harborside?’
    ‘I know where it is, but it’s not my territory. Mostly Latino, isn’t it?’
    ‘Now I guess. Not back in the day. People still talk about Alonzo Horton blow into town and buy him a big chunk of the place for $260?’
    ‘I might’ve heard that.’
    ‘I can’t really decide who you is, boy. Whether you a curveball coming off a lefty.’ Dusty cocked his head, as if judging Conor on some invisible scale. ‘Hell, OK, I don’t care.’ The albino handed him an old-fashioned skeleton key on a paddle that said C-20.
    ‘I’m not sure who I am either,’ Conor said. ‘But I pay.’
    ‘They’s two