Rhode Island Red Read Online Free PDF

headbands, Afro picks, and so on.
    â€œA mufflah for ya, Sweetart?” the cuter one of them pitched me. “Genuine mohair, sistah, keep you warm when I’m not than to do the job.”
    â€œHow much?” I asked.
    â€œFive.”
    â€œGenuine mohair, huh?”
    â€œI look like a liar, mon?”
    I chuckled, flirting a little. “No need to get into personalities.”
    He looked prepared to press his case, but I had stopped listening by then. A particular group of items displayed on a plaster replica of a human arm had suddenly captured all my attention.
    â€œWhat are those?” I asked, pointing.
    â€œFor you lovely wrist, lady. Two fa each. Three fa five.”
    I gave him five bucks and lifted off three of the wrist bands. Stiff Indian leather embossed with an eagle’s head. The same ones Siggy was wearing.
    â€œLet me help you,” Mr. Smooth Salesman offered, expertly tying the bands on my wrists and all but copping a feel as he did so.
    I took an even closer look at the bracelets. No doubt about it, these were the kind that Charlie Conlin had left on my kitchen table while he showered.
    â€œThanks a lot,” I said innocently. “Now I want something else.”
    He grinned and passed his hand over the table in a gesture of magnanimousness. “Just you tell me, sistah. What else you want today?”
    â€œI want you to tell me if you had a skinny white guy buy a lot of these lately. He would have been carrying a saxophone case most likely. Long hair. Young.”
    He cast a glance over at the other man and then turned his eyes back to me.
    â€œCome on, sistah,” he said derisively, “why you want a white mon when you have me?”
    â€œYou’re very good,” I said, and I meant it, actually. “But I’ve got to catch a train. Do you know the man or not?”
    â€œKnow nobody,” the second guy spoke up then, a frost in his voice like they don’t often get down Jamaica way.
    â€œOh really?” I said pleasantly, a little frightened but brazening it out. “Well, I think maybe you do.”
    â€œNo no,” cutey protested, still good natured. “We don’t know your mon, sistah.”
    â€œYou know what else I think?” I replied.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou look like a liar, mon.”
    He smiled wickedly. I took a ten out of my wallet and placed it on the table.
    The second guy just shook his head.
    â€œOkay, fellas,” I said with a sigh, “I’ve got to make a quick decision here. I’ve got three phrases running around in my head. And I don’t know which one is going to get me my answer the fastest when I start screaming. So let me try all three of them out on you. Number one: rape! Number two: vendor’s license. Number three: green card.”
    Salesman Two started for me at that moment, but the smoothie put up a staying hand. “Mon didn’t buy them,” he said to me, voice suddenly affectless. “We give them to him for being lookout when we work Penn Station. He hang with old dude name of Wild Bill. They hustle, same as us. Okay, sistah?”
    â€œJust fine,” I said.
    â€œSorry to see you go, Sweetart.”
    Later that afternoon, a commuter in a tan raincoat—of all people—led me out of the wilderness. Just before he turned into Penn Station, the man called out to a musician standing nearby, “How’s it going, Wild Bill?” and pressed a couple of bucks into the guy’s pocket.
    Wild Bill was trumpeting something that might have been pretty and autumnal if weren’t for the bitter hootiness in his tone. He reminded me of a mezzo past her prime, straining hideously for the same note that had once poured out of her throat like good vodka over ice.
    The man who was playing looked, in fact, more like a clowned-out decoy at the rodeo than a jazz musician.
    He wasn’t young. But through the zigzags of white in his hair I could