Sleepless Read Online Free PDF

movie.
    They jumped a curb, rode at a cant, half on the sidewalk, and bumped back even, past another logjam of cars.
    Kleiner braced his hands against the door and the roof.
    "Jesus, Hounds."
    Hounds killed the siren.
    "What else we got? Dreamer?"
    A new note in Hounds's voice as he said the word. Same note that might have come into the voice of a drunk playing a scratcher at a gas station, before the state leased the lottery, before the company that bought it went bust. A note of hope and disbelief in the bare second before he confirms that the number that looks like it might be worth a million is indeed his usual two-buck winner. Just like he knew it would turn out to be.
    Kleiner dropped the caps back in the bottle.
    "No, Demerol."
    The sedan lurched as it was broadsided by a hybrid edging into traffic from North Vermont, and the plainclothes pointed at the driver.
    "Motherfucker! Fucking shoot that motherfucker!"
    Kleiner ignored the request, opening the baggie.
    "Who has Dreamer? No one has real Dreamer. Just bootleg crap."
    Hounds turned to look again at Park.
    "And you, what's this bullshit about a sleepless taking Valium?"
    Park looked between his knees.
    "This guy in Koreatown. Says they help. He takes them ten at a time. Drinks a bottle of red wine. Says he almost naps."
    Hounds chewed his lip.
    "Ten at a time. Does it work?"
    Park shrugged.
    "He thinks it does. Never heard of it before. But they all have things they try. Know a lady, she chops up melatonin and snorts it. Twenty, thirty grams at a time."
    "Yeah, but the Valium?"
    Park shook his head.
    "I doubt it."
    "Fuck. Fuck."
    Griffith Park loomed brown on their left.
    Park looked at the fire-scorched hillside. Tents were starting to repopulate it now that the wreckage and dead bodies from the original refugee camp had been mostly cleared away and the smoldering ground fires extinguished.
    Hounds slapped the dash.
    "Hey, what about the Demerol? That help sleepless any?"
    "Not that I ever heard of. I sell that to a regular old pill head. Guy used to be a roadie for Tom Petty."
    Park watched a crowd of refugees gathering at a Red Cross truck. Most of them had been burned out of the canyons between the Ventura Freeway and the coast, flushed from the chaparral as far north as Mugu Lagoon.
    Looking at the lost and unmoored, his mind drifted.
    "The only thing I ever heard of really working other than Dreamer is maybe Pentosan. But the molecule is too big to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. So they have to install a shunt to administer it."
    He remembered the doctor who had described the procedure to him and Rose.
    Basically we drill a hole in your skull and drive a bolt through it.
    Rose had declined. Rather, Rose had said, No fucking way in hell.
    Park shook his head.
    "Anyway, all the Pentosan really does is keep you alive. You're still sleepless, still in pain. Some sleepless have been given massive doses of Quina -crine and recovered. Briefly. Then they get worse than before. Palsies. Liver failure."
    He shrugged again.
    "Valium, stuff like that, mostly it's people grabbing at whatever makes them feel better for an hour or two."
    Hounds was tapping the brakes, slowing as they approached the line of cars before the Los Angeles River checkpoint.
    "How you know all that shit?"
    Again Park shrugged.
    "I sell drugs."
    "Shit."
    Hounds wiped sweat from his forehead.
    "My fucking mother-in-law, she's with us. Sleepless for a couple months now. Bitch is getting bad. Fucking insufferable. Stumbling around all fucking hours. Talking shit all the time. Freaking out the kids. Why's Grandma calling me Billy, Daddy? Try explaining to a kid, Well, honey, it's cuz Granny's thalamus is being eaten away by misfolded proteins and she's having waking dreams that are more like fucking nightmares and she doesn't know where the hell she is and she thinks you're her son who was actually a miscarriage she had in high school when she was fifteen. I could give her ten Valium and a bottle of