Snitch Factory: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

asset and an inspiration, making me eat this shit.”
    He pointed the fork at the massacred fillet. Lavoris, showing a great deal of cleavage, took a sip of her wine and said to him, “That’s what lovers are for.”
    “Don’t get me started on that subject,” Petard grumbled.
“Do you know in the last year I’ve had to get rid of most of the names that I kept in my phone book? I’m talking about old friends…like fucking bookends that you want to throw out with the trash.”
    “People can get redundant, can’t they?”
    “It’s the con artists and the opportunists that get to me. I’ve got all kinds of friends. I’ve got my fair-weather friends, long-distance friends and temporary friends. I’ve got my ex-friends and now I’ve got you, Lav.”
    “That’s what happens to men.”
    “How’s that?”
    “They end up solitary in the world. Like a polar bear on an ice cap. It takes a woman to keep them from going insane.”
    “Pussy is the crossroads of life, isn’t it?”
    “Please don’t ruin the meal, Gerald.”
    “Honey, I’m flattering you. What you’ve got? If I could bottle it, I’d make a fortune.”
    “Be quiet and eat your fish before it gets cold,” she instructed him. “It has more texture and taste when it’s warm.”
    “Warm or not, it’s not like pork chops, and I miss that.”
    “Gerald?”
    “What?”
    “Close your mouth when you chew.”
    Lavoris’s beauty was a peculiar thing. Under the influence of Bruno’s obscure lighting, her skin shone like burnished copper. Her cheekbones were asymmetrical and one eye was colored darker than the other. When she reached for the long-stemmed wine glass, her bracelets glittered and her ponderous breasts shifted inside a sleeveless blouse.

    “I feel like eating you,” Petard replied, putting down his fork. He ran a finger over her forearm and when he began to kiss her, the backfiring of a passing car’s muffler filtered into the restaurant. This caused more than a few of the patrons to duck under their tables, thinking it was gun-fire. Gerald, uncaring, glued his lips on Lavoris’s mouth, bumping his leg on the table, rattling the silverware and dishes.
    The mayor, craning his head, saw this. He thought the well-dressed couple were being classy and romantic and he started to clap his hands. This set off a chain reaction; everyone else in Bruno’s wanted to stay on the mayor’s good side and they began to applaud Gerald and Lavoris.
    The DSS hetman, never one to miss an opportunity, got to his feet, posing like a boxing champion. It prompted the mayor, who couldn’t afford to be outdone, to rise, as well. The mayor’s entourage, not getting it, rose from their tables in their booths. Everybody had stopped eating and drinking.
    Gerald, pleased at how easy it was to manipulate the crowd, kept his eyes on the mayor, who was beginning to see that nothing was happening. If it went on any longer, the redheaded man with the wolfish grin would make a clown out of him.
    “Who the fuck is that?” The mayor asked an aide by his side. He sat back down in a huff; the women and businessmen with him did, too. Petard, thumbs in his belt loops, laughed his head off.

eight
    A home visit was a prerequisite for getting the monthly benefits. Frances Dominguez’s application was on my desk, staring me in the face. With her phone call, I couldn’t procrastinate any longer and I took a county car over to her duplex on Shotwell Street.
    On the ride there, going by El Herradero, then Yip Wing’s Trading Company, the Gold Star Check Cashing Company, Tak Fok Restaurant and the Ali Baba Factory Outlet, I think I ran over a dog or a cat. I heard a thump, but since I was late, I didn’t have the time to stop and find out.
    There wasn’t anywhere to park near my client’s residence, a problem on most of the Mission’s ill-paved spidery streets. So I crammed the sedan onto the sidewalk next to her building.
    Her apartment was in a crumbling, sub-divided