Stick Read Online Free PDF

fun of dogmas and people in high places and would laugh until her mom stuck her head in the door with her look of quiet amazement. Her dad had been on Wall Street since she was a baby and remained, he said, because he didn’t know how to do anything else. She would never tell him she made more money than he did, with her snobby Gucci-Cartier approach to investment counseling; though it was her dad who’d told her rich people loved to be pushed around—as long as they believed they were being pushed exclusively. Her dad was dry, the cynic who’d never cheered, screamed or cried
until her brother Jim moved up to the Red Sox from Pawtucket, had a 12-2 record by the All Star break his first year, pitched three scoreless innings and finished the season 18-8. Jim was a stockbroker, now, still in Boston. Her brother Mike had made it through Columbia Law and was now an agent in the New York office of the FBI.
    She pictured telling Chucky about “my brother the Fed” and had to smile. He could be tiresome, but at least he was different. She might go with Chucky.

4
    STICK TRIED THE LEATHER CHAIR behind the giant desk, swiveling slowly from side to side as he stared at the phone system, at the dull orange glow in one of the extension buttons.
    He said, “I bet what’s his name, Chucky’s talking to somebody. You want to listen in?”
    It brought Rainy away from the glass doors, coming over with his shoulders hunched like he was tiptoeing, not wanting to make any noise.
    â€œCome on, man, don’t fool around.”
    â€œI haven’t touched it.”
    â€œHe’s got phones all over this place,” Rainy said. “You know how many phones he’s got?”
    â€œFour,” Stick said. “Five?”
    â€œFive, shit. He’s got . . .  I think he’s got one, two, three, four . . .  five, six, seven”—Rainy seemed to be picturing them as he counted, punching the air with one finger, giving it short jabs—”eight, nine, he’s got like twelve phones up here.”
    â€œThat’s a lot of phones,” Stick said. “He must like phones, huh?”
    â€œHe has to have them,” Rainy said. “Chucky owns the whole top floor up here, the apartments like connected together. Cost him, I hear, a million dollars. Shit, that’s nothing to him. Some of his guys stay here. That one, Lionel Oliva, he’s like his bodyguard. Chucky has an apartment he keeps a broad in when he’s got a broad here, you know, staying. I don’t know if he’s got one staying here now or not. Chucky goes through broads, man. They don’t stay too long. He gets rid of them or they get nervous being with him and have to leave. Some guys—did I tell you that? They say he’s a switch-hitter, but I never seen him with anything but a broad.”
    Stick said, “No chicks, huh?”
    Rainy said, “What?”
    â€œNothing,” Stick said. He’d think about it, see if there was a distinction between a chick and a broad. Or ask Rainy about it sometime. He got up from the desk where he was making Rainy nervous and looked around the paneled den. The wood walls and floor made the room seem bare.
    Stick went over to a row of framed color photographs of groups of men in sporty attire. A group with golf clubs. A group standing by a row of sailfish hanging by their tails. A group having drinks on the fantail of a yacht. The name, lettered in gold on the stern, was Seaweed. This one interested Stick because there were two girls in string bikinis standingamong the soft-looking guys in their Easter-egg outfits, the girls acting coy, trying to appear surprised, their mouths saying Ohhh to whatever the guys were doing or saying to them. Stick looked a little closer. One of the girls wore a gold slave chain around her bare middle—yeah, and the comedian next to her with the wide-eyed who-me? look had his hand behind