The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) Read Online Free PDF

born in Lafayette or Natchitoches or even Slidell, into a blue-collar family without a care in the world except making some kind of crummy salary, just enough to get along, and maybe going to church on Sunday to make up for drinking too much and cheating on his wife.
    What could it have been like to have a childhood in which he didn’t have to make all A’s, then didn’t have to keep up a 3.8 average, get into the best fraternity, get into med school, get the prettiest girl, all that stuff you had to do if you were Sonny Gerard? He wondered if other people who were born not to be ordinary thought about it at all. About what a burden it was. What a pain in the ass.
    He thought about it all the time. Did the triumphs outweigh the effort of it? Yes. They did. That was why he kept it up—that and the fact that he truly wanted to do what was right. It would have been nice if he’d never known about it—his life as Sonny Gerard. If he’d been born Joe Blow and the question hadn’t come up.
    “Sonny? Aren’t you Sonny?”
    He turned. Standing beside him was a woman he knew from somewhere but couldn’t quite place. “Do I know you?”
    “I’m Di. From the program. Maybe you don’t remember me.”
    “Di. Of course.” They hadn’t spoken before, but he’d noticed her, found her very attractive. “Buy you a drink?”
    “Oh.” She looked dismayed, as if he’d insulted her.
    “Hi, Di,” said the bartender.
    “Hi, Floyd. The usual.” She gave him two dollars. To Sonny, she said, “I guess you took me by surprise. I don’t drink. I live across the street.” The bartender laid a stack of quarters in front of her. “Floyd gives me change for the washer and dryer.”
    “You’re doing laundry tonight?” She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a low-cut T-shirt showing cleavage.
    “I was, but it’s so hot.” She sat down and fanned her face.
    “A Coke or something?”
    “Ice water.”
    Sonny ordered another gin and tonic for himself. “Maybe we should go out on the patio.”
    “I can only stay a minute.”
    Up close, he saw the tiny lines under her eyes, the softness of her half-exposed breasts, and realized she was probably as old as his mother. What could he possibly have to say to her? From her right ear hung a star, from her left a crescent.
    “Di for Diana? The goddess of the moon?”
    “And the Huntress. Did you know she was supposed to be immune to falling in love?”
    “Are you?”
    “I’m not even named Diana.”
    “Diane.”
    She shook her head.
    “Diamond.”
    “Diamara.”
    “Ah.” He took a sip of gin, not knowing what to say next. “Diamara.”
    “My birth name was Jacqueline.” She pronounced it Zhakleen.
    “That’s a beautiful name.”
    “It wasn’t me. I’m born again.”
    “How did you come up with Diamara?”
    “You were almost right the first time. I am partly named for Diana but, I have to admit, partly for diamonds, and Mara is a name for the goddess.”
    “Mara or Mera?”
    “I just pronounce it Diamera. It’s really spelled with an A. I had to do it that way so it would come out a master number.”
    Sonny knew there must be a way to answer her. He tried to think what it could be.
    But she said, “Do you know anything about numerology?”
    “Oh, yeah. Numerology. I had a girlfriend once who was into it. Something about names and numbers. But you aren’t supposed to change your name, are you? Isn’t that part of the deal? You have to use the one you were born with?”
    She smiled, a priestess passing on the word. “I do it my way. That’s the way a nine person is, which is what I am; meaning my reality number is nine.”
    “Uh, could you run the system by me again?”
    “Let’s do your name. Okay—Sonny: S is one, o is six, n is five, the second n is five, and y is seven. Twenty-four, right? So that makes six—two plus four. That’s your key number. S is your cornerstone, so that’s one, and o is your instinctive desire, which is the same as your key.