The Barkeep Read Online Free PDF Page B

kill anyone.”
    “Even the person who killed your mom?”
    “Based on what you said, that would be you.”
    “I’m just the instrument, like a gun. And you know what they say about guns.”
    “Whatever you might be, I’m not a killer. It’s hard enough to live with myself as it is. The karma would be all wrong. Andbesides, I don’t have any money. I don’t sling drinks for my health. End of the month I’m strapped like everyone else. There’s nothing to tap, here, Birdie. Sorry.”
    “You could raise it if you wanted.”
    “No I couldn’t.”
    “What about your daddy? He sure got it somewheres. You could ask him.”
    With the swiftness of an arctic wind, Birdie Grackle became suddenly less amusing. “I don’t talk to my father,” said Justin.
    “Maybe it’s time to start.”
    “Maybe it’s time for you to go to hell.”
    “Don’t you worry, boy. At the rate things is closing down on me, that won’t be too long.”
    “And the third reason your little scheme isn’t going to work is that I know very well who killed my mom. And he is currently in jail for the rest of his natural-born life. So I have no need for your services. We’re done. Your scam isn’t going to work, but I have to admit it is a first.”
    “Is that how it’s going to be?”
    “That’s how it’s going to be.”
    “Suit yourself,” said Birdie. He picked up his drink, slurped the rest of it down, pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket with a number scrawled on it. “You reconsider, you give me a call. I’ll be in town for a few days, catch a ball game maybe, but then I’m gone.” He stood and looked down. “Don’t take too long.”
    “Don’t hold your breath.”
    Grackle smiled at Justin as if he knew something that Justin didn’t, before turning, hitching up his pants, and heading out of the restaurant. Then he stopped, like he had suddenly remembered he left his teeth beneath the napkin, and came back to the table.
    “You know, that job, the instructions Preacher gave me, it was supposed to look like a robbery. And whatever I took, I was supposed to hand over to Preacher for him to give the client as proof. But I didn’t hand over everything. I used to take souvenirs from my jobs. Little things, knickknacks to remind me of what I was. But I don’t need them trophies no more, so I thought you might like this.” He pulled from his jacket pocket an old, worn envelope and tossed it onto the table. It landed with a thunk.
    Justin picked up the envelope. There was something small inside, small but heavy. He tore the end of the envelope off and dumped the object onto the tablecloth.
    A turtle.
    He looked up to see Birdie Grackle’s back retreating from him, looked down again at the turtle. Not a real one, a pin, a women’s brooch, made of green enamel with rhinestone eyes. It was a cute little thing, something that would appeal to a kid’s sensibilities. Justin knew this because he had bought the enamel turtle for his mother for Mother’s Day when he was the tender age of twelve.

5.
    LIME RIKKI
    T he doubts came at night for Mia Dalton, and they came with teeth bared.
    During the daytime, Mia Dalton lived in a world of certainties. The sky was blue, the ocean was salty, guilt was a condition of the soul merely ratified in court by a jury of the defendant’s peers. And the most important certainty of all was that when Mia Dalton was prosecuting homicides with a ferocity that made hers a cursed name in penitentiaries all across the state, she was always acting as a crusading instrument of justice.
    Mia Dalton had convicted some of the most notorious murderers in Philadelphia’s history, including a famous sixties icon who decades ago had decapitated his girlfriend, stuffed her body into a trunk, and then gone on the lam in France until being found and extradited. Now chief of the Homicide Division, Mia was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker, peppering her popular talk with the lurid details of her most