The Big Bamboo Read Online Free PDF

attorney on lunch break.
    “Serge, you never called me back.”
    He returned to his typewriter and sat. “I’m in lockdown. Have to finish my screenplay.”
    “Can’t you take a
little
break?”
    “Not until I find the hook.”
    The attorney walked up behind Serge and began running her hands down his chest. Serge stared at the typewriter. Her hands reached his stomach and began undoing buttons. “It’s been two weeks since the charity ball. Didn’t you have a good time?”
    “Yes”—eyes straight on the page.
    It
had
been a good time. The attorney was precisely Serge’s type—a woman in full bloom. She would have been a stunning thirty-five-year-old, but was unreal considering she was actually forty-eight. Still, most guys would have preferred the alternative of a tittering twentysomething. Not Serge. A bimbo package still meant a bimbo mind, and the first inane comment always collapsed his sexual house of cards. After enough flaccid evenings, Serge began giving pop quizzes. The fastest litmus test, he found, was vice-presidential running mates on losing tickets. The mandatory minimum was Sargent Shriver, but anything before Edmund Muskie lit the afterburners.
    The feeling was mutual among a certain segment of professional women in Tampa Bay. Bimbos come in two flavors, after all. They usually met Serge because of the enormous time he spent in museums and art galleries. Besides looking spiffy in a tux, he could hold his own in dinner conversation with any
Jeopardy!
finalist. Sure, the women knew he was nuts. But that was the thing about Serge: It could take hours to figure that out. Over the short course of a cocktail reception, he merely appeared effervescent and charismatic. Only much later in the evening did it become evident that Serge was wired out of his gourd. But by then it was the sex time, when this turned into a plus. More than one date had seen the origins of the universe.
    The attorney now undoing Serge’s shirt was his third chamber of commerce member in as many months. “Let’s play.” She reached for his belt buckle. “I don’t have to be back until two.”
    Serge pushed her hands aside. “Even if I wanted to, you know how I am when I’m trying to concentrate. I’ve got twenty planes circling in my head waiting to land.”
    The attorney understood Serge inside out, weaknesses. She nuzzled and whispered in his ear with a raspy voice. “I’ll go to one of your special places. My sleeping bag’s in the car.”
    Serge’s breathing shallowed. His face reddened. “Anyplace I want?”
    She ran her tongue along his neck. “Mmmm, hmmmm…”
    He stood up and wrote an address on a scrap of paper. “Tomorrow at noon.”
    She initially pouted over the delay, then gave him a wicked grin and strolled out the door. “Don’t be late.”
    Serge’s attention was already back at the typewriter. “Uh, right…”
    The door closed on one side of the room and banging started on the other.
    Serge jumped up and grabbed his gun again. “This place is nonstop bullshit!”
    “But, Serge,” said Coleman, pointing toward the closet, “I still think you should write about—”
    “Can you please be quiet? I got too much coming at me at the same time.”
    Bang, bang, bang.
    “But, Serge, it’s a really exciting—”
    “Not now!” Serge opened the closet. Crack. He closed it.
     
SIXTEEN HOURS LATER , FAR AWAY
     
    A Greyhound bus arrived in the dark. The empty street glistened and smelled from a recent rain.
    No bus station, just a roadside shelter a block from the town square with a obelisk of engraved names from World War II. There wasn’t anyone waiting for the 331, but the driver was required to stop anyway. A police cruiser went by. One of the few left with the old
Car 54
bubble-top lights.
    Mark was using bunched-up clothes as a pillow, trying to sleep against the window. His eyes fluttered when the Greyhound lurched away from the curb and continued west.
    Ford was completely awake in the