The Camel Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

park next to the Georgetown Waterfront Complex and glanced down at the brownish waters of the Potomac River as they licked up against the seawall. Some very enterprising graffiti artists, who obviously didn’t mind working with water right under their butts, had elaborately painted the concrete barrier.
    A little earlier there would have been traffic racing along the elevated Whitehurst Freeway that ran behind Stone. And a jet-fueled nightlife would have blared away near the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Georgetown had many tony places that promised good times for those with lots of ready cash or at least passable credit, neither of which Stone possessed. However, at this late hour most revelers had called it a night. Washington was, above all, an early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise sort of town.
    The Potomac River was also quiet tonight. The police boat that regularly patrolled the waters must have headed south toward the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. That was very good, Stone thought. Thankfully, he didn’t pass any police officers on land either. This was a free country, but somewhat less free for a man who lived in a cemetery, wore clothes only a couple of levels above rags and was out after dark in an affluent area.
    Stone walked along the waterfront, skirted the Francis Scott Key Park, trudged under the Francis Scott Key Bridge and finally passed a memorial to the famous composer. A bit of overkill, Stone thought, for a fellow who had written song lyrics no one could remember. The sky was an inky black with splashes of clouds and dots of stars; and, with the recently reinstated curfew at nearby Reagan National Airport, there were no aircraft exhaust streams to mar its beauty. However, Stone could feel the thick ground fog rolling in. Soon, he would be lucky to see a foot in front of him. He was drawing near to a gaudily painted building owned by one of the local rowing clubs when a familiar voice called to him from the darkness.
    “Oliver, is that you?”
    “Yes, Caleb. Are the others here?”
    A medium-sized fellow with a bit of a paunch came into Stone’s line of sight. Caleb Shaw was dressed in a suit of clothes from the nineteenth century, complete with a bowler hat that covered his short, graying hair; an old-fashioned watch graced the front of his wool vest. He wore his sideburns long, and a small, well-groomed mustache hovered over his lip.
    “Reuben’s here, but he’s, uh, relieving himself. I haven’t seen Milton yet,” Caleb added.
    Stone sighed. “Not a surprise. Milton is brilliant but absentminded as always.”
    When Reuben joined them, he didn’t look well. Reuben Rhodes stood over six foot four and was a very powerfully built man of about sixty with a longish mass of curly dark hair dappled with gray and a matching short, thick beard. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt, with frayed moccasins on his feet. He was pressing one of his hands into his side. Reuben was prone to kidney stones.
    “You should go to the clinic, Reuben,” Stone implored.
    The big man scowled. “I don’t like people poking around inside me; had enough of that in the army. So I’ll suffer in silence and in privacy if you don’t mind.”
    As they were speaking, Milton Farb joined them. He stopped, pecked the dirt with his right foot three times, then with his left two times and finished this off with a series of whistles and grunts. Then he recited a string of numbers that obviously had great significance for him.
    The other three waited patiently until he finished. They all knew if they interrupted their companion in the midst of his obsessive-compulsive ritual, he would have to start again, and it was getting rather late.
    “Hello, Milton,” Stone said after the grunts and whistles had ceased.
    Milton Farb looked up from the dirt and smiled. He had a leather backpack over his shoulder and was dressed in a colorful sweater and crisp-pressed khaki pants. He was five foot eleven and thin with