The Dead Love Longer Read Online Free PDF Page B

returned the photo and took one last look around. Nothing here that I would need. Still, it gave me a creepy feeling to drift through the wall for probably the final time. Just when you think you've come to accept your lot in life, or even in death, reality comes along and slaps you in the face.
    I was in the lobby right at four. The desk attendant was bored, and he looked like a goober in his little red vest. He'd sneered at me that time I'd locked myself out of my room in the middle of the night, caught in my underwear. I thought about playing a trick on him, taking advantage of my invisibility and spooking him good, but I didn't want to waste my energies.
    4:01. While I waited, I tried to guess who would show up. I put two and two together, and came up with either three or five. Math was never my strong point.
    4:02, and the bell jingled above the lobby door. The attendant raised one eyebrow, then faded back into his all-consuming funk. He should have looked closer, or else he was gay, because she was a knockout.
    Hair that hung like black silk. One of those Anastasia fur hats. A leopard-skin dress whose familiarity with her curves brought out the animal in me. Legs that went all the way down to the floor, and back up again. I know, because I checked twice just to make sure.
    Her eyes were almost as pretty as Lee's, and nearly the same color. She looked at the stairs and the elevator, then clutched her purse to her chest. She was anxious and scared. And in a hurry.
    I went around the corner and composed myself while out of sight. I took on flesh and form, and I felt pretty good for a dead guy. I flexed my fingers as if they were in gloves. I was almost normal again, except for the headache I got from concentrating myself back into corporeal existence. And my jacket still had the holes in it. If there was any spiritual cost besides underarm stench, then I assumed I was running a tab somewhere up there on the heavenly ledgers.
    I walked into the lobby as if I'd just come from the restroom. "Meet me in the lobby?" I quoted from the note.
    She nodded. "Richard Steele?"
    "In the flesh."
    "Hi, I'm Bailey DeBussey ."
    A porn star's name or a budding actress. Usually the same.
    She glanced at the door to the street outside. The sirens were louder now, audible even over the Muzak strains of "O Christmas Tree" that permeated the lobby, and the attendant snapped out of his stupor long enough to rubberneck. "Let's go out the back way," she said, taking me by the elbow.
    I'd never minded a woman's taking charge, especially if she might become a client or lover. The closing of the door sounded frighteningly like one of Diana's patented hisses of disapproval. We went into the alley behind the apartment building. A wino was leaning against the dumpster. I tossed him all my spare change and wished him happy holidays. Having no need of money was a freeing experience, especially when the cash registers were going full guns all across the city, ringing in the season.
    "God bless yaz , suh ," he said, flashing me three yellow teeth with his grin.
    "I think I'll need it."
    "Over there," the impatient Bailey DeBussey said, pointing across the street.
    She took my hand and led me through a gap in the chain-link fence. We went across a parking lot into what used to be called a coffee shop. Now it was a "casa de cafe." Same deal, only guys like me didn't hang out there anymore and coffee was three bucks a cup. Still, any port in a storm.
    We were seated as the first of the police cars pulled up to the Hollywood Hype. It would take them a whileto find my body. Maybe even a day or two, after Lee called five or six times and received no return call. For a moment, I regretted my casual treatment of her. But in a way, I was glad to delay the breaking of her heart. Because, unlike a lot of women I'd known, she had one.
    "So why the mystery?" I asked the woman after she had ordered a cappuccino. I didn't order anything myself, because I wasn't sure how