The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin Read Online Free PDF

8 a.m., it would be almost impossible for you to avoid sitting in the worst kind of fucking traffic. Which I know you don’t like.”
    Did I mention that some of the cops like to throw shit back at me as well? You give it, you got to take it.
    I said, “I’m assuming you’re about to say 8 a.m.?”
    â€œThat’s why I’m giving you this business, Darvelle. You’re a pretty good detective. Eight a.m. My desk.”
    â€œGreat,” I said. “Thank you, Mike. I’ll see you at eleven.”
    And I hung up.
    And then I thought about the old lady, the plant lady, and the ring again. Maybe taking a case that I wasn’t all that interested in had somehow led to me getting this one.Because sometimes getting going, even in the smallest way, opens up a cosmic window for something bigger to happen. Interesting how that occurs. You know? Whatever field you’re in, when you just do something , anything, when you just get started, you are pushing a big inert rock, the big invisible wheel of momentum.
    The two things don’t even need to be tightly connected. You start organizing your office and the phone rings. You’re on a case and you can’t think of a theory to explain what’s happening, so you throw out a first-thought idea, maybe even a terrible, nonsensical one. And then a decent idea pops into your head. You don’t have an interesting case on your desk, so you take a not-so-interesting one. And then you get a call from Mike Ott about a murder the cops couldn’t crack.
    Yeah, you’re giving the big rock a little nudge, a little push, and before you know it, it starts to roll down the hill. I wondered, if you looked at specific examples, whether the second things, the better things, actually only appeared if you engaged with the first things. Do you always have to somehow, even if just with an obscure action, press start on the Cosmic Momentum Wheel? Sitting there, I just didn’t know the answer to that one. Might need to think about it a little more. What I did know was that I probably wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it right then and there. I also knew that I could probably drive home now in relative peace.
    So I got up, cut the lights, and cut out of there.
    I got in the Focus and headed off the lot. Right at the point where you leave the lot proper but are still technically onthe lot, there’s a streetlight that kicks on automatically at dusk. It was on now, but because there was still some light in the sky, the beam coming out of it was weaker than it would be later. Sitting underneath it, and glowing just a bit because of the weak light, was a new gray Mercedes S-Class, one of the big-dog Benzes. It sat with its grille pointing conspicuously at the lot’s exit. Under a spotlight of sorts, nothing covert about it. I drove—slowly—right in front of it. I looked through its windshield. There was a man sitting behind the wheel. An older man. Mid-, or maybe even late, fifties. He had dark hair slicked back, a trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee, and glasses. Big gold frames, with maybe just the slightest tint of bronze to them.
    I looked right at him. I could only just see his eyes behind not one but two walls of glass. He looked right at me. Stared right at me. Expressionless.
    I wondered, driving home, Was that guy there for me? Again I had one of the thoughts I’d considered when I’d seen “LAPD” on my phone: Muriel Dreen. Sitting there with her ring but not happy with the story that came with it. So she sends someone to look into me. Possible. More likely than her calling the cops about it . . . Or was it something to do with an old case? Somebody sent back to fuck with me? Wouldn’t be the first time. Or did this guy in the Mercedes have something to do with my new case, the one I hadn’t even gotten yet, the one I’d just talked to Mike Ott about? Stranger things have happened. Information