The Glass Highway Read Online Free PDF

grunt.
    “Her supplier.” I leaned on his head.
    He made an unintelligible sound of acquiescence. When it soared to a pleading whine, I got off and pulled him up by his collar. When he was on his knees he swung at me with the wrench. I caught his arm and twisted it behind his back as I lifted him to his feet. The tool tinkled to earth.
    I said, “Let’s go inside.”
    He steered quite easily when I heaved up on the arm and pushed. At the back door of the house I asked, “You want to open it, or should I do it with your head?”
    He wanted to open it. I let go and we stepped into a large kitchen furnished with an antique table and chairs, wood-burning stove, maple chopping block not much bigger than the GM Building, and crowing roosters on the curtains. A modern refrigerator and a microwave oven looked like things that had dropped through a time warp. The stove was working; the temperature inside was thirty degrees warmer and the smell of burning wood made me nostalgic for a childhood I had never had. I deposited him in one of the chairs at the table, checked out the pantry, and poked my head into the next room, a big dining room with a chandelier and one of those long tables you see in Bugs Bunny cartoons. They were deserted.
    “Where’s the butler, out walking the parakeet?”
    “We haven’t had a butler since I was six.” He spat out grit and blood from his chewed lip. “The maid’s gone shopping or something.”
    I twirled a chair and mounted it like Randolph Scott, folding my arms across the back. “Well?”
    He worked his sore arm and grimaced. “I wasn’t supplying her. I don’t know who was. Or is. I haven’t seen her in weeks. She didn’t show up Saturday night. If this Bud guy did I don’t know it.”
    I showed him the picture. He glanced at it and shook his head. I put it away. “Where’d you know the Royce girl from?”
    “Nowhere. She just started showing up at parties. Not just mine. Wherever there were pills, come to think of it. Just another crasher. Man, you almost broke my fucking arm, you know that?”
    “If I wanted to I would’ve. Who supplies you?”
    He looked at me, and he didn’t have heavy lids anymore. He didn’t have any kind of lids at all. “Forget it. Break an arm if you want. Break both of them. I got lockjaw.”
    “Stop being dramatic. They won’t kill you, not for dropping a name to a peeper. Ever been busted?”
    “What for? You’re the one broke my snow toy. You going to pay for that, by the way?”
    “Ask Mommy and Daddy to buy you a new one. I’m talking about pushing prescription drugs.”
    “Once. My freshman year at college. Hell, that’s twelve years ago. Passed water.”
    “It’ll float you straight into Jackson if you fall again.”
    He showed me his teeth. He had gravel in his moustache. “My father eats lunch with the commissioner.”
    “It’s an election year,” I reminded him. “You can’t spend lunch at the polls. If the cops in Grosse Pointe are like the cops in Detroit—and they all drink the same brand of beer and root for the same football teams—they’re watching you now. Your folks are in Hawaii. You’ve probably already started stocking up for this Saturday night. Suppose some solid citizen drops a word in some officer’s ear that a search of the Grissom place just might make his whole week. Today’s Wednesday. They’re serving turkey roll down at the Wayne County Jail. You’ll like it. I don’t think.”
    He showed me more teeth. He slid into a slouch and crossed his long legs, bouncing the one on top. He rat-a-tat-tatted long slender fingers with ragged nails on the table. He whistled “Judy in Disguise” through his teeth. Then he uncrossed his legs and sat up and stared at the bridge of my nose. He said: “Moses True.”
    “Try again. True’s strictly Twelfth Street. They wouldn’t let him walk his dogs here.”
    “Come on, man. How’d I know his name otherwise?”
    I beat a tattoo of my own on the tabletop.