The Haze Read Online Free PDF Page A

again, Mr. Connors. That’s the last time we accept that. You are now a danger to yourself and others. Hurling large heavy objects.”
    â€œYeah, what’re you going to do, toss me out? Great, make my day.”
    â€œWe move you to another room on the top floor. Up where we put the people throw things. It’s real quiet up there. The drugs, they work better in the altitude.”
    â€œWe had a deal.”
    â€œThere isn’t any deal, Mr. Connors. We got rules and this is the third time, and that’s all the strikes you get.
    â€œI got an excuse. I’ve been under a lot of pressure since I lost my daughter.”
    â€œYou didn’t lose nobody.”
    â€œShe was murdered in a robbery yesterday or day before. The cops came.”
    â€œYour daughter just left, Mr. Connors. She brought you some new books and she took away the old ones. That’s what she told me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe was in a hurry. I think you upset her, the way you’re talking lately.”
    â€œShe took my book? Varla and the retired hitman.”
    â€œI don’t know any Varla, but yeah, she took four books with her, left those on the table over there.”
    â€œShit, I wasn’t through with that book. It was just getting interesting.”
    â€œThat’s nice. Now it’s time for your pills. Let’s go now, be a big boy today.”
    â€œMy daughter’s alive?”
    â€œShe looked alive to me. That’s a pretty woman. Nice shape to her, too.”
    â€œWatch it, kid. My daughter’s not into that stuff.”
    â€œCould have fooled me. She’s a looker that one. Everybody stops what they’re doing she comes around. Including me. I about dropped a bedpan.”
    Javi left and Little Mo sat at the small table and looked out at the trees. The books were sitting there, a stack of them. Something different with these. He could smell them. He leaned close. Musty. And they had price stickers on them. Used, two dollars. Discounted hardbacks. His daughter was going cheap on him.
    He pushed the stack over, let them tumble onto the tabletop.
    Four books. Every one of them with a babe on the cover. Juicy pictures. Fishnet stockings, garter belt, kimonos half open, breasts spilling out.
    Old books.
    He leaned close and inhaled them. Reminded him of somewhere. It took him a long time, he wasn’t sure how long, smelling them and trying to remember until he had it. A library. A half dark library. Not a big city library. Somewhere out in the sticks. An older gentleman behind the desk stamping books for a young girl.
    â€œI like mysteries,” the little girl said.
    â€œOh, so do I,” the man said. He stamped her books and passed them to her. “Nothing like a good murder to pass the time, fill up the hours.”
    â€œThey’re scary,” the girl said. “I like that. Give me goosebumps.”
    â€œMe too. Scary is fun.”
    â€œMy mom doesn’t like me to read. Thinks it’s a waste of time. Nobody gets ahead that way, nose in a book.”
    â€œYour mommy is an idiot.”
    The girl took the books into her arms like loaves of bread.
    â€œI’ll tell her you said that.”
    â€œPlease do. Tell her Mo Connors thinks she’s an idiot.”
    â€œI will. I’ll tell her that.”
    Did he read that somewhere, a character in a story? He wasn’t sure.
    He opened one of the books, went to the back and there was an envelope pasted to the back cover. Raybun West Virginia Central Library. He looked at the other books. All from the same place, Raybun.
    Little Mo went out to the front desk.
    â€œI need to use a phone,” he told the nurse. Black woman named Hazel.
    â€œYou don’t have a cell phone, Mr. Connors?”
    â€œWould I be asking to use the phone if I did?”
    â€œNo reason to get nasty.”
    â€œYou think that was nasty? You don’t know from nasty.”
    â€œI’ll have to