The Holy Terror Read Online Free PDF

offered up in apology. “Leg’s already throbbing, it’s only November.”
    Someone in the shadows went up to the Seeberg juke and punched in “Luckenbach, Texas.”
    “Waylon and his ol’ Willie,” Givens said.
    * * *

    The two men had parted after they had crossed the river at Wacker. As much as Reginald complained about the cold, he was still a hustler at heart. It was only two in the afternoon. Two hours of daylight left, Surles figured his friend for having a decent game of monte going on soon enough. The shills would supplement his disability check but good.

    “Got to have the faif, man.” Givens had waved.
    “Yea, faith. Keep on keepin’,” Surfer had returned, with so little conviction towards his friend’s equating religion and criminality that he did not bother to cover his shunt with his forefinger. He doubted that Reg would have been listening, even if his response had been audible.
    Back in the Hard Times, he was no stranger to most of the steadies there. No one would give it a second glance when he touched either forefinger to the plastic device whenever speaking. As with most of the Marclinn’s residents, many of his moves were unconscious.
    Many of the late-afternoon crowd and storefront employees knew him as well, and sometimes, when his personal pain was darkest, Surfer thought that maybe they smiled only out of relief because he was not looking for a handout.
    Now that he was past the incline of North Wacker Drive, he reached into his white sidepack—10th Annual Ortho-Olympics stenciled in blue across the pack, his name and address back when he lived on Keystone across the flap in red—and pulled out a cassette-Walkman. Flipped in a tape of sixties beach music.
    “Ride, ride, ride, the wild surf...” he sang, passing the United Cerebral Palsy building at 318 West. Waved hello to Miss DeWalt as she rushed back from lunch. In front of the Randolph Towers a block east, old Chubby Lovell pandered for the tourists who went into the lobby’s McDonald’s.
    Surfer had told Chubby Love he should pick a location opposite a lesser landmark than Capone’s Bismarck Hotel. He’d make more jingle on the State Street Mall.
    He had plenty of room once he hit the 100 block. The silver arc of the State of Illinois Building to his left, City Hall kat-corner, Surfer just wished that the pedway under the two blocks was accessible to those in wheelchairs. Sometimes he really didn’t understand what each new mayoral administration was bragging about. And he didn’t think things would be any better if Richard Daley Jr. was elected in April.
    So he made do with the wide open expanse, letting the songs of Jan & Dean or The Hondells - keep him from shivering too much. He saw Blackstone Shatner out hustling up pennies by the Greyhound Terminal. The guy drank his wine from an old detergent measuring cup and he wasn’t even clownin’ when he did it. Surfer wondered how Givens was making out. The three wrought-iron sculptures atop theMarclinn’s doors were less than a block away. At least, he would be out of the cold.

Chapter Two

    Today was the day that he would save the three card monte dealer and take him to gloryland. The man that tomorrow’s papers would call The Painkiller was certain of this and he felt good.
    At twenty after three that Thursday evening, Francis Madsen Haid walked past an orange Volkswagen Beetle that had been abandoned in the alley off Tooker Street. It effectively blocked the entrance to his first floor apartment, but since Uncle Vince’s death in September, he hadn’t had any need for maneuvering room for his beloved Father’s wheelchair. In addition, the ancient car succeeded in blocking any strays who might come across the smell and become inquisitive...
    He figured that he had a good hour of daylight to catch up with the monte dealer. Of all those in the chairs that needed saving, Haid had found himself thinking with increasing frequency that the dealer wanted it most of all.