The Lost Brother Read Online Free PDF

last one not on skid row anyway.”
    She went off to get his drink. He checked her out. She was a tough make: part black, part white. Some Mex, maybe. Some Asian.
    She came back. Put the glass on his table.
    “What all are you?” he asked.
    She stared at him. She’d heard the question too many times not to be annoyed by it. Said, in perfect TV-white English, “What do you think I am?”
    “You can’t work here if you’re not black.”
    She said, in exaggerated city-black accent, “Dat a fac, ofay-pattay?”
    “I’m not Irish.”
    In a perfect Irish accent, she said, “Ay, me mother in Dublin would cry if I could not tell that.” He laughed.
    She didn’t.
    “Where you from?” he asked.
    “L.A.”
    “Where in LA?”
    “Hollywood.”
    “You grew up there?”
    “People do.”
    “It’s a tough neighborhood.”
    “Yep.”
    “You got some Mex in you?”
    “Si Senor Vendejo. Soy Mexicana. Por que?”
    “Nothing. Calm down.”
    Back to a street black’s voice, she said, “Motherfucker, don’t be telling
me
to calm down. I be as mad as I wanna be, you know what I’m saying? I’ll fuck your white ass
up.”
    He smiled. “How long you been in Washington?”
    Only because it was her first night on the job and she didn’t want to offend a regular customer, she sighed and answered, instead of shrugging and walking off. “Three weeks.”
    “What brings you here?”
    “A guy I met in New Orleans. From here. When he wanted to come back here, I came along. Hadn’t been east before.”
    “You with the guy now?”
    “No. He was an excuse, not a reason.”
    “I understand.”
    “Shit you do.”
    “You’d be surprised.”
    “I would.”
    “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked.
    She looked around the room, hoping to see another customer needing attention. But there were only a few people in the club that early that night, and the other waitress had them. “A writer,” she said, not really wanting to tell him or anyone else that, but not wanting him or anyone else to make her lie, either.
    “Oh, yeah? Ever read Raymond Chandler?” Kellogg asked. “He lived in L.A.”
    “Ever read Dashiell Hammett? He was born in Maryland.”
    “You’ve read Hammett?”
    “Yas, suh. I be an ed-chu-cated nee-gro.”
    “But you’re working in a dump like this.”
    “And you’re drinking in it.”
    “I’m a dump kind of guy.”
    “I can see that.”
    “You know, I could use someone like you.”
    “For what?”
    “Why do you think I asked you about Chandler?”
    “What, you’re a private investigator?” He nodded. She laughed.
    “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “If you’re any good, you can find that out on your own. And if you aren’t any good, why would I want to work for you?”
    “I’ll give you a call.”
    “Sure.”
    “And when I do, I’m going to ask for someone named Passer.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you ain’t that, you’re not what I need.” She stared at him. Took him in. Said, “Think I haven’t been called that before?”
    And now, on this April night two years later, Catherine “Passer” Jones is taking a seat next to him.
    “You found me,” Kellogg says, loudly. “You ace skip tracer, you.”
    “Shut up, Kevin.”
    “You drinking?”
    “I’m here on business.”
    “Great,” he says.
    “We got a customer.”
    “Great. You drinking?”
    She sighs. Concedes. Kellogg waves to the waitress, who motions to the bartender, who pours two whiskeys, one straight up for him, one on the rocks with soda and two cherries for Passer, both of which the waitress, a black woman Kellogg’s age and mind-set, brings over and sets down.
    Kellogg lights two cigarettes. Gives one to Passer, which she takes and drags deeply from before sipping. “You hate it here, don’t you?” he asks. “Don’t start on that again.”
    “But you do. You hate places like this.”
    “I worked here, remember?”
    “For three nights.”
    “Still, I worked