The Lost Brother Read Online Free PDF Page B

here.”
    “Slumming. Still are.”
    “Okay”
    “That kid’s got a special horn.”
    “He is good.”
    “I sit here two, three nights a week, getting shit-faced, hearing dead-end jazz, just hoping that once in a while I’ll hear something special.”
    “You get drunk here because it’s walking distance from that thing you call an apartment and you can’t afford another DWI.”
    “That, too.”
    “I just talked to Sue. She said a man named Jimmy Close called.”
    “I know that name.”
    “Founder and president of the League of True Colors.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s looking for a private investigator. Told Sue he’s been turned down by the first six places he called.”
    Kellogg laughs. “Gee, I wonder why that might be.”
    “Well, like you like to say, private investigators should be dicks, not pussies.”
    “Actually, what I say is that people should have genitals and not be them.”
    “Okay. Anyway, Sue said he sounded desperate. And she’s from West Virginia, and he is, and LTC started there, and so she wants you to take him on.”
    “Shit, take him on and the whole city will close down on me. Fair or not, the press has demonized the man. Blacks in this town think he’s Hitler come home.”
    “So where does that leave us?”
    Kellogg stares down into his glass, which is empty again. A sick smile comes to his face. “Call him. Now. Tell him to meet us at the office. No, downstairs, at the diner. I’m hungry.”
    She gets up. Walks to the pay phone back by the rest rooms. Every man in the joint watches her.
    Kellogg takes a deep breath, slowly lets it out. Stares up at the ceiling. Down at the floor. At the customers, the employees, the tables, the bottles behind the bar. Thinks, Yeah, I’ll take on Mr. Jimmy Close. Why not? Kellogg Investigations. Known throughout the city as the place to go for the street work. The pimp, dealer, gambler work. The after-hours, gutter-time, downside work. Kevin Kellogg. King of shit hill. Fuck my drunk white ass.

6
    ONE IN THE MORNING.
    Kellogg and Passer, he in his black slacks and white shirt and loose red tie, and she in her black jeans, sneakers, and windbreaker, drink coffee, wait. They look out the window at the empty, steel-and-glass-office-lined downtown street, headlight lit and oil rainbowed; look at the few other customers and the diner employees, all tired, slumping, downward-gazing, up too late.
    Kellogg chain-smokes. Passer occasionally smokes. They don’t talk much but don’t feel uncomfortable in the silence. He told her long ago that they’d go nuts trying to fill their time together with conversation, so just shut up and daydream. Listen to the jazz on the radio.
    A taxi pulls up outside, and Kellogg and Passer watch the middle-aged white male passenger pay the driver, get out, come in.
    “Yo,” Kellogg calls out with a wave as Close enters. Close comes to their booth. “Mr. Kellogg?” he says.
    “Come on, man, who else is going to call you over?” Kellogg says, looking annoyed.
    “Have a seat,” Passer says, friendly.
    Close sits by her. Puts out his hand to her, says “Jimmy Close.” She takes his hand, shakes it, smiles.
    “I’m Catherine Jones. This is my boss, Kevin Kellogg.”
    Kellogg grunts, looks away from the hand Close offers.
    “You’re from West Virginia?” Kellogg asks.
    “Yes,” Close answers.
    “Went to Princeton? Rutgers Law?”
    “Yes.”
    “How you like it down here?”
    “Washington? It’s nice.”
    Kellogg looks out the window at the taxi that dropped Close off. The driver, a Middle Easterner, is filling out a log sheet.
    “My father was a cabdriver,” Kellogg says. “Here in D.C. I grew up here. Does that surprise you?”
    “Why should it surprise me?” Close asks. “A lot of people think D.C. is all black.”
    “It is mostly black.”
    “It is now. Wasn’t always. In this city, when my father was a boy, if a black looked at a white the wrong way, the black could get beaten or killed. If you