The Midnight Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

tiny porch with a black-enameled iron railing. It had been described to me in detail over the telephone, but I went past the place twice because every other lot in the neighborhood was just like it. Why people wanted to live like ants was a question for greater brains than mine.
    I parked behind Sturtevant’s blue Datsun and got out under a blossoming locust where bees hummed somnolently like plantation darkies in an old musical. The sun was hot on the back of my neck, the air heavy with scent you can’t get too much of unless it comes from a bottle. Kids’ cheerful obscenities and the crack of wood on artificial horsehide nearby testified to the existence of a sandlot baseball diamond down the block. Another day made for snoozing in a hammock with a portable radio tuned in to the Tigers, and here I was in harness again, and on the cuff to boot.
    The doorbell was warm to the touch. I waited while footsteps approached from inside, wondering how many hours I had spent waiting for footsteps in front of how many doors on how many days like this one. Down the street there was another crack, louder this time, and a general tangle of shouted encouragement and shrieked insults. Extra bases at least.
    “Thank you for coming, Mr. Walker. I’m Karen Sturtevant. We met the other day. My husband is in the living room.”
    I hadn’t seen her at her best in the hospital. When she opened the door I probably still wasn’t seeing it, but the improvement was more than satisfactory. She was a small blonde without seeming like one, that category having been swallowed up by the pert type with freckles and that air of good sportsmanship you can expect to find anywhere but in sports. She wore her hair in a modified page boy with a wave in front instead of bangs, framing a face that was just saved from being doll-like by a chin that came to a point. Her eyes were a cloudy green and she had a kewpie mouth. No lipstick.
    “I thought he was still in the hospital.” I stepped inside and she closed the door.
    “So does the press. My brother and I smuggled him out under cover of darkness.” She smiled tightly, just to be doing something with her mouth. “The doctors don’t like it. He had a stroke, you know. They think he might have another. But I’ve spent time in hospitals, and if strokes can be carried those nurses are all potential Typhoid Marys.” Her voice was rough-smooth, like velvet dragged over fine sandpaper. June Allyson was born with it, Lauren Bacall screamed herself hoarse to get it. That’s how potent it is.
    “I don’t think they can be,” I said. “Carried, I mean.”
    “What modern medicine doesn’t know about the human body and its ailments would sink an ore carrier. The living room is this way.”
    She led me past a spotless kitchen into a living room with imitation wood paneling and a picture window looking out on the picture window of the identical house next door. Today she was all in green, with a leaf-print blouse tucked neatly into a solid green skirt with a modest slit up the side. Her heels seemed high for ordinary house wear, but her legs didn’t seem to mind. I decided I wouldn’t either.
    “Van?” She placed a hand on the shoulder of the man seated in a wheelchair in front of the big window. “Van, Mr. Walker’s here.”
    He opened tired eyes to look at me. If not for them I wouldn’t have recognized him. The strong, square face had fallen, its lines drawn deep by the weight of the grayish flesh and of the broad lower lip, pushed out in the bitter pout of the very old. His mouth wasn’t humorous anymore. In two weeks his hair had turned the color of house dust. He had a blanket over his knees and a heavy sweater draped across his shoulders on the hottest day I had seen that season.
    One side of his mouth twitched in a sign of recognition, and I knew then that the other side couldn’t.
    “He can’t talk, but he’ll understand everything we say.” She half leaned on the arm of a houndstooth