The Shaft Read Online Free PDF Page A

splatter all over the sun deck, he hadn't realized the bimbo had had any.
        Cruz would see her fall thousands of times more before his life was over. His ears were cracking constantly and he had a headache. Over the cabin com, Captain Falstaff of Eastern Airlines announced to the passenger complement of the 737 that there was turbulence coming; they should belt up. Cruz sat gripping the armrests. One was loose. He stared out over the starboard wing and wondered how these double plastic windows could possibly get marked up on the outside. Was the wind shear that nasty thirty thousand feet up? He thought of fat gremlins riding the wingtips and working their alien vandalism.
        He got a pillow, he gulped aspirin, he marveled at the fact that less than six hours ago, his life had been pretty goddamn smooth. He tried not to worry about dying, but that was stupidly optimistic. As of six hours ago, and Rosie's party…
        Cruz was still watching Chiquita fall. Down and over, one lull turn, then splat into the apron of the hotel pool.
        Rosie humped across the suite on his burn leg while the party's zombies were still puzzling out what had gone down. Besides Chiquita. Cruz was hanging so far over the rail he almost got sucked over. His mouth was agape and a snow-white droplet of saliva unmoored from his lip and tumbled. Same trajectory.
        The party had definitely cratered.
        'Back off the rail, Cruz, c'mon now.' A textbook of cool in a shitstorm, that Rosie. He was Emilio's big fixer. He caught a fistful of Cruz's flapping aloha shirt and hustled him off the balcony and into the only empty bedroom of the presidential suite. A lot of coke was smeared across Cruz's upper lip and most of his right cheek; he looked like a punk in a cheap Santa Claus getup to whom some attacker had dealt a hard lefthanded slap. He had been drinking and snorting all day. Now his eyes had filled with something a bit more potent and permanent, and he was drunk on it. He clomped fumble-footedly along, letting Rosie lead him.
        'Yee-HAH,' somebody said. 'Rawwww-hide?'
        The suite's other two bedrooms were noisily taken; five in one, a trio in the other, all sweaty, higher than helium and fucking like minks. Seven other mouth breathers were still gawping at the eleventh replay of the Star Wars videotape on the big Proton monitor. Most of them had lent applause to Chiquita's brain-dead strip act. The kicker to the act was her jump. Most of the droids laughed. By now half of them had managed to forget she had ever existed at all.
         So much glossy black hair, Cruz thought. Her feather earrings. Emilio had paid for the diamond in her front tooth. Her dark Brazilian eyes. All of it had impacted with concrete at about seventy miles an hour. Stone defeats flesh.
        'Rosie, she…' Cruz hadn't collected his wits. He squeezed his eyes shut, blinking out white grit, then sniffed mightily as tears freed and rolled. 'Fuckin' jumped.'
        'Shut up a minute.' Rosie lent the idiots in the next room a quarter-second of disgusted checkup. No one would pull any shit for at least five minutes. On the video the special effects fireworks had revved up. He slammed the door and in three crooked strides got right in Cruz's face. Cruz was still staring at the shut door, wondering where Rosie had got to.
        Rosie was notorious for his efficiency. Efficiently, he yanked Cruz nose-to-nose and backhanded him twice, bouncing him off the wall with a split lip. His footing went away. A tiny cloud of cocaine dust hung between them as Rosie hauled him back up.
        'Stupid,' he muttered. 'Why didn't you keep your jaws wired? What the fuck is wrong with you?' He stomped his good foot, then rushed his hand through his thinning bronze hair. His businessman's tan was perfect. He needed to blow off his mad, and had only moments in which to stitch this rancid mess into order.
        'Asswipe needledick birdshit!