The Sleeping and the Dead Read Online Free PDF

breasts. His silk pajama bottoms and glittering red curly toe slippers, his coffee cup and his perpetual cigarette were as much a part of his left hand as his fat little sausage fingers, and his white skull-headed cane a bony extension of his right arm.
    Not that he would ever write a book, unless it was a cookbook, or a dirty book filled with pictures of naked French children.
    â€œYou’re trying to flatter me, Jackie,” he said after a moment. “You got a new camera. May I?” He set aside his cane, took the camera from me and squinted at his picture on the LCD screen on the back.
    â€œIt’s a Leica.”
    â€œAnd you prefer this to film?” He frowned at his photograph, then set the camera on the table. “God, I look like an old wrastler . Do you remember Tojo Yamamoto?”
    â€œWasn’t he an admiral?”
    â€œHe used to wrastle here in Memphis.” He took a long crackling drag on his Winston and squinted one eye against the smoke. “Being Japanese, he usually played the heel. But you should have seen him karate-choppin’ all them big sweaty young men—Jerry Lawler, Austin Idol.” He sighed and closed both eyes. “Wildfire Tommy Rich.”
    He took another drag and left the cigarette wedged in the corner of his lip. “Kamala the Ugandan Giant. You wouldn’t think I’d care a switch about such lowbrow trash, would you?” He glanced at the manila folder lying on the table between us. “I had me a front-row seat at the Mid-South Coliseum. Season ticket. I was there the night Jerry Lawler broke Andy Kaufman’s neck with a pile driver—April 5, 1982. Do you remember Andy Kaufman?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “He was on that show.”
    â€œ Taxi . That was before he started wrastling women. It was theater, of course, but what the hale did we care? It got your heart to pumping so you wanted to smash somebody with a folding chair. What’s in the folder?”
    â€œSome pictures I thought you might like.” I removed the rubber band and pushed it across the table to him.
    Michi looked at it briefly, then stood up and hobbled to his stove. He picked up a spoon and stirred the skillet. “You look like shit, Jacqueline,” he said. I could always count on Michi for this. He wasn’t cruel, just honest, like a child who will tell you your breath stinks while they hug your neck.
    â€œI’m OK. All I need is a shower.”
    â€œYou can use one of mine.” He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray beside the stove. “I got half a dozen. I got some I ain’t seen in five years.” He pinched another smoke from a pack beside the ashtray and held it to the blue gas flame until the end caught fire. He blew out the flame and took a long drag and held the smoke in his lungs for a moment.
    â€œI got a new apartment today. I’ll be OK.”
    â€œWhere at?”
    â€œSummer Avenue.”
    â€œIs it safe?”
    â€œAs safe as anywhere. Nowhere is safe in this city.”
    He limped slowly back to the table and took my hand. His hand was fat and soft and dry as a pincushion. He squeezed my fingers affectionately. “Let me see your pictures.” He opened the manila folder. I took his cigarette and stuck it in my mouth, tasting the coffee residue from his lips. “Oh my,” he said, leaning closer to the first photograph. “Honey, this is different.”
    The photo on top was a glossy 8x10 blowup of the remains of Roger and Loeb Simon—high-school brothers who were found three years prior in the ruins of the Warren Academy auditorium. The boys were curled up side by side in a claw-foot iron bathtub. The outside of the tub was charred, but the white enamel inside was only slightly browned. They were naked and partially submerged in their own liquefied fat, like sheep boiled in butter.
    â€œIs this…?”
    I nodded. “Playhouse Killer. Victims two and