The Snake Tattoo Read Online Free PDF

blues.
    My fingers found a melody. I remembered the words:
    Cocaine’s for horses, not for men,
    Doctor said it’d kill me, but he didn’t say when.
    Cocaine, running ’round my brain.
    That was one of my ex’s favorites, the way Chris Smither used to do it, fine and loose and lazy. Cal used to sing it doped to the gills, like a lung cancer patient gulping cigarette smoke.
    I sang it through, tried a key change.
    My voice is not great, but it’s true, a gift of perfect pitch. With all the windows in my cab shut, I wail and shout along with the radio—whenever I don’t have a fare. At home I really pull out the volume stops. I used to worry about Roz, but so far I haven’t discovered a noise loud enough to wake her. Mainly she disturbs me.
    See, Roz makes noise when Roz makes love, and even over my guitar, I could hear her scream and moan. I admit to my share of curiosity, so when I heard the steps creak about four-thirty, I stuck my head out to investigate.
    It was the taller of the Twin Brothers, sneaking down the stairs, zipping his jeans. At that moment I gave up all hope for my bathroom.

CHAPTER 4
    I must have just nodded off when the doorbell chimed. My subconscious knocked the phone off the hook, but the damn thing kept ringing and pretty soon I figured it was probably the door. It could have been three rings for Roz, but I hadn’t been counting and I knew she’d never hear it anyway, so I grabbed my bathrobe and pelted downstairs barefoot.
    If it was one of the Twin Brothers, I was planning to strangle him.
    As a courtesy to the burglars I always keep my porch light burning. With my right eye pressed against the peephole, I could make out a figure on the front stoop. While I groped for the dangling ends of my bathrobe belt, found them, and tied them tightly around my waist, the thin shape turned to face the door. It was the kid I’d dropped off at the police station.
    I’d told him to mail me the fare, not special-deliver it in the middle of the night.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said as soon as I yanked open the door, before I could get in a word. It takes the wind out of my sails when somebody apologizes before I get a chance to blow up.
    He winced as he spoke, and lifted a hand to his face. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. His lips were puffy; a dark seam split the lower one.
    â€œYou ought to put an ice cube on that,” I said.
    â€œI’m sorry, really.” He took a long look at my robe, and gave his head a quick shake as if he were waking from a trance. “What time is it? Oh geez, oh shit, you were sleeping. I didn’t know what time it was.… I wanted to hire you. I mean, I didn’t just come because somebody—” He lifted his hand to his mouth. “Because of this.”
    â€œYou better come in,” I said, hoping to shut the door before the wind blew open my robe. The kid seemed frozen on the front porch. I practically had to pry his hand off the storm door and tug him into the kitchen. I put some ice cubes in a dish towel, gave him the resulting ice pack, and sat him down in a chair.
    The cat strolled in, wide awake, and nuzzled the kid’s ankles. T.C., a large black cat with a white forepaw, usually competes with other males, of any species. Perhaps he considered this one too young. Out of combat, so to speak.
    The kid was incredibly polite. He kept telling me not to bother while I hauled out the iodine. He “pleased” and “thank-you’d” and patted the cat, who proceeded to make an exhibition of himself. You know, the whole nobody-in-this-house-ever-petted-me-before routine. Rolling over. Purring shamelessly. The kid asked if he should be quiet so as not to wake anybody else, with a kind of speculative air that wondered if I were married, sleeping alone, or what. Maybe he wasn’t that young. I thought about Roz and the Twin Brother who’d exited at