There Fell a Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

there and watch it, Wells, this long, long line of cars runnin’ deeper and deeper into the plains. And I’d stand there at the edge of town and, so help me, if my soul could have left my body, I’d have been on that sucker. I’d’ve been gone, boy. Gone, gone, gone.” He laughed again. “Hallelujah.”
    One corner of my mouth lifted. I didn’t have to answer.
    â€œThat’s what I mean, I guess, more than anything,” he said. “What I mean is: I been everywhere, man. Everywhere. I seen everything, been shot at, captured.… You ever cover a war?”
    â€œNah. I was a local crime boy from the start.”
    â€œYeah, well, it’s something. I mean, you just see everything.” Colt stopped on the sidewalk. I stopped, turned to him. He shook his head at the long stretch of avenue ahead. “And no matter how much I see, no matter where I go, sometimes I feel like I’m still just standin’ there at the edge of town. Like there’s still someplace out there I’m tryin’ to get to.” He faced me. “Like I never got on that train. You know? Just like I never got out of Oklahoma.”
    We stood silent for another moment. “Oh hell,” I said.
    He snorted. He slapped my shoulder. We started walking again.
    We reached the hotel. Young men dressed in black flanked broad glass doors. We passed into the lobby, the boys attending. Colt collected his key. We passed into the elevator. Silently we were hoisted up to the seventh floor.
    I leaned back against the wall.
    â€œWhoosh,” I said.
    â€œYeah,” said Colt. He laughed. “All that air.”
    He let me into his suite. Two rooms, both small. There was a sitting room with two stuffed wing chairs in the middle of it, a sofa against the wall. A coffee table, long, low, and topped with glass. A TV in the corner. A bureau beside it. A window on Madison. A door into the bathroom, another into the bedroom. I glanced through the bedroom doorway, saw the usual pair of beds crushed close to either side of a lamp-stand, a writing desk under a mirror against the wall. All of it fancier than most, I guess, but a hotel room is a hotel room just the same.
    I took my coat off, dumped it on the sofa. Sat down heavily in one of the chairs. Colt carried his coat into the bedroom. There must have been a small refrigerator hidden in there, because he came out with two plastic cups filled with ice. He extracted the scotch bottle from a drawer in the bureau. He poured with a liberal hand. He took his place in the chair across from me.
    â€œShe’s something,” he said. He’d been following some thoughts of his own. When I raised my eyebrow at him, he said: “Lansing. She’s something all right.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “She’s something.”
    â€œShe sure can hold her liquor.”
    â€œOh, man. Can she ever. You ought to see her sometimes.”
    â€œDamn! She any good?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œAs a reporter, I mean.”
    â€œOh. Yeah. Yeah, she’s good. She goes for it, anyway. She once drove me up Fifth Avenue at maybe sixty miles an hour to beat the cops to a murder scene.” I paused for effect, sipped my scotch. “Fifth Avenue goes downtown.”
    I saw something flicker in Colt’s hard brown eyes. The crags around them bunched together. “I reckon that was just to impress you,” he said.
    â€œOh hell. What’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œWhat’s that mean? It means she’s mad about you, buddy.”
    I waved him off.
    â€œShe is. The way she looks at you.”
    â€œShe’s twelve years old, Colt.”
    He laughed once. He drawled: “She ain’t twelve. And you ain’t eighty. She’s … what? Twenty-five?”
    â€œClose enough.”
    â€œAnd you’re fifty?”
    â€œForty-six, thanks. Just worn by hard living.”
    â€œYou married or