Under Cover of Daylight Read Online Free PDF

smoked a joint out on his balcony, looking off at Blackwater Sound at the metronome blink of a channel marker for the intracoastal. A jet headed into Miami, also blinking, timing its beat to the channel marker. Thorn felt himself warming inside, the loosening of some clenched part of himself.
    “For someone who doesn’t smoke it, you always have the best shit,” Thorn said, letting the smoke out gradually as he spoke.
    She leaned forward in the oak rocker and took the joint back. Before she took her turn, she said, “One of the perks of working at the courthouse. The only perk, come to think.”
    “Hell of a perk. Perks me right up. Better than having all four burners going at once.”
    “It’s good,” she said, “but it’s not that good.”
    “Do all the public defenders do drugs?”
    “Ex-hippies. Every one of them. The state’s attorneys are the worst. Judges, too. I know a couple of judges, they’ll pitch a fit if you’re prosecuting somebody for inferior dope. They sniff the stuff, shake their heads. They laugh prosecutors out of their office. Tell them to bring in some serious dope if they want a conviction. They do all this in chambers, and in court they’ll just drop the case soon as a PD moves to dismiss.”
    Thorn smiled to himself. Out here in the night air, talking about things from the larger world. Not tides, not the migration of fish or the latest hot spot. A conversation, like he supposed normal people had.
    Sarah said, “I can understand that. Got to draw the line somewhere. They got their pick of so many cases a day, why not just burn the guys bringing in the potent shit?”
    “Hard to believe. Hard to believe,” Thorn said. He paused, watched the marker light blink. Said, “I got to get you and my friend Sugarman together. I told you about him. Only black cop in the Keys? Well, this is his. Know how you can tell which ones are the drug dealers on the highway?”
    She shook her head.
    “They’re the only ones doing the speed limit.”
    Sarah smiled, said, “Guys at work’ll like that one.”
    “And Sugarman calls it the Veranda Act. The act that keeps you waiting out on the veranda while they flush all the dope down the johns. Funny guy, but he has no idea. Got no sense of humor. Everybody’s always laughing at what he comes out with, and he’s there saying, ‘Huh, what, what’s the joke?’ ”
    “I like him.”
    Thorn said, “He’d like you,” and slid his hand lightly down her shoulder, collarbone, ran his hands across the sides of her breasts, barely a touch at all. The worn cotton of the T-shirt was silky against his palms.
    Sarah said, “He the one with wife troubles?”
    “She’s young,” Thorn said. “And she’s white. High school cheerleader marries all-county fullback. I don’t think she even knew he was black till the summer after they were married.”
    Sarah told him that what he was doing felt good. Thorn’s hands beneath the T-shirt, fingertips dialing her nipples, listening for the fall of tumblers.
    Her eyes closed, she said, “You make these chairs?”
    “No, Dr. Bill.” He kept his fingers there, hovering, feeling her nipples rising against his palms.
    “You called him that? Doctor?”
    “Yeah. Everyone did.”
    “And Kate, what do you call her?”
    “Always so many questions,” Thorn said.
    “It’s a bad habit,” she said. “My job.”
    She handed the joint back, and Thorn took his hands away from her, sat back in the chair, and drew in a harsh, deep drag and held it tight.
    He let it out and handed her the roach. He was starting another surge. Blackwater Sound shimmered like licorice Jell-O. He felt seventeen. Foolish, on the edge of a panicky laugh.
    “Well,” Sarah said. “Dr. Bill made nice chairs. Nice chairs for a heart surgeon. The Cadillac of Cardiologists is what Kate calls him.”
    The dope didn’t seem to be hitting her. Thorn heard her voice seem to come from out in the mangroves, out toward the channel marker. It sounded