Vulture Peak Read Online Free PDF Page B

me, laughed, and said, “Sorry. You didn’t want to hear that mouthful when you’ve just come home.”
    She let a couple of beats pass, embarrassed maybe to haveintimidated me with her big words, then gave a little jump and said, “Look at what an anonymous admirer sent me today.” We went to her PC, and she clicked on an icon so we were looking at her e-mail window. Then she double-clicked on one of the items. Now we were looking at a screen that was blank save for two naked feet. While we watched, the feet slowly grew legs, then knees, then thighs. Chanya threw me a glance, grinned, and turned back to the screen. A further unscrolling revealed a tan penis and testicles, pubic hair, a mass of highly developed stomach muscles, an impressive hairless chest, terrific pecs, biceps, and triceps—a more perfect figure of a man you could not hope to find in your electronic inbox. But the scrolling stopped at the neck. It was a beautiful body without a head. Now a message in crimson Thai script was slowly spelling its way across the screen where the head should have been:
I love you
.
    I said, “Who’s it from?”
    She shrugged and used her mouse to point to the sender’s address, which was a collection of numbers. “Anonymous.”
    I said, “I didn’t know they’d started targeting women like that. I get about a hundred a week. Women, I mean.”
    “Naked without heads?”
    “Nope. They all have heads, as far as I can remember. Some have dicks in their mouths. One two weeks ago had an erection in both ears, and she was holding two others in her hands.”
    Before we fell asleep, Chanya said, “Do you care about dying?”
    “In some ways yes, in other ways no. How about you?”
    “I feel the same. It’s a filthy world. I went to temple today—I think I had a breakthrough.”
    “How?”
    “I finally understood—but it’s unnamable. Afterward I realized I didn’t mind dying. Even if you weren’t there, I could handle it—I never felt that way before.”
    “Sounds like the real thing.”
    “But when I came home, I got angry with Dorothy, and the Unreal grabbed me all over again.”
    “I know the feeling. Try being a cop.”
    “Yes, I thought about that. I thought about how the more you get involved in the world, the lonelier it gets. I understood you a bit more, maybe. Is it like you’re in some underground cave system and only connected to the light by a string that could snap any minute?”
    “Exactly like that.”
    “And for you I’m that string?” By way of answer, I slipped my hand between her thighs, right up to the top: the origin of life. There was nothing erotic about the gesture, it was too childlike for sex. She responded by holding my cock in the same way. “But if you rely on me too much, then you’ve lost your own center—your whole life will depend on the whim of the unknown, namely me.”
    “Did you get all this from a book?”
    “That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That you’ve lost me to books?”
    I withdrew my hand. I did not say,
Not only books
. This was not a good moment to mention the rumors.

5
    In the morning I woke to feel the world on my shoulders, which is where it normally sits. I know there are other cops all over the planet who feel the same way. The steady accumulation of human dirt—let’s call it evil—makes it a little harder, day by day, to find the light. On the other hand, I also felt a new thrill: this case was a big one, whatever way you looked at it. Maybe it would be the trump to get me out of the hole forever? Remember that Leonard Cohen song:
“The card that is so high and wild he’ll never need to deal another”
? For a second I allowed my ego to inflate; I saw my name in headlines: foreign media flashing my mug around the world; the Nobel Prize for law enforcement. I also tried to see the good I might be doing—but that detail eluded me.
    Chanya was already up, making coffee called three-in-one: the sugar and creamer are included in