A Few Minutes Past Midnight by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online Page A

was there with … well, never mind.”
    “You have quite a memory, Congressman,” I said.
    “And you have a face that’s easy to remember,” he said with a smile. “I have to run. If I can help …”
    “I’ve got it under control,” I said.
    “You don’t happen to recall the poem I read that night at Mr. Butler’s,” the congressman said, looking back at Lucas Rolle who was on the telephone again.
    “No,” I said.
    “No reason you should,” he said. “It was Song of the Silent by James Boyd. It ended, ‘The crippled boys come back to mule and star. If they shall miss the brotherhood they wanted, our leaders may learn who they are.’ Our boys will be heard and our enemies exposed.”
    He patted my arm and went back through the door, closing it behind him. I was alone in the hall.
    I’d made two stops. I had gotten nowhere. I hadn’t really expected to make any discovery that would help. My job was to touch all the bases I could find and hope one was right.
    I stopped at Mack’s on Melrose. Anita was there waiting on a man drinking coffee, looking at a magazine, and worrying the edges of what looked like a toasted cheese sandwich with little nibbles. The man was skinny. A cabby’s cap was tilted back on his head.
    “Tobias,” Anita said, with a grin that didn’t hide the fact that she was nearing the end of a seven-hour shift.
    I sat at the counter on a red-leather—covered swivel stool and faced her. Anita cleaned up and made up really good, but at work she kept herself clear-faced, efficient, and pleasantly out-of-reach for some of her male regulars.
    “Anita,” I said. “What do you think of Charlie Chaplin?”
    “Funny, sad, says and does dumb things. I really don’t think about him much. I’m more the Bob Hope type.”
    The cabby with the toasted cheese sandwich turned to us and said, “Chaplin’s a jerk.”
    I looked at him. His eyes were on his magazine. He wasn’t looking for conversation. He was imparting his version of simple truth.
    “I guess that settles it,” I said to Anita.
    She reached under the counter and came up with a brown paper sack bulging with potatoes. I placed it on the stool next to me.
    “Johnny Mack Brown’s at the Roxy,” I said looking up at the Royal Crown Cola poster behind her. Johnny Mack Brown was wearing a big white cowboy hat, and the quote next to his head said, “I like the best tasting cola of them all.” “ The Texas Kid. ”
    “First, The Fallen Sparrow ,” she said.
    “Tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe the day after. Then how about The Texas Kid ?”
    “And then Claudia ,” she said.
    “ Fallen Sparrow. Tomorrow night.”
    “Date,” she said, patting my hand. “I’m off early. Pick me up at home?”
    “At home,” I said.
    Something in the way I said it gave me away.
    “Ann,” she said. “You were thinking about Ann.”
    I didn’t lie.
    “I guess,” I said.
    Ann was my former wife, a contrast to Anita in almost every way. Ann was a full, dark beauty who had lost weight and lost a husband after she left me. Maybe I should explain “lost.” Her second husband was dead. Now she was married to a movie actor named Preston Stewart who was still handsome and, after twenty years, still in demand but no longer an A-list leading man. He starred in B programmers with an occasional supporting role at M.G.M. He would pop up in the credits once in a while to remind me of his existence. I had been at their wedding and had to reluctantly admit to myself that I liked the guy.
    Anita looked nothing like Ann. She was lean, blonde, and good-looking, but not a beauty. However, I wasn’t looking for beauty, and anyone interested in me wasn’t either. We had been doing fine together since I found her here behind Mack’s counter less than a year ago.
    “Nothing wrong with thinking about her,” she said. “God knows I think about my ex more than once in a while. See you tomorrow.”
    She gave me a smile and a wink and moved to serve two women