A Safe Place for Dying by Jack Fredrickson Read Free Book Online Page B

my grandfather had installed. With a used microwave oven and plastic washtub sink, the turret, with its bad roof, had all the comforts of camping out in an abandoned house, but as I reminded myself on an almost hourly basis, at least I was not at the health center. The zoning lawyer would have been pleased; through that winter and spring and into the summer, my profile was lower than a garden snake’s.
    Late one afternoon, I was on top of the turret, leaning against the stone wall that rose five feet above the roof, arguing with Elvis. A long week had passed since I’d messengered my report to the Bohemian, and I’d stayed busy by calling every roofer in the yellow
pages and trying to convince myself that the Bohemian was right in not going to the cops.
    Elvis had seen the roofers’ trucks coming by all week, and each time one pulled away, he came blustering over to make sure I wasn’t violating any of his rules.
    â€œA membrane roof is a big rubber sheet,” I said for the fourth or fifth time. I kicked at the loose stone pebbles on my roof. “It won’t leak like this tar and gravel. Besides, this wall hides it. I could put a pink roof on, and you’d never know.”
    â€œI’d know.” Elvis touched a large dark red pimple on the tip of his nose. “I’d know.”
    â€œYou saw the buckets downstairs. This place leaks.”
    â€œI’d know.”
    The loving way he was fondling the zit was mesmerizing.
    â€œI’d know,” he said again.
    â€œWhat?” Engrossed by the way he was caressing his apple red nose, I’d lost the thread of what he was saying.
    â€œIf you were putting a pink roof on this place,” he said.
    I’d paused, searching for the right one-syllable words, when my cell phone rang. A crisp British voice introduced herself as the Bohemian’s secretary and said, “Mr. Chernek requests that you go to Crystal Waters immediately. Mr. Novak will be outside the front gate.”
    My heart started banging like an old pump. “What’s this about?” I shouted into the phone.
    â€œPlease go there, Mr. Elstrom. Immediately.” She hung up.
    Elvis’s lips were working under his inflamed nose, but I couldn’t hear his words. Guilt had shut down my sound as my mind raced. Thirty pieces of silver, three grand; I’d been Judas. I’d sold out, hadn’t forced the Bohemian and Stanley Novak to go to the cops. For money, for a roof. Jesus. Now there’d been another bomb, and maybe somebody had died.
    I hustled the startled Elvis down the five flights, mumbling
something about a family emergency, jumped in the Jeep, and aimed it west.
    I couldn’t risk getting stuck in the trucks clogging Thompson Avenue; I ran the stop signs on the side streets, past the bungalows and the dark shells of the abandoned factories, and shot back onto Thompson Avenue by the Fronts at the outskirts of Riverton, where the highway widens to four lanes. I raced along the highway, swerving around the slow-moving trucks, dodging the occasional car pulling out of one of the long driveways. Cars horns blared; drivers fumbled to lower their windows to scream at my recklessness. I didn’t care. I was Judas, and now people had died.
    I got to the hill just east of Gateville and sped up toward the crest with my head out the side window, scanning the sky for black smoke. But the sky was clear and blue, and there were no sirens above the sounds of the traffic. I got to the top of the hill and looked down.
    The white marble gateposts of Crystal Waters stood like Corinthian soldiers at rest, calm against the dark green yews by the entrance. No smoke, no flames, no flashing lights. Just three men standing next to a pale blue pickup truck parked on the grass outside the brick wall, right next to the entrance. I rode the brake down the hill, taking deeper breaths.
    I got close enough to recognize Stanley Novak, talking to two