Bitter Truth by William Lashner Read Free Book Online Page B

except for how fiercely I wanted out. I sat and daydreamed about winning the lottery and dripping paint on canvases in the Hamptons with a gin and tonic in my hand and then I stopped daydreaming and thought about the Reddmans.
    Guys like me, we don’t often brush shoulders with that much money and to accidentally rub up against it, like I did in that bank, does something ugly to us. It’s like seeing the most beautiful woman in the world walk by, a woman who makes you ache just to look at her, and knowing that she’ll never even glance in your direction, which slips the ache in even deeper. I thought about the Reddmans and all they were born to and I ached. More than anything in this world, I wish I had been born rich. It would have made up for everything. I’d still be ugly, sure, but I’d be rich and ugly. I’d still be weak and dim and tongue-tied with women, but I’d be rich enough for them not to care. I’d no longer be a social misfit, I’d be eccentric. And most of all, I’d no longer be what I was, I’d be something different. I thought about it all and let the pain of my impoverishment wash over me and then I started making calls.
    “I don’t have time to chitchat,” said Detective McDeiss over the phone, after I had tracked him down to the Criminal Justice Building. “You need something from me, you can go through the D.A.”
    “It’s not about an active prosecution,” I said. “The case I want to talk about is old and closed. Jacqueline Shaw.”
    There was a pause and a deep breath. “The heiress.”
    “I like that word, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, well, this one hung herself. What could there possibly be left to talk about?”
    “I don’t know. I just want to get some background. I’m representing the sister.”
    “Good for you, Carl. It’s a step up I guess from your usual low-class grease-bucket clientele. How did you ever hook onto her?”
    “She chased me down the street with a gun.”
    “Tell me about it, you slimeball.”
    “You free for lunch tomorrow?”
    “To talk about Jacqueline Shaw?”
    “Exactly. My treat.”
    “Your treat, huh?” There was a pause while McDeiss reprioritized his day. “You eat Chinese, Carl?”
    “I’m Jewish, aren’t I?” I said.
    “All right then, one o’clock,” and he tossed out an address before hanging up. I knew that McDeiss wanted nothing to do with me, disdain dripped thick as oil from his voice, but in the last few years I had learned something about cops and one of the things I had learned was that there was not a cop on the force who would turn down a free lunch, even if it was just a $4.25 luncheon special at some Chinatown dive with fried rice and an egg roll soggy with grease.
    Except the address he tossed out was not to some Chinatown dive, it was to Susanna Foo, the fanciest, priciest Chinese restaurant in the city.

6

    P ETER CRESSI had a dark, Elvisine look that just sort of melted women. He told me so in his own modest way, but he was right. Take the way our secretary, Ellie, reacted after he walked by whenever he walked by. She stared at him as he strutted past, her eyes popping, her mouth agape, and then, when the door was closed, she let out a sort of helpless giggle. He was a tomato for sure, Cressi, Big Boy or beefsteak, one of them, and from my dealings with him I knew him to be just about as smart. He was actually a little brighter than he looked, but then again he’d have to be.
    “How’s it hanging wit’ you, Vic?” he said to me as he sat indolently in the chair across from my desk. “Low?” His dark eyes were partly brooding, partly blank, as if he were angry at something he couldn’t quite remember. His lemon tie, delicious and bright against his black shirt, was tied with entirely too much care.
    “It’s not hanging so terrifically, Pete,” I said, shaking my head at him. “Next time you buy an arsenal, try not to purchase it from an undercover cop.”
    Peter gave me a wink and looked off to the