CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) by S.J. Rozan Read Free Book Online

hour!”
    “I been upstairs rehangin’ the door to Miz Weeks’ room,” Carter said.
    “Oh, yeah? And just who the hell told you to do that?”
    “No one told me. Miz Weeks ask me yesterday, say she can’t close her door.”
    “Her mouth, you mean! That old bat could talk the ear off a fucking fish.” To me, Portelli said, “Him and her was probably sitting around exchanging stories about the good old plantation days. Carter, you work for
me!
You don’t scratch your ass unless I tell you to. You understand that, or you want I should use smaller words?”
    Carter’s spine stiffened, but all he said was, “I understand.”
    “Swell. Now get the fuck back to work. Ahh, shit, wait.” He sighed, a man weary with the burdens life thrust upon him. “Doctor Feelgood’s looking for you. I told him he had ten minutes, then I want you back here. See him first.”
    Carter turned and left, without a look at me.
    Pete looked at me, though. “Damn moulies stick together, don’t they? You suppose he’d’ve spent ten minutes hanging a door for some one of those kikes up there?” I didn’t answer. He smashed out his cigarette. “So, you got nothing to do? What’re you hanging around here for?”
    “A locker,” I reminded him.
    “Oh, shit, yeah, okay.” He rummaged through a desk drawer, came out with a file folder with a couple of pieces of ruled paper in it. He looked through them. “Eighteen,” he said. He scrawled my name next to the number, with the note “Moran” next to my name. “Bring your own lock. G’bye.”
    The garden was a welcome relief after Pete Portelli’s office, and my own company a welcome relief after his.

E IGHT
    I ran into my new cousin toward the end of my shift, invited him to join me for a quick beer after work.
    “Can’t do it.” He shook his head. “Got somewhere to be. Rain check?”
    “Sure.”
    “Look forward to it. Hey, thanks for staying cool with Pete before.”
    “Well, I don’t know what I was staying cool about, but you obviously didn’t want to know me.”
    “Not exactly that. Pete find out I been messing with the Cobras, he’ll fire my ass.”
    “What about Dr. Madsen? Didn’t he tell Pete why he wanted you?”
    “Naw. He tell Pete he need a quick look at me, have to do with my health insurance.”
    My respect for the cynical Dr. Madsen rose an abrupt notch.
    “That Pete’s a real peach, isn’t he?” I said as we fell into step along the corridor. “Is he always like that?”
    “Nope. Sometime he in a bad mood. Unless you Italian. You Italian?”
    “Uh-uh. Half Irish, half cracker.”
    “Cracker from where?”
    “Kentucky. Louisville.”
    “Don’t sound it.”
    “Didn’t live there long. Listen, I’m on break and I’d just about kill for a cup of coffee. Is there a coffee machine or something around here?”
    He hesitated. “No machine. But if you really desperate, they got coffee in the staff room. We not suppose to go in there, and probably you not either, but seeing as you new, maybe it be all right.”
    “I’ll take my chances. Point me toward it.”
    I thought about that cup of coffee a lot, later. If I’d focused less on finding some caffeine, more on why I was there, I might have remembered what I’d already forgotten. A simple question, a simple answer, and I might have cleared up what I was there to clear up and left a lot of other things untouched. As it was, before I saw the answer floating on the surface I was in so deep that I was turning up the mud at the bottom, exposing things that couldn’t stand the light.
    The staff room was bright and neat, three square tables with chairs around them, two sofas, a small kitchenette with a stainless-steel counter. Rectangles of late-day sunlight striped the floor in front of the barred windows. It was quiet and empty and smelled of coffee.
    A full Mr. Coffee on the counter was waiting patiently just for me. I poured a cup, clinked a quarter into a can with a slotted top, and took the