Concrete Desert by Jon Talton Read Free Book Online Page A

has interesting Freudian undertones,” she said, sniffing.
    Mike and Sharon had been childhood sweethearts. By the time I met Mike, they had been married nearly five years. Now they had two grown kids and managed to make a good life for themselves. God knows, it couldn’t have been easy living with Mike, and I knew they came close to breaking up while Mike and I were partners years ago—but somehow they had made it.
    If Mike had barely changed, Sharon had become nearly unrecognizable from the person I knew fifteen years ago. Then, she was a pudgy, shy social worker who was fighting her husband about continuing her schooling. I guess she won, because she went on to get her doctorate in psychology, go into private practice, write a popular book on eating disorders, and, for the past two years, host a radio psychologist show on a local station. Dr. Sharon was a minor celebrity now, poised, polished, and aerobicized. Another thing that struck me was how Sharon had a calming influence on Mike. His coiled anger seemed subdued that night, his mood almost playful.
    I sat back on the brown leather sofa, dragged on the cigar, and felt peaceful. My ribs still hurt like hell, though. I hadn’t told Peralta about the encounter in the carport. I couldn’t say exactly why. I guess I felt stupid for being so careless. Not only was Peralta a kind of big-brother figure to me, but he was my old self-defense instructor. I couldn’t bear to admit to him that I had been on the losing end of a fight.
    I’d come to in the carport maybe half an hour after I’d passed out, with a big tomcat licking my face and purring at me. I was covered in sweat and my head felt like I had been through a week-long binge of drinking bad whiskey. I pulled myself into the house, locked up behind me, and thought about what had happened and why. I wasn’t as scared as I was surprised, and then angry, and then embarrassed. Working the streets for four years as a patrol deputy, I had seen plenty of violent situations, especially the family fights where the cops are target number one, and I had learned to take care of myself. But it was clear that years of the soft, safe life of academia had settled into me far more than I wanted to admit.
    As to the why: I didn’t have a clue. I couldn’t imagine my work on the Stokes case mattering to anyone. I doubted it was some Marxist historian trying to settle an intellectual score with me; they had gotten me kicked off the faculty already. So it had to involve Phaedra. I hadn’t been prepared to draw a conclusion Wednesday night, and I still wasn’t. I’d called Julie Riding the next morning to see if she was okay, but she was distracted with work and we didn’t talk long. I didn’t tell her about the attack, either.
    “So when are you going to bring me Stokes, signed, sealed, and delivered?” Peralta asked.
    “Soon,” I said. “Tell me why you tossed this case my way?”
    “No,” Sharon interjected. “No more work talk. I am sick to death of work talk.”
    “You do shrink talk,” Peralta protested through a plume of cigar smoke.
    “Not tonight, my love,” she said. “We’re going to talk about David.”
    I shifted uncomfortably and nursed the cognac.
    “Mike tells me Julie Riding has come back into your life,” Sharon said. I nodded and told her about the search for Phaedra.
    “What’s Julie like now? What’s she doing?”
    “Everybody changes,” I said. “She’s not the same woman I knew twenty years ago.”
    “I bet she’s gotten old and ugly,” Peralta said.
    “You are so low,” Sharon said, then turned back to me. “I don’t know if I should say this. I never thought Julie was right for you, David. Too immature, too insecure. You two were so different. You gave a lot more than you got.”
    “That was a long time ago, Sharon. I have no illusions about Julie. I just told her I’d help her find her little sister, Phaedra.”
    “That’s a pretty name,” Sharon said.
    “Ahhh.”