Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) by Joel Canfield Read Free Book Online Page A

lot and headed for the entrance.
    I went in, power-walked through the lobby and came right back out the back door – all so I could walk back around the front to where I had originally parked.
    And there in the parking lot, I saw, as I expected I would, a familiar blue Toyota cautiously coming to a stop a few spaces away from my new rental. I waited to see who was going to get out of it.
    And holy fuck if it wasn’t a damn teenager.
    The kid was wearing expensive ripped jeans and t-shirt, trying to look street for too much money. He was skinny, furtive and was holding a heavy-duty X-ACTO knife in his left hand as he approached my shiny new rental car. But I was able to get right behind him before he got too far. I knew this was an amateur because he never felt me coming.
    “Hold it, Billy the Kid. You don’t want me to use what’s sticking in your back.”
    What was sticking in his back was the end of the tire wrench from the trunk of the rental. But he didn’t know that.
    He stopped immediately and put up his hands. Poor little fucker was shaking. Finally, someone else besides me was in the damn principal’s office and I got to be the damn principal.
    “Drop the knife,” I barked like a tough guy. I’m up to it when there’s no chance of me getting hurt.
    He dropped the knife. I picked it up.
    “Thanks,” I said. “Sorry for the surprise, but I didn’t feel like wasting another hour forty-five today, it’s already starting to get dark. Now turn around.”
    He did. I showed him the tire wrench. His eyes went wide. I was suddenly a magical trickster. Maybe I would turn him into a frog.
    “What’s this all about?” I asked.
    He looked glumly at the ground. But not before I noticed the family resemblance.
    “Your mother’s name Angela?”
    No response. Which was a response.
    “Well, go home and tell Mommy you didn’t scare me off. And maybe have her give me a call.”
    He stood there not knowing what to do. I pointed the tire iron at him.
    “Bang.”
    He skedaddled away, back to the blue Toyota, which he jumped into just as fast as he could, stumbling and almost falling on his face on the front seat. Then he drove off with a loud squeal, leaving a little of the tire tread behind in the parking space.
    I had the feeling he was going to be up all night on Hulu watching old Family Guy episodes trying to calm himself down.
     
    Five more miles up the interstate, I checked in under a phony name at a different Hilton Ramada Holiday Inn and took my luggage, by which I mean the Banana Republic shopping bags, up to my room, headed straight for the bathroom, and finally took the shit that had been trying to fight its way out of my ass for the past three hours.
    I felt about twenty pounds lighter, and thought about maybe taking a shower and watching some garbage TV to relax. But who was I kidding - I knew I couldn’t relax. So far, everybody I had been in contact with today was deeply unhappy - and I knew I needed to add one more name to this little anti-party.
    An hour later, Howard threw open his front door. He was in his pajamas. I didn’t figure him for a pajama guy, I figured him for a boxers and t-shirt guy. I’m usually right about these things, so I was momentarily taken off guard.
    “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, logically enough.
    “I figured if I wasn’t going to sleep tonight, neither should you.”
    Howard and his lovely wife Janet lived in the Palisades, a nice neighborhood near the Potomac River and the Georgetown campus – another Washington elite community. They weren’t in the nicest part of this nice neighborhood, but where they were didn’t suck either.
    I looked Howard over a moment, since I hadn’t seen him in person in a few years. He had always had the face of a rat, now he had a shaved head on top of that, so that he resembled an albino lizard. All the old guys shaved their heads now, cutting their losses once their hairlines retreated to the back of their skulls.