I Kill by Giorgio Faletti Read Free Book Online Page B

since he had last awoken and whether or not Homer had been there all that
time. He was wearing the same clothes, the same expression. Frank had realized that he had never seen him with different clothes or different expressions. Maybe he had an entire closet full of
identical ones. They called him ‘Husky’ in the office, because his steely blue eyes looked like those of a sled dog.
    ‘Hi, sweetheart. Welcome back,’ Harriet had said with her hands in his hair and a tear running down her face. That tear was part of her, as if it had been there since the
beginning of time.
    She had risen from her seat next to the bed and placed her lips on his in a salty kiss. Frank had breathed in the scent of her breath the way a sailor breathes the air that carries the
fragrance of the coast, the air of home. Homer had discreetly moved away.
    ‘What happened? Where am I?’ Frank had asked in a toneless voice that he didn’t recognize. His throat was strangely sore and he remembered nothing. His last memory was of a
door being kicked open and of holding his gun as he entered a room. Then came the flash and the thunder and an enormous hand pushing him upwards, towards a painless darkness.
    ‘You’re in the hospital. You’ve been in a coma for a week. You had us worried sick.’ The tear was melded on to his wife s cheek like a fold in her skin. It sparkled
with her pain.
    She was standing to one side and had glanced at Homer to let him do the rest of the explaining. He had come over to the bed and looked at Frank from behind the barrier of his glasses.
    ‘The two Larkins spread a rumour that there was a big deal about to happen, and that they were going to be exchanging the goods and the money with their contacts at the warehouse. Lots
of goods and lots of money. They did it on purpose to get Harvey Lupe and his men jealous and convince them to break in and get their hands on everything: drugs and cash. The building was stuffed
with explosives. With one show of fireworks they were planning to free themselves of all the competition. But you and Cooper came along instead of Lupe. He was still outside the south side of the
warehouse when you went in through the office. In Cooper’s direction the blast was partly absorbed by the shelves inside and all he got was a little debris in his face and a few scratches.
You got hit with the full force of the explosion and it’s lucky for you that the Larkins are big dealers but lousy bombers. It’s a miracle you’re alive. I can’t even tell
you off for not waiting for the team. If you had all gone in there together it would have been a massacre.’
    Now he knew it all but still could remember nothing. All he could think was that he and Cooper had worked for two years to get the Larkins and instead the Larkins had got them. Him, to be
precise.
    ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Frank had asked, sensing some strangeness in his body. He felt a vague constriction and saw his right leg in a cast, as if it belonged to someone
else.
    A doctor had entered the room just in time to hear the question, and he had given the answer. The doctor’s hair was grey but his face and manner were those of a young man. He had smiled
at Frank ceremoniously, his head to one side.
    ‘Hello, I’m Dr Foster, one of the reasons you’re still alive. Hope you don’t mind. If you like, I can tell you what’s wrong. A few broken ribs, a lesion of the
pleura, a leg broken in two places, wounds of various sizes everywhere, serious injuries of the thorax, and a concussion. And enough bruises to make your skin three shades darker. And there is
– that is, there was – a piece of metal that stopped a quarter of an inch from your heart and made us sweat blood to get rid of it before it got rid of you. And now, if you will allow
me’-he picked up the chart hanging at the foot of the bed – I think it’s time to examine our efforts at damage control.’ He had gone to the head of the bed and pressed a