My Hero by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

like. Hello? This is the Benighted Realms bookshop in Stockport. Where the bloody hell has she got to?’

    There was a confused buzzing at the other end of the line, from which Regalian was able to deduce that Jane was due at Dillons at half past twelve and Waterstone’s in Cheadle at two. He glanced at his clock, did the necessary mental arithmetic (his clock, of course, worked in Overtime, which is three hours plus one minute for each phase of the moons of Saturn ahead of Greenwich) and called directory enquiries for the number of Dillons, Stockport.
    â€˜Hello, could I speak to Jane Armitage, please? Yes, she’s there doing a signing session.Yes, that Jane Armitage. Yes, I’ll hold. Regalian. Um, Harvey Regalian.Thank you.’
    There was a long pause, during which Regalian could visualise bookshop staff looking under piles of books and in the dark corners of the stockroom; and then Jane came on, saying, ‘Yes?’
    â€˜It’s me.’
    â€˜Gosh.’ An impressed pause. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’
    â€˜Call it heroic intuition. Look, what’s the problem?’
    There was a long silence at the other end of the line, which Regalian charitably put down to Jane being asked to sign a book. ‘It’s a long story,’ Jane said at last. ‘And you might find it a bit difficult to believe. Are you ready?’
    Regalian frowned. On the one hand, he badly wanted to know what was going on. On the other hand, it was his phone bill.
    â€˜Call me back,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the number.’
    Â 
    This is America.
    This is, to be precise, Chicopee Falls, Mass., and the year is 1959. Rifles for Cochise is playing at the Roxy, in gentle competition with West of the Pecos at the drive-in. In back yards all over town, small boys wave wooden tomahawks and shoot each other with diecast sixguns
drawn from cardboard holsters. And in a nice house on the edge of town, a man who once wanted to be a writer but now does Westerns scowls at his typewriter and tries to think of some even vaguely original way for the good guy to outdraw the baddie.
    Crack! Crack! Crack! The heavy Colt bucked in Slim’s hand like a Rio Pueblo bronc as his left hand brushed the hammer . . .
    Oh for Christ’s sake. He stood up, ground out the twelfth cigarette of the day, and stared out of the window. In the glass he saw his own face; and, as he gazed at it in his distraction, it seemed to change into that of his hero. His useless, whisky-sodden, two-left-footed geek of a hero.
    Howdy, partner.
    â€˜Go play with yourself,’ Skinner growled.
    Only being sociable, partner. Seems like you’re mighty cross-grained this fine April morning.
    â€˜And whose fault is that?’ Skinner replied. ‘Just for once, why don’t you do like you’re frigging well told?’
    I got my public to think of, bud.
    Skinner’s eyebrows huddled together like frightened sheep. ‘One of these days,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you get on with it, and we’ll see just how fast you really are. What am I saying? Probably you’ll shoot your damn foot off just trying to get the gun out the holster.’
    You sayin’ I ain’t fast?
    The idiot in the window was giving him the eye, and it suddenly occurred to Skinner that he’d been making a mistake all these years. The sonofabitch character was in fact a villain, somehow miscast as a hero. That would account for his habit of running away from showdowns on Main Street, and wearing a black hat.
    â€˜You? Fast? I’ve seen faster things climbing walls with their houses on their backs.’

    You wanna put your iron where your mouth is?
    Feeling incredibly foolish, Skinner reached out and opened the drawer where he kept the Scholfield. He’d bought it as a publicity thing, eight years ago, out of his advance money for Geronimo’s Nephew , and had tried to have as little as possible to do