Nightbird by Edward Dee Read Free Book Online Page B

state-of-the-art morgue of a western state, Ryan listened to the drone of official words as he
     silently begged God to let him change places with the broken body being caressed by his wife. Never in his life had Ryan felt
     so helpless, so useless. Leigh whispering hoarsely to their son, as if crooning a lullaby.
    “Maybe nobody is responsible,” Leigh said as she stacked the
Playbills
back in the box. “I’m going to call my sister, tell her we’ll pick her up in five minutes.”
    Somebody is always responsible, he thought. Who would tell the Stones that no one was responsible? He thought about them in
     the Bellevue morgue this morning. Did they think their daughter was only sleeping? He’d noticed that it always took an oddly
     long time for parents to react in the morgue. He didn’t know if it was the familiarity of the closed eyes or the absolute
     stillness. Or merely a few extra seconds of hope. How easy it was for parents to convince themselves, for those few seconds,
     that their child was only sleeping.
    “Enough dwelling,” Leigh said. “Dwelling is not good for anybody.”
    She grabbed his wrist and tried to pull him to his feet. He sat there looking up as she yanked. “On your feet, pally. Let
     someone else worry about who’s responsible. The only thing you have to worry about is where you’re taking us for dinner.”
    The weight of being up for over twenty-four hours had descended on Anthony Ryan. Fatigue had left his emotions too close to
     the surface. He buried his face in his arm. He wanted to stay in this room where he knew the stories behind every framed picture,
     every souvenir and knickknack, every odd creak and groan.
    “I need to be fed, Officer,” Leigh said, still pulling. “Something Italian and fattening as hell. Maybe a nice bottle of wine.
     A big bottle. We’ll all get stoned on that Day-Glo red you half Italians drink.”
    “Dago red,” he corrected, and had to smile because his southern girl had said it the same way for over thirty years. “It’s
     called dago red.”
    She yanked with both hands, grunting, as if pulling him out of jungle quicksand. Her back was almost parallel with the floor,
     head thrown back recklessly, gray hair flying. Ryan got up slowly, holding tight; he had to or else she would have fallen
     backward. When he was up, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
    “Dago, Day-Glo, whatever,” she said. “We’ll get two bottles.”

7
    T he borough of Queens was named after Catherine of Braganza, the queen of King Charles II. She could have it back as far as
     Danny Eumont was concerned. On Thursday morning road crews had funneled Fifty-ninth Street Bridge traffic into one eastbound
     lane; it took Danny two hours to drive the olive green Volvo from home to his office.
    Manhattan
magazine, despite the facade of a P.O. box and a telephone exchange indicating Manhattan, was actually located in a fading
     industrial section of Long Island City, Queens. For a quarter of the price of Manhattan square footage, the fledgling journal
     rented the entire top floor of a two-story concrete block structure only two subway stops east of the East River.
    Danny jogged up the steep and narrow stairway to the second floor. An auto body shop occupied the ground floor of the kind
     of building his uncle called a “taxpayer.” The magazine’s main office was empty, nine A.M. being too early for real journalists. The floor plan consisted of one long room, with private offices at the far end. Only
     editors and bean counters rated private offices. Danny’s desk sat in the big room, near a back window, overlooking a pyramid
     of used tires and a vicious one-eared mongrel restrained by an anchor chain. The only time he’d brought Gillian to the office,
     she’d gone out and actually petted the greasy, psychotic beast.
    Ball-peen hammers
ping
ed and air compressors
whoosh
ed as Danny opened and slammed his desk drawers, looking for his tape recorder. The recorder was