Sleepless by Charlie Huston Read Free Book Online Page B

Last night? What time is it?"
    The needles in his hands were turning to pins, and he found he could flex them on his own.
    The man let go and took a cell from a plastic clip on the belt of his navy blue Dickies.
    "Little after midnight."
    "I should call my wife."
    The man put the phone back on his belt.
    "Later."
    From the corner of the table he picked up a wrinkled and stained manila envelope, names and numbers scrawled across it in long rows, each crossed out in turn, except for one: HAAS, PARKER, T./A330H-4-40
    The man untwisted a frayed brown thread from a round tab, opened the envelope, looked inside, and then dumped the contents onto the table.
    "What the hell is this?"
    Park looked at the baggies of brown, seedy ditch weed.
    "Not mine."
    The man looked at the uncrossed name on the outside of the envelope.
    "Says it is."
    "It's not."
    The man nodded.
    "Lot of trouble to be in for a couple ounces of Mexican brown."
    Park made fists; just the tips of his fingers tingled now. He looked at the door.
    "Can we talk?"
    The man folded his arms across the Dodgers jersey he wore open over a white tank.
    "That's why we're here."
    Park flicked one of the bags with his index finger.
    "That's what they planted on me."
    The man pointed at the bag.
    "Because this isn't what I expected to find on you."
    Park nodded.
    "And it's not what I had on me."
    "Hounds and Kleiner took what you had on you?"
    "Yes."
    "And planted this?"
    "Yes."
    The man folded his arms a little tighter.
    "And what did the arresting officers take off you?"
    Park looked at the man's cellphone.
    "I should really call my wife. She'll worry."
    The man shook his head.
    "Later. Tell me what they took off you."
    Park drank from the water bottle, draining what was left.
    "Demerol. Valium. X."
    The man nodded and unfolded his arms and picked up one of the baggies.
    "Because this will get you nowhere."
    Park touched the ear that had been punched while the black sack was over his head.
    "I know. And it's not what I had. It's not what I've been doing."
    The man waved a hand.
    "I know what you've been doing."
    Park shrugged.
    "Well, then?"
    The man stared at him, shook his head, and sat in the chair opposite.
    "I want to hear it."
    Park looked at the door again.
    "We can talk?"
    The man took off his sunglasses, revealing bagged eyes, bloodshot, sunk in deeply wrinkled sockets.
    "We can talk."
    Park pointed at the sack on the floor.
    "Then can you tell me who the hell is running things here, Captain?"
    The man with the worried eyes shrugged.
    "We are."
    Park didn't want the duty at first.
    It wasn't what he'd joined for. He'd joined to help. He'd joined to do service. When asked by his friends what the hell he was going to do, he told them he was going to protect and to serve.
    None of them laughed, knowing that Parker Thomas Haas did not joke about such things. He had, in fact, no sense of humor at all when it came to matters of justice and ethics.
    Morality he found amusing, in the obscure way that only a man with a Ph.D. in philosophy could find such things amusing, but justice and ethics were inflexible measures, applicable to all, and not to be joked about.
    Not by him, in any case.
    And so he'd wanted to stay in uniform.
    Long before he had finished at the academy, he had resolved for himself that justice within the courts did not often live up to the standards it should and must. Long, hot afternoons spent between classes in the downtown courthouses, watching the wheels of justice squeal and creak, had settled that case.
    But street justice was another matter.
    It could be applied directly. In the face of injustice, a man with a badge on the street could actually do something. What happened after the point of interdiction could be a mystery, but in the moment of arrest, leniency, summons, unexpected tolerance, no-BS takedown, comfort, lecture, or application of force, a cop on the beat could enact true justice.
    A matter of setting a standard and applying it always, without