The Goldfish Bowl by Laurence Gough Read Free Book Online Page B

Rice quickly and efficiently, and then stepped away from him, out of the line of fire. With the look on Willows’ face, she believed he was ready to shoot. “He’s clean,” she said.
    “Sure he is. He’s so fucking clean, he squeaks.”
    “Can I turn around now?” said Rice.
    “If you’re sure you want to.”
    Rice slowly lowered his arms. He turned around, his eyes avoiding Parker. He stared at the weapon dangling loosely from Willows’ hand, the short barrel pointing at the oak floor. “You don’t need that,” he said. “I called you, remember?”
    Willows studied Rice indifferently for a moment, and then put away the gun. “The question is, why did you do it?”
    “Because I’m a good citizen.” Nobody laughed. Rice shrugged. “You must’ve dusted down every last square inch of that bus, right?”
    “Got a prior, Shelley?”
    “You guessed it.”
    “What?”
    “The worst. Took a shot at a guy.”
    “Hit him?”
    “In the kneecap.”
    “What kind of gun you use?”
    “A .22, a Hi-Standard automatic.”
    “When was that, Shelley?”
    “Two years ago. I did fourteen months, I’m still on parole.” He paused, and then added, “I wasn’t even trying to hit the guy, just scare him a little.”
    “Why?”
    Rice hesitated. “We had a business disagreement, I guess you could say.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Soft drugs. Nothing heavy.”
    “Anything else?”
    “What d’you mean?”
    “Convictions.”
    “No, nothing.”
    “You sure?”
    “Absolutely. You don’t believe me, go ahead and check.”
    “Who owns the house?”
    “My dad. He’s in Hawaii, on vacation.”
    “So that’s why you turned yourself in, because we had your prints and you knew we’d get to you sooner or later, so why not do it now, because this way your old man never finds out about it.”
    “You’re way ahead of me,” said Rice.
    Parker stood quietly to the side, watching Willows ply his trade. She wondered what he was getting at. Rice seemed to know — the armpits of his T-shirt were dark with sweat.
    “How old are you, kid?”
    “Twenty-six.”
    “You working?”
    “No, I’m unemployed. But who isn’t, right?”
    “What were you doing on the bus?”
    “My car broke down. I was on my way home.”
    “The Jaguar in the carport around by the side of the house, is that yours?”
    Rice nodded.
    “Expensive car. What went wrong?”
    “It was nothing, a dead battery. I left my lights on.”
    “Okay,” said Willows, “let’s see if I follow you so far. You wanted to get home but your car wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. So you grabbed a bus.”
    Rice frowned, nodded hesitantly. He looked, thought Parker, like a man trying to follow a vitally important conversation conducted in a foreign language.
    “Kind of taking the long way around, weren’t you? Heading east instead of south.”
    “I’m not all that familiar with the public transit system, to tell you the truth.”
    “When did you get the battery charged?”
    “First thing this morning.”
    “What did you do, call a tow truck?”
    “No, a friend of mine drove me back downtown. We used his jumper cables.”
    “What’s the friend’s name?”
    Rice glanced at Parker, almost as if he hoped she might prompt him, now that the questions were getting tough.
    “Come on now,” said Willows. “You really expect me to shovel such low-grade shit? Your thirty-thousand-dollar car breaks down and instead of spending ten bucks on a taxi, you stand around in the rain waiting for a bus that’s headed in the wrong direction?”
    Willows moved rapidly towards Rice. His arm shot out. Rice flinched. Willows straightened the Toni Onley hanging crookedly on the wall, giving the painting all his attention. Rice sagged with relief.
    “I’m with homicide,” said Willows. “Not narcotics. But if you don’t tell me what you were doing on that bus, I’m going to phone downtown for the wrecking crew and the dogs. Your daddy’s going to get back from the