The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley Read Free Book Online Page B

phlegm-strangled ,
    whiskey-soaked, cigar-smoked, window-rattling roars. I
    wondered how he slept in all that racket, how his wives ,
    past and present, ever got any sleep. I hid his afternoon
    ration of vodka between something called The Towers
    of Gallisfried and a thin Western, Stalkahole, then
    tiptoed out quietly, trying not to awaken the monster.
    At the nearest pay telephone, I found the high school
    drama teacher's number listed. When I called Mr.
    Gleeson and told him why I wanted to talk to him, he
    sounded vaguely amused rather than surprised. He
    didn't have to thumb through his memory to recognize
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    the name, though, which was a good sign. He agreed to
    talk to me as soon as I could drive out to his house, but
    only for a short time, since he had a student appointment later that afternoon. Then he proceeded to give me a set of directions so confusing that it took me thirty
    minutes to drive the ten miles out to his house at the
    base of the Oakville Grade. By the time I found it, I
    had stopped myself twice from driving on over the
    Grade into the Napa Valley and a wine tour.
    Charles Gleeson lived in a cottage in a live oak glade,
    a small place that looked as if it had been a summer
    retreat once, with a shake roof and unpainted walls that
    had tastefully weathered to a silver gray. Some sort of
    massive vine screened his front porch and clambered
    like crazy over the roof, as if it feared it might drown
    among the large flowering shrubs that cluttered the
    yard. He came to the screen door before I could knock,
    a small man with a painfully erect posture, a huge head,
    and a voice so theatrically deep and resonant that he
    sounded like a bad imitation of Richard Burton on a
    drunken Shakespearean lark. Unfortunately, his noble
    head was as bald as a baby's butt, except for a stylishly
    long fringe of fine, graying hair that cuffed the back of
    his head from ear to ear. He must have splashed a
    buck's worth of aftershave lotion across his face, and he
    was wearing white ducks, a knit polo shirt, and about
    five pounds of silver and turquoise.
    "You must be the gentleman who telephoned about
    Betty Sue Flowers," he emoted as he opened the door.
    A cruising fly, hovering like a tiny hawk, banked in
    front of me and sped for the kitchen. Gleeson swatted
    at it with a pale, ineffectual hand and muttered a mild
    curse.
    "I'm sorry I'm late," I said.
    "The directions, right? I must apologize, but my
    conception of spatial relationships is severely limited.
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    Except on stage, of course. My god, I can block out a
    monster like Morning Becomes Electra in my head but I
    can't seem to tell anyone how to find my little cottage in
    the woods," he prattled as he twisted the heavy
    bracelet on his wrist. Then we shook hands, and he
    patted my forearm affectionately and drew me into his
    Danish Modern, Neo-Navajo living room. "It's lovely
    out," he suggested, touching the squash-blossom necklace, "so why don't we sit on the sun deck? I fear the house is a disaster area-I'm a bachelor, you see, and
    housekeeping seems to elude me. " He waved his hand
    aimlessly at some invisible mess. We could have
    lunched off the waxed oak floorboards or performed an
    appendectomy on the driftwood coffee table. I didn't
    mind going outside though. His sort of house always
    made me check my boots for cowshit. Unfortunately,
    this time they were innocently · clean.
    The sun deck, built out of the same silvered planks as
    the house and threatened by the same heavy vine, was
    done in wrought iron and gay orange canvas. At least it
    was outside. With a deep, throbbing sigh, Gleeson
    collapsed into a director's chair and genteelly offered
    me the one facing him.
    "It's a bit early for me, but would you care for a
    cerveza?" he said, idly swirling the ice cubes in the
    blown Mexican glass he had picked up from the neat
    little table that matched his little chair. "A beer?" he
    added, just in case I hadn't understood.
    "Right," I growled, "it's