The Library of Forgotten Books by Rjurik Davidson Read Free Book Online Page B

you?”
    “Testy. Spit it out then.”
    “She’s dead,” Faulkner says and he reaches into his coat, looking for something. “Murdered.”
    Laurence looks at Faulkner as if he doesn’t understand, then nods his head and says, “At her apartment?” When Faulkner remains silent, Laurence nods again, slowly, like a horse searching the ground for grass. He turns back to the cabinet, takes another glass and fills it. “Looks like you could do with one of these.” He turns back and freezes.
    Faulkner has a gun on him.
    “Easy, tiger,” says Laurence.
    “It had to be about you, didn’t it? I mean, no one sells dream-dust, gets caught, and stays out of jail. There’s got to be a reason, doesn’t there, Laurence? There are shadows behind all of us.”
    “I guess you don’t want your drink then?”
    “She was your daughter and you haven’t even broken a sweat.”
    “Listen, I gotta get out of here. I gotta get across the bay, outta Melbourne.”
    “What do they want from you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Who are they?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Faulkner steps forward and, with a quick crack, hits Laurence on the forehead with the butt of his gun. Laurence drops to his knees, places his hand on his forehead, but blood still flows in rivulets between his fingers.
    Faulkner places the gun against Laurence’s head. “Now she’s gone, I ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”
    “I worked for the secret service. The secret service.”
    “That’s why you weren’t sent to jail, is that it?”
    “Yes.”
    “So someone wants you dead from the old days.”
    “I swear, I don’t know who.”
    “What were you working on?”
    “The Chinese. We knew Mao was gonna take power, so we were working on plans to stop them.”
    “Plans for the war.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So now Allied troops have landed across southern China, and the communists think you got information on the Allied strategy. So they’re coming for you. How did they know you were working for the secret service? Let me guess, you ran an opium den, and when you got busted, you didn’t go to jail—right?”
    “Right.”
    “So where do I find them?”
    “Who?”
    “The rats who killed Lucy. The communists.”
    “Dunno. Everywhere.”
    Faulkner turns and takes one of the bottles of powder from the table.
    “I’m takin’ this dream-powder. Used my last tonight on some cop,” says Faulkner. “Get back to those nice dreams.”
    Laurence calls back to him: “She was my girl, too, you know.”
    Faulkner descends the stairs, stops halfway, lights a cigarette. The smoke drifts ever so slowly up the stairwell as he examines the bottle. Dream-dust. He wants to use it. He has always loved the stuff. But since Lucy’s death, it has become as necessary as water to him. Dream-dust—the most valuable of the opiates. Dream-dust—a snort of it and it projects you back into the world of memory so that you are actually there , so that you can see and hear and feel and smell the very moments of the past, as clearly as the experience itself. Faulkner wants to immerse himself into that world of memory, to relive . But he can’t, because there is still a rat to catch, work to do. And work like this, well, it has to be done at night, when the slop in the gutter looks like silver and you don’t notice the stains on your clothes.

    In 1947, after the discussion with Victor Jackson in the Opium Den, Faulkner stepped out of the grotto, back into the main room with its billowing roof and Chinese lanterns. Lucy was waiting for him.
    “Shall I show you the door?” she said.
    “I think I’ve seen it.”
    “Well, perhaps you’d prefer the rubbish chute.”
    “Hey, my suit isn’t that cheap, you know.”
    “We could take it off before we sent you down.”
    “I know you’d like nothing more than to take my suit off, but maybe we should get to know each other first.”
    “Really honey, I wouldn’t think that’d take too long. I mean, you seem a simple man—I can see