The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online

hour, and I'd fallen back into a surface layer of
sleep, not quite awake but never far from it, either, when the tapping began. A
gentle series of taps, five or six at a time, then a pause followed by another sequence.
I don't know how many sequences had passed before they finally carved into my
brain and I sat up in bed and realized that someone was knocking on my door.
Knocking, it seemed, with extraordinary consistency and patience. Never loud,
never urgent, but never stopping, either. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
        I got
out of bed and tugged on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, made it to the top of
the stairs as another calm sequence of knocks began, reached the bottom just as
it came to an end. Then I had the door open and was squinting out into the
harsh daylight and the face of a small, dark-haired man with a raised fist.
There was a ring on his finger that seemed brighter than the sunlight behind
him, some hideous collection of gold and diamonds so heavy that I hoped he wore
one on the other hand to keep from becoming lopsided. He was getting ready to
bring it back down on the door, continue the knocking, but when he saw me he
just held the pose for a second and then slowly lowered the hand to his side.
        "Good
morning, Mr. Perry."
        I was
barefoot and he was in shoes, but still I had a good four inches on him, and
I'm not particularly tall. He was thin across the chest and shoulders, with
small hands and weak wrists, and seemed like the kind of guy who would need his
wife to open the pickle jar for him. Until you looked him in the eye. There, in
that steady and unflinching gaze, was a quality I'd typically seen in much
larger men, stronger men. Men who felt invincible.
        "Did
I wake you—" he said when I didn't respond to the greeting. "I
apologize. I'm an early riser, though. Always have been."
        He
put out the hand with the ring and waited until I shook it, until my palm was
firmly held in his, to say, "My name is Dominic Sanabria."
        I
pulled my hand free and stepped forward, out of my doorway and into the
daylight.
        "I'm
sorry you made the trip," I said. "It was entirely unnecessary, Mr.
Sanabria."
        "You
don't even know the purpose of my trip."
        "I
know the source of it, though."
        "Do
you—"
        "A
lawyer named Child probably gave you a call. Or somebody in the Medina County
Recorder's Office, though that seems unlikely. Either way, somebody told you I
was inquiring about your sister's home. That information is no longer correct."
        "Is
it not—"
        I
shook my head. "I've learned the house is not on the market and will not
be on the market, and I've passed that information along to my client. We're
done with it now."
        He
reached up and ran a hand over his mouth, as if drying his lips, and then he
spoke without looking at me. "Let's go upstairs and talk—and I'd ask you
not to continue lying to me. It's not something I appreciate."
        He
walked past me and headed up the stairs without another word, and I turned and
hesitated and then followed, swinging the door shut and closing out the
daylight behind us.
        When
I got to the top of the stairs he was already in my living room, standing in
front of the bookshelf. He slid a Michael Connelly novel out with his index
finger and studied the cover.
        "I
had a brother-in-law who was a big reader," he said. "Not these sort
of books, though. Not fiction. He was an anthropologist. Studied people.
Studied the, what's the word, indigenous types."
        He
pushed the book back into place and turned to face me.
        "He
didn't study me. Did not have the slightest desire to study me, or my people.
Wanted very little to do with us. Oh, he was polite, you know, a hell of a nice
guy, but he definitely wanted to know as little as possible about me and my
associates and what it was that we did. I always liked that about him."
        I
didn't answer, didn't say a