The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook Read Free Book Online Page B

for Adam’s benefit. Maybe he was trying to make up for grabbing me. My wrist still hurt, the bastard.
    Adam opened the door and stepped out on the porch. It had begun raining again. I paused. “One more thing,” I said to Michi. “You’re on the board of directors at the Lou Hale Theatre, aren’t you?” I didn’t know for sure, but it was a logical guess.
    He flicked his cigarette past me into the rain. “So what? I’m on the board of damn near everything. Is that all?”
    â€œThat’s all,” Adam said. “For now.”
    â€œWell, goodbye then. Don’t be a strange-ah ,” Michi drawled. Adam started down the steps.
    As I leaned close to give Michi a peck on his flabby cheek, just to show him we were still friends, I whispered in his ear, “You missed a drop, Michi-san.” I pointed at the white blob still stuck in one of his forehead wrinkles. He touched it, paled, then flushed pink as a piglet and slammed the door in my face.

 
    6
    A DAM DELIVERED ME BACK TO the Orpheum and dropped me off at my car before somebody towed it away. A news van and a fire engine were still parked in front of the theater. Adam was going to be up all night working on the case.
    I drove home in the pouring rain, thinking things over, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself turning into the lot at my old apartment. Blue plastic sheeting covered the smashed-out windows, but the rain hadn’t washed away the smudges of soot going up from the windows to the roof. This place was only the latest in a long string of personal disasters going back almost five years. The starting point was when I ruined my marriage and left my husband, Reed Lyons. I had a tendency to destroy everything I touched, nothing lasted once I got my claws into it, whether it was a career or a relationship or even something as innocent as a car or an apartment. That was my problem—I had a destructive genie, too much fiery yang. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t anything I did. It just happened.
    But it didn’t just happen , I usually made it happen. I left the barn door open and the stove on and the cigarette burning. I cheated on my husband, shirked my responsibilities, slept with my bosses and hooked myself on pills and smack. For a while, the Police Department acted like they were interested in keeping me on the payroll, but they were only following the prescribed steps so the police union wouldn’t get all up in their kitchen when they eventually fired me. So they sent me to talk to a counselor who asked me about my father and told me I harbored a morbid fear of success. Any time I seemed to be getting my life together, I’d do something stupid to bring it all crashing down again. Any time I got close to someone, I’d drive them away; Adam was the exception. God knows I’d done my best to run him off, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe he was just a stubborn ass. Maybe he felt like he had to save me. I didn’t particularly want saving. What was it the man said?—Life is nasty, brutish and short.
    After they rescued me from the fire, I ran into my landlord standing in the rainy parking lot looking up at the smoke and steam still pouring out of the broken windows. He said, “What the fuck, Jackie? Ain’t no blackened catfish this time. I hope you got some goddamn insurance.”
    I didn’t. He had insurance, he just didn’t want the insurance company coming in and setting minimum standards for the people he rented to, to make him run credit checks and collect security deposits that half his clientele couldn’t pass or pay, most of them Mexicans without Social Security numbers and living six or eight to a bedroom. His insurance company would triple his rates and price him right out of business. I knew I could use that against him. The smoke and water damage and the busted doors and windows added up to more than I owned in the world.