The White Flamingo by James A. Newman Read Free Book Online

to a room that was the size and shape of a prison cell. No windows. No air-conditioning. Two mattresses were on the floor, some plastic shelves holding clothes and a floor-standing fan. There were some soft cuddly toys; the type you win at the fair by throwing darts at balloons or hoops over pins.
    Boxes, pharmaceutical medicines. One of the girls had some kind of illness, or condition. Christ, they all did. There were a few framed photographs and a cheap Mickey Mouse alarm clock. “I don’t like to sleep here alone,” Kelly said. “Not since, it happened.”
    “Well, who sleeps there?” Joe pointed at the unmade mattress, speaking in the local tongue. He knew the answer instinctively. He wanted her to say it. He wanted to be sure.
    “Nobody, not anymore. You speak our language well. Tell me, Joe, you believe in ghosts? I not mean the old stories you hear as a kid, I mean real ghosts?”
    “Kelly, I believe that the human mind has a hard time accepting death, especially the death of somebody close to us. In a strange way, it is comforting to think that they are still out there somewhere looking over us.”
    “Even if she die like that and she trying to tell you that the same thing will happen to you if you don’t listen, then...”
    “Listen, Kelly, have the Boys in Brown been in here?”
    “No. What do they care? She was a lady working the bar, just like me. People like us don’t matter. We don’t count. She had two rooms in the city and slept with three or four customer a week.”
    “Where are the rooms?”
    “The dark side of town.”
    “Write it down,” the Detective handed her a piece of paper and a pen from his back pocket.
    Kelly looked at the pen and then looked at the paper. “I can’t…”
    “Don’t be afraid.”
    “No, I mean, really I can’t”
    “You can’t what?”
    “Read, write.”
    “Okay, tell me the addresses.”
    She gave the names of some roads and he jotted them down.
    “Did she have enemies? Was she frightened of anything?”
    “She was not scared. She thought the tourists were stupid, she thought she could control them?”
    The Detective crouched down next to Tammy’s mattress. There was a dirty glass, a packet of unopened condoms and a bottle of pills. He picked up the bottle, read the label and memorized it. There was a small pulp comic book and a half pack of chewing gum.
    The Detective stood back up, dipped into his jeans, and pulled out his wallet. He handed Kelly two hundred dollars. “Take this. Get the bus out of town for a few days. Go back home, see your parents.”
    “I don’t have any.”
    “Any what?”
    “Parents.”
    “Well, see an aunt or an uncle then. There must be somebody.”
    She shook her head. “There’s no one.”
    “Everybody has at least one person. An old customer. The guy that sells chewing gum on the street. Go to the city. Go somewhere. Get away from the ghost.”
    She took the money.
    They always did. 

     
     
    TEN
     
    FISH SPA.
    A place to think.
    Entrance to a massage joint.
    A seat above a tank of water filled with hundreds of fish, two cms in length, these fish fed on dead skin and foot sores.
    Verruca, they dug special.
    Joe rolled up his pants.
    Dipped in.
    Nibble, nibble, little fish, nibble.
    The Killer was working the nightshift.
    The fish kept nibbling.
    Kelly would not be safe, any bargirl on the seventh or eighth road hustling tourists were not safe.
    Nibble, tickle , bite.
    That’s it, callous, hard.
    The Detective ’s lack of judgment bothered him like an insolent child on the shared custody gig. Nibbled at him over the cheeseburger and spoke about uncle Dave.
    Trips to Disneyland.
    Nibble.
    Sometimes instinct got in the way of responsibility, he reasoned ; it was all part of the slip . The cigarette smoked over the pool table at Slim Jim’s bar, and the stash of China White that he kept chip, chip, chipping away at. He had to get off the train before it derailed.
    One fish floated to the surface.
    OD?
    He