Read Online A Smile on the Face of the Tiger by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online

knowing better than to try to breed. It stayed in my pocket. I had the thought it was something he wouldn’t want her to see. What that had to do with anything, I didn’t know to the tenth power.
    “How is it you were friends when you modeled? You said you didn’t know many writers.”
    “I didn’t. I met him through Lowell. Gene used to drop in to watch him paint. They admired each other’s work. When Gene’s books started selling and his publisher wanted to commission a better-known artist in New York, Gene said no. He refused to sign a contract until they agreed to have Lowell do all his covers.”
    “Lowell?”
    “Lowell Birdsall.” She waved twelve ounces of zir-conia in the direction of the painting on the wall. “They didn’t sign them in those days. Potboilers, Lowell said. Something to pay the bills while he was waiting for the Louvre to call.”
    I couldn’t figure out why the name was familiar until I remembered the business card in my wallet. I peeled it out. “Lowell Birdsall,” it read. “Systems Analysis.” It listed five numbers and none of them was an address. I showed it to her. “I got this from a clerk in a bookstore. She said he’s a collector.”
    She slid down her glasses to read over the tops, then shook her head and pushed them back up. “That’s his son. Lowell died years ago. Junior used to sneak in after school, hoping to catch me undressing for work. I still get Christmas cards from him. He’s living in his father’s old studio in the Alamo.”

7
    O n the way out I leaned into Mrs. Milbocker’s office to thank her again. She smiled up from her clipboard. Her leathery face broke up into deep lines.
    “Character, isn’t she?” she said. “Sometimes I think if some of our livelier guests channeled the energy they spend being charmingly eccentric into just plain living, they wouldn’t need Edencrest. But it could be I’m being eccentric myself. It rubs off.”
    “What did you do before this, traffic cop?”
    “Just the opposite. I stole cars and stripped them and sold the parts for drug money. This started out as five hundred hours of community service and ran into six years and counting.”
    “The system works.”
    “The system works for those who would’ve found their way out without it. But if it weren’t for this job I’d probably be wearing a gold blazer and selling real estate. Gold doesn’t suit my complexion.”
    “Are you hungry? How’s the food at the German place?”
    “Yes, and not bad. Unfortunately I have to eat here. The guests become paranoid when they don’t see me sharing their creamed corn. I’d invite you, but they’d think you were sent here by the state to shut us down. They’ve been uneasy ever since we prosecuted an orderly last year for attempted molestation.”
    “Just as well. I’m addicted to chewing.”
    “Try the wurst platter.”
    I left her to her clipboard and went out past a middle-aged couple heading inside with a picnic basket. The woman was reminding the man that this could be Dad’s last birthday.
    “Bullshit. He’s had more last birthdays than the Kennedys.”
    At the restaurant I got a table under the Hohenzollern coat-of-arms. I was going to order the wurst platter right up until the waitress asked me what I wanted. I lost courage and had pork chops instead, but I washed them down with beer from a bottle with a Valkyrie on the label.
    All the way back to Detroit I was aware of the thing growing like a potato in the unlighted bin behind my brain stem. Something Fleta Skirrett had said had fed it, but I didn’t know what. That kind of thing was happening more and more lately. I’d considered taking a mail-order course in self-hypnosis, but I was afraid I’d forget how to snap myself out of it.
    I did some business back at the office. The answering service said a lawyer had called to ask me to check out a client’s story. I called him for the particulars, wrapped the thing up in two conversations lasting