Read Online Accustomed to the Dark by Walter Satterthwait - Free Book Online

else.
    I stood up. “All right, Jimmy. You can go now.”
    He rubbed at the back of his head again, to remind me that we were connected now. “Jeeze, Mr. Croft, you don’t think you could maybe come through with a little something? For my troubles, you know?”
    He had lived long enough to know that other people sometimes felt guilt, and now he was playing me, manipulating mine. My understanding it didn’t prevent it from working.
    â€œWait here,” I told him.
    I went down the hallway into the bedroom, found my pants, dug out my wallet, slipped loose a twenty. He was standing up when I returned. I handed him the bill.
    He looked at me. “Only a twenny?”
    â€œYou don’t want it, Jimmy, you can always give it back.”
    â€œNo no, I’ll take it.” He slid it into his pocket before I could change my mind. He studied me for a moment, an amateur anthropologist examining an alien species. “You’re really gonna go after Lucero and Martinez, huh?”
    â€œYeah.”
    He shrugged. “Well, okay, it’s your funeral, I guess. But I’ll tell you something. And this is for free, Mr. Croft. You better be real careful. Martinez is one bad motherfucker. You already know that, I guess. And I guess you know he’s got a hard-on for you. But that Lucero, he’s something else. He’s one of those psychopaths for real. He is one very spooky guy. You talk to him and he keeps changing on you. He does impersonations and stuff. Like that Jim Carrey guy, in the movies.”
    â€œI don’t think Jim Carrey’s all that spooky.”
    â€œYeah, well, Jim Carrey, he won’t pull out a gun and shoot you in the eyes. Lucero will, and he won’t even think twice about it. He’ll be having a good time. So the two of em together, Martinez and Lucero, they could cause you some real hurt.” Running through the melodrama in his voice I thought I could hear a faint thread of vengeful hope.

8
    A FTER M C B RIDE LEFT I called the hospital. Rita was still unconscious.
    I dialed New Mexico information and got a phone number and an address for Sylvia Miller in Las Vegas. There were no other Millers listed at that address, so presumably Sylvia lived alone.
    I tried the number. No answer.
    I made some coffee, took a shower, realized I hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours, and put together a sandwich. It went down like raw cotton and turned to lead in my stomach. I washed it down with a glass of milk, thick and chalky.
    I kept an emergency stash under a loose floorboard in the bedroom, hundred-dollar bills, ten of them, that I hadn’t touched for almost a year. I scooped them up, slipped them into my wallet. I lugged the carryall and the computer out to the Jeep, stowed them behind the front seat, went back to the house and shut down the gas and the hot-water heater. I called the phone company and arranged for all the office phone calls to be forwarded to the cellular in Leroy’s briefcase.
    Chuck’s Garage sat back from the roadway on West Alameda, not far from Siler, a low building walled with metal siding painted a sickly yellow. Beyond a chain-link fence, a small herd of aging automobiles slept in the forecourt, most of them blotched with primer, a few sagging to the side as though mortally wounded. The door to the garage was open and Chuck was in there, standing beneath an ancient Chevy truck perched high on the pneumatic lift. There was a smell of motor oil and old metal, but the cement floor was spotless.
    He turned when he heard my footsteps. “Joshua. Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s it going?”
    â€œFine. You?”
    â€œCan’t complain. What brings you by?”
    â€œI could use some help.”
    He glanced past me, at the Jeep. “Not running right?”
    â€œNot that kind of help.”
    He nodded. He wore dark blue cotton coveralls and he was an inch or so taller than I was. He had