Read Online Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack - Free Book Online

rightout front. “I enjoy waking up at three in the morning. Do it all the time.”
    It was pretty lousy of me to roust him so early, but I needed a friend to talk to and a lawyer as well. Walter was the only one who met both qualifications.
    “How you feel?”
    “Like death on a soda cracker,” I answered truthfully.
    “You don’t look even that good.”
    “Thanks. I owe you one, buddy,” I panted, trying to keep up with him on my bum leg. Walter went at everything like killing rats.
    “I’ll take it out on you when the ankle mends.”
    Walter unlocked the driver’s door to the BMW and disabled the alarm. He reached down to flick a switch on the armrest and the passenger door lock button popped up. I climbed in to the smell of leather car seats. The night was still bright orange under the streetlights; even the usual middle of the night pedestrian parade of the homeless, the blistered, and the demented had diminished.
    “Sun’ll be up soon,” I said.
    “Harry,” Walter said, his hand pausing before he twisted the ignition key. “You are through with this business, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t know. Can you believe those idiots, thinking I offed Fletcher?”
    Walter started the car, then put it into gear. The BMW took off as smooth as a blue point oyster sliding down a throat. “They mirandize you?”
    “No.”
    “Then they don’t really think you did it. They put a little pressure on, though. Ask you a lot of detailed questions. They want you to say a lot in your statement, even if it’s irrelevant. That way, they can come back in a year or so and impugn your testimony if you do become a suspect.”
    “More to work with, huh?”
    “You got it,” he said. “You get a look at whoever bashed you?”
    “If I had, I’d have told the cops. But no, not a glance.”
    “Don’t worry. You’re off the hook. Let it go.”
    I fumbled with a row of black switches on my armrest and lowered the window. A big whiff of the rendering plant filled the car. It was like sticking your head in a freshly opened bag of dry dog food. This is the only city I know that locates incinerators, rendering plants, thermal plants, anything that stinks, right downtown.
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Don’t know what?”
    “Whether or not I’m off the hook.”
    “Oh, no,” he sighed. “I’ve seen that glint in your eye before. You’re going to stay on this son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
    I turned to him. “Yeah. Think I will.”
    “Listen, bunghole, what makes you think Fletcher’s killer won’t do it again?”
    “Maybe—”
    “Harry, as your attorney, I advise you to go home, drink a quart of tequila, and get one of those cheap weekend deals to the Bahamas.”
    “I hate tequila.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Walter, this may not make any sense, but I’m staring middle age right in the face. I feel like a failure.”
    “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “Give it a rest. You’ve been reading too many of those male sensitivity books.”
    “No, I mean it. You and I went to college together. Look at you: you drive a BMW; you’re a successful lawyer. Even if you didn’t make partner, you’ve got a future. I live in somebody’s attic in East Nashville, drive a six-year-old Ford, and have an ex-wife who spreads dirt about me to anybody who’ll listen.”
    “Harry, you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself ever since the paper canned you.”
    “It’s not that, Walt. This is different.” I stared out the window as we drove over the Church Street Viaduct. Below us, street people sleeping in the Gulch were stirring to life.
    “I want to know I can do something well, even if it’s just be a cheap, sleazy private investigator.”
    Walter laughed. “The sleazy part’ll be easy. The rest, I don’t know. One thing you need to keep in mind: the cops are going to assume right off that Rachel killed Conrad. You get involved, they’ll figure you’re in on it.”
    “Jesus, Walter,” I sighed. “Not you, too.”
    “Are