Read Online Hate Crime by William Bernhardt - Free Book Online Page B

question. Wish I knew the answer. But photocopies can yield information beyond the mere text.”
    “You think there’s a connection between the murder and illegal drugs?”
    “I don’t know. God, I hope not.” He looked one more time around the shed, then passed through the door. “ ‘And our little life is rounded by a sleep.’ ”
    Baxter followed him. “Robert Frost?”
    Mike shook his head. “Shakespeare. Again.”
    “He was a cheery soul. Aren’t there any poets who are pleasant to read?”
    Mike considered a moment. “You might go for Theodore Geisel.”
    “Really?”
    “Possible.”
    “If I learned to spout poetry like you do, you think we’d get along better?”
    “Possible.”
    “And you’d stop treating me like your ignorant secretary?”
    “Possible.”
    “And you’d let me drive the Trans Am?”
    “Not a chance.”

 
    6
    South Side of Chicago
near Jackson Park
    Charlie the Chicken was running scared.
    That was why he blew town. That was why he was now back, albeit functioning under a different professional name. That was why he had buzzed his hair off, ditched his glasses, changed his look. He wasn’t working the same neighborhoods and he hadn’t haunted the old haunts. Hadn’t gone anywhere near Remote Control. In short, he had burned all his bridges and forsaken all traces of his former existence.
    And none of it would be enough.
    Charlie recounted the change in his pocket. This was getting ridiculous. He couldn’t make the pathetic fifty-dollar-a-week rent for this hellhole of a room in a part of Kenwood that urban renewal never touched. He couldn’t even feed himself. He was a prisoner, just as much as if he were behind bars, except that behind bars he’d be a lot safer and better fed than he was out here. Safe or not, he had no choice. He was going to have to get out. Go to work. Earn some scratch.
    But he had to be careful, too. Because his old friend, the one he had seen on that dark and rainy night, would be looking for him. He was sure of it.
    He’d followed the case in the newspapers, of course. Who hadn’t? Every dramatic development. So far, no one had a clue what had really happened. His friend had to be feeling fairly secure right about now. Impervious. About the only thing that could possibly go wrong would be if Charlie the Chicken opened his big mouth.
    He wondered if that was what had happened to Manny. That hick had never had the sense God gave a carrot. Probably swapping testosterone with their mutual friend—until it went too far. And then—Charlie winced just to think about what had happened to the stupid slob. And to realize how easily it could happen to him. The smartest thing he could do was stay out of the way. Way far out of the way. Even if that meant there would be no transfer. He couldn’t give their friend a chance at him.
    If there was to be no transfer, then tomorrow he would have to start the job hunt. He had no choice. Back to the wonderful world of sex, oral and anal, licking and spitting, fancy French terms for things kids whispered about on playgrounds. Bathroom stalls. Adult parlors. Society cotillions. It’s a wonderful life.
    He wondered if he would ever be safe. When the trial restarted, that would help. A little. But would it be enough? Wouldn’t his friend still be concerned about the havoc that could be wrought by skinny, hair-gelled, dimple-chinned Charlie the Chicken?
    Would he ever be safe?
    Somehow, he didn’t think this was the life his parents had mapped out for him, back when they gave him birth and raised him in the Windy City’s Cabrini-Green housing project. Good Catholic upbringing, decent schools. They’d thought he was going to grow up to be a doctor. Well, they’d missed that mark by a hell of a distance, hadn’t they?
    What had happened to him? He had always been rebellious, true, but this life was something else again. He’d always been fascinated by sex, too—but what teenage boy wasn’t? Most of them