Read Online Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva - Free Book Online Page A

face.

15
    On Saturday, my clock radio roused me just before noon, blaring that we were in for a cold snap, which got me wondering what we’d been having.
    I dropped Secretariat at the Shell station on Broadway to see what they could do about the heater. The mechanic was a lanky, murmuring dude named Dwayne who had “Butch” embroidered over the pocket of his blue work shirt. Five years after his dad died and left him the station, he was still wearing the old man’s clothes.
    â€œSecretariat off his feed again?” he said. “How ’bout I take him out back and shoot him so you can break in a new nag?” Dwayne had been tending to Secretariat for years, and he never tired of the same horse joke.
    â€œI just can’t bear to let him go,” I said, and told him about the heater.
    On the walk back to my place, I called Veronica.
    â€œMulligan! I was beginning to think you didn’t like me anymore.”
    â€œNo chance of that, cutie. What say I take you out on the town tonight?”
    â€œOn the town or around the town? We’re not cruising Mount Hope sniffing for smoke, are we?”
    She was on to me. “Well,” I said, “that is the part of town I had in mind. I thought maybe you’d like to drive.”
    â€œSecretariat in the shop again?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œPick you up at seven.”
    And she did, driving her slate-gray Mitsubishi Eclipse straight to Camille’s on Bradford Street, where we shared a bottle of wine and ate mounds of spaghetti. Veronica treated, tapping into the five-hundred-dollar monthly allowance from Daddy that supplemented her meager paycheck. Good thing, or I’d have had to do some business with the loan shark eating with his aged mother at a table by the windows. Then it was off to the Cineplex in East Providence for the new Jackie Chan movie, he and his comic-relief sidekick doing a better job of catching the bad guys than I was.
    This wasn’t the romantic evening of street prowling and rat watching I’d had in mind, but I was having a pretty good time, especially whenever she leaned over to kiss me. Besides, she had the car keys, so there wasn’t much I could do about it.
    Afterward, she came up. We sat together on my bed and watched Craig Ferguson on my sixteen-inch Emerson. She sipped Russian River, her favorite kind of chardonnay, straight from the bottle, and I did the same with Maalox. The police radio, turned down low, chirped benignly in the background. Veronica thought Ferguson was the funniest man on television. I didn’t watch enough TV to know if she had a point.
    â€œMulligan?” Veronica said, sleep lurking at the edges of her voice. “Are you seeing anybody else?”
    I flashed on Dorcas asking, “How many bitches are you fucking now?” Same Mulligan, different woman, better vocabulary.
    â€œDo Polecki and Roselli count?”
    She smiled and shook her head.
    â€œWell, then it’s no,” I said.
    â€œHardcastle says you’ve been stepping out with the blonde in the photo lab.”
    â€œGloria Costa?”
    â€œYeah, her.”
    â€œNot happening,” I said. “And Hardcastle is an asshole. You shouldn’t be getting your news from him, and that includes what he writes in his lame column. I’ve got a bad feeling he makes some of it up.”
    â€œMaybe. But I do think Gloria’s sweet on you.”
    â€œI think you could be right.”
    The police radio chirped again, making me wonder how I was going to get to Mount Hope if something happened after Veronica went home. I was still thinking about that when she stripped down to her bra and panties and slid under the covers. I didn’t put up a fight. I snapped off the light, took off everything but my boxers, and crawled in beside her. It had been a long time since anyone felt that good in my arms. Maybe no one ever had.
    â€œMulligan?”
    â€œUm?”
    â€œIs that an