Read Online The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) by Shane Norwood - Free Book Online Page A

the darkness in the middle of the night, liss’nin’ to them folks talkin’ is an education in itself, boy. All them people’s stories, that’s all you need to know. See old folks, and derelicts, and mothers with young babies, climbing out of the bus in the middle of Desolationsville in the hard dawn, and rummies and winos and deadbeats panhandling the bleak stations at midnight. Lost and lonely motherfuckers stretched out trying to sleep on the plastic benches with the neon glaring on their flickering eyelids, you find out right quick what this country can do to you if you let it. That was my first lesson, and I learned it right off the boat, when I rocked up here from the Ukraine and landed up in Galveston when I’s fifteen years old, with six dollars, a secondhand Talmud, and dollar-sized hole in the ass of my britches. That’s why you gots to get on top a things, kid, claw your way to the top of the shitpile and dig in, and kill any motherfucker tries to move you. You dig?”
    “ Oh, I dig. I dig all the way to fucking China. It’s just that all that digging and I ain’t found shit.”
    “ That’s ’cos you goin’ about it all wrong, dude. You ain’t all that dumb. You got a halfway-decent brain in that there skull a yourn. Just you ain’t a-usin’ it right. Ain’t no use havin’ a computer iffen you don’t know how to plug the fucker in. And let me tell you somethin’ else fer free, kid. Ain’t no quantifiable correlation between intelligence and money in this country. Iffen they was, Harvard professors would all be loaded, and George Dubya would be sellin’ his ass outside the White House. The trick is, find one thing that you’re all good at, and stick with it. Use what you got. An’ in your case, what you got is that you look like Tiger Woods. Shit. Iffen I looked as much like Tiger Woods as you do, I’d have nearly as much dough as he does by now. Now I gots to go, son. Cain’t be a settin’ around all day blabbermouthin’ with no niggers. Time’s a-wastin’ boy. Pick y’all up in the mornin’. Don’t be late, and don’t get yer dick stuck in the cookie jar.”
     
    Monsoon stood in front of the Venetian and watched the big Red Caddie ease into the traffic. The other cars seemed to make way for it like peasants making way for royalty. Monsoon’s dream machine turned on automatically.
    He was onto a good thing and he knew it. It was time to play a smart hand for once. Rabbi Elmo Yorke was not a guy who was going places. Rabbi Elmo Yorke was a guy who had been places and was already on his way back. You could learn a lot from a guy like that. Plus, for some reason he seemed to have taken a shine to Monsoon. Ironically, it might have been because of an act of honesty on his part, which was so un-Monsoon-like as to be rarer than a pair of nuts in a harem. Without knowing why, he had just blurted it out, right off the bat on the first tee.
    “ Er, Mr. Yorke. I have a confession to make. I ain’t really much of a caddy. In fact, I don’t know shit about golf.”
    Monsoon had already been mentally flagellating himself for being so fucking stupid as Yorke looked up from his tee shot and gave him a piercing stare.
    Way to go, asshole , he thought, now you really did just wipe your ass on a hundred-dollar bill.
    He was extremely surprised and not a little relieved when Yorke said, “Don’t worry ’bout it, son. Neither do I. Stupid fuckin’ game. Knock the ball in the hole, take it out, knock it into another hole. What’s the fuckin’ point? It’s a game for fuckin’ peckerheads. I only play it because of the people I meet. It’s a kinda necessity, kid. Ninety percent a the deals that go down in this country take place on the golf course.”
    “ I’m glad you feel that way, Mr. Yorke.”
    “ Call me Elmo, kid. I hate it when some sumbitch calls me Mr. Yorke. Makes me think they’s a kiss-ass. And don’t sweat it. Alls y’alls gots to do fer me is look like what you look