Read Online The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore - Free Book Online
Authors: Jeffrey Moore
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peacefully laps water from a pond; in frame two, thestuffed bear is in the guy’s living room, ferociously baring fang and claw.
Thumb-tacked onto a bulletin board was a map of Paris, much used, along with overlapping newspaper clippings, at least a dozen of them, including this one from the St. Madeleine Star , December 1958. It was yellow with age and encased in plastic:
And this more recent one on the same subject:
With the smallest of the three keys I opened the bottom drawer of Céleste’s dresser, and promptly got a shock. A face looked back at me, from a ripped and blurred photograph of … the veterinarian. It was unmistakably her. I set this aside, thoughts whirling, and sifted through various sculpting implements—modelling tools, chisels, wire-loops, rods, dowels, netting—until finding a pair of glasses, the utopian communard model with small round lenses and frames of the thinnest wire. No doubt a spare, judging by their scratched lenses. Underneath all this was a blue sketchbook with tiny black letters on the cover. I had to put on Céleste’s glasses to read what they said: NOT TO BE READ UNTIL I’M DEAD .
There was no phone in any of the upstairs rooms, but in the kitchen was a black wall phone. I didn’t expect it to have a dial tone and it didn’t: it had a stutter-tone. I punched in the long-distance number of Brook’s cellphone, in violation of a court order, and left a message so long it was cut off. I then called J. Leon Volpe, my attorney.
“Do you realize, Nightingale, you are in serious shit?” was his greeting. He was my father’s attorney, to be precise, a chronically exasperated man with expletive-salted sentences and Italian suits who disliked everyone, especially me. He had a throaty, interrogatory voice that sounded less lawyerly than gangsterly.
“Yes.”
In the background I could hear his favourite radio station, an AM channel trapped in the fifties, which he never turned off. “For the love of Christ, Nile, I’ve been trying to reach youfor the last three weeks. Do you ever retrieve your goddamn messages? Does anyone even send you messages?”
He disliked me, in part, for my lawyer jokes. “What did you want?”
“What did I want ? What the hell do you think I wanted? I wanted to know why I’m in the middle of a shit parade . Affidavits, warrants, restraining orders, complaints for damages. Phone calls and e-mails from Katz, Carp & Ferret. I’m drowning in this stuff. Am I representing you?”
How do you stop a lawyer from drowning? Answer one: shoot him before he hits the water. Answer two: take your foot off his head. “If you agree.”
A loud theatrical sigh. “Can I just say, at this preliminary point, that I wish you had done me the courtesy of consulting me beforehand ? And that I find your actions grossly irresponsible ?”
His job, for the most part, seemed to consist of putting people in their place. “Yes, feel free.”
Count to five. “And where are you now, your Highness?”
This was a reference to my drug use. Former drug use. “In a cemetery.”
“Where? Colombia? Afghanistan?”
Through a frost-covered window at the end of the hall, I glimpsed what looked like a snowplow. It was heading toward the church, which was odd because the lane had already been cleared. It stopped halfway.
“Just tell me one thing, off the record, no bullshit. Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jessica Martin?”
I took the phone up the hall, stretching its gnarled black coil until it was no longer a coil, but before I could get a better look the plow had backed up and roared off.
“Is this a dialogue we’re having, Nile? Or an interior fucking monologue?”
An interior monologue, pretend you’re Hamlet. “I’m listening.”
“Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jennifer Martin?”
He was said to be brilliant, although I never once heard him say a brilliant thing; my father, on the other hand, said brilliant
Thumb-tacked onto a bulletin board was a map of Paris, much used, along with overlapping newspaper clippings, at least a dozen of them, including this one from the St. Madeleine Star , December 1958. It was yellow with age and encased in plastic:
And this more recent one on the same subject:
With the smallest of the three keys I opened the bottom drawer of Céleste’s dresser, and promptly got a shock. A face looked back at me, from a ripped and blurred photograph of … the veterinarian. It was unmistakably her. I set this aside, thoughts whirling, and sifted through various sculpting implements—modelling tools, chisels, wire-loops, rods, dowels, netting—until finding a pair of glasses, the utopian communard model with small round lenses and frames of the thinnest wire. No doubt a spare, judging by their scratched lenses. Underneath all this was a blue sketchbook with tiny black letters on the cover. I had to put on Céleste’s glasses to read what they said: NOT TO BE READ UNTIL I’M DEAD .
There was no phone in any of the upstairs rooms, but in the kitchen was a black wall phone. I didn’t expect it to have a dial tone and it didn’t: it had a stutter-tone. I punched in the long-distance number of Brook’s cellphone, in violation of a court order, and left a message so long it was cut off. I then called J. Leon Volpe, my attorney.
“Do you realize, Nightingale, you are in serious shit?” was his greeting. He was my father’s attorney, to be precise, a chronically exasperated man with expletive-salted sentences and Italian suits who disliked everyone, especially me. He had a throaty, interrogatory voice that sounded less lawyerly than gangsterly.
“Yes.”
In the background I could hear his favourite radio station, an AM channel trapped in the fifties, which he never turned off. “For the love of Christ, Nile, I’ve been trying to reach youfor the last three weeks. Do you ever retrieve your goddamn messages? Does anyone even send you messages?”
He disliked me, in part, for my lawyer jokes. “What did you want?”
“What did I want ? What the hell do you think I wanted? I wanted to know why I’m in the middle of a shit parade . Affidavits, warrants, restraining orders, complaints for damages. Phone calls and e-mails from Katz, Carp & Ferret. I’m drowning in this stuff. Am I representing you?”
How do you stop a lawyer from drowning? Answer one: shoot him before he hits the water. Answer two: take your foot off his head. “If you agree.”
A loud theatrical sigh. “Can I just say, at this preliminary point, that I wish you had done me the courtesy of consulting me beforehand ? And that I find your actions grossly irresponsible ?”
His job, for the most part, seemed to consist of putting people in their place. “Yes, feel free.”
Count to five. “And where are you now, your Highness?”
This was a reference to my drug use. Former drug use. “In a cemetery.”
“Where? Colombia? Afghanistan?”
Through a frost-covered window at the end of the hall, I glimpsed what looked like a snowplow. It was heading toward the church, which was odd because the lane had already been cleared. It stopped halfway.
“Just tell me one thing, off the record, no bullshit. Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jessica Martin?”
I took the phone up the hall, stretching its gnarled black coil until it was no longer a coil, but before I could get a better look the plow had backed up and roared off.
“Is this a dialogue we’re having, Nile? Or an interior fucking monologue?”
An interior monologue, pretend you’re Hamlet. “I’m listening.”
“Did you, or did you not, abduct and assault Brooklyn Jennifer Martin?”
He was said to be brilliant, although I never once heard him say a brilliant thing; my father, on the other hand, said brilliant
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