Read Online The Long Good Boy by Carol Lea Benjamin - Free Book Online Page A

odds, cracking the sidewalk to make room for its trunk as it grows, its roots snaking their way around rocks and shale as they burrow deep into the ground in search of water. We walked over to it, and Dashiell gave it one more obstacle to overcome for survival. I hadn’t spent a lot of time climbing trees since I was a kid, but I had the feeling I could do this one. In fact, standing there charting my path from branch to branch and then to the roof of the old chicken market, if I wanted to get inside, this looked like my only real shot. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.
    â€œWho wants Chi Chi?”
    â€œI do. It’s me, Rachel.”
    â€œYeah? You found out something already?”
    â€œNo, not yet. But I need your help.”
    â€œI give you anything you need. What’s up?”
    â€œI need you to describe the inside of Keller’s. I need you to tell me every last detail, first the layout in general, how many rooms there are and where they are, where the stairs are, where the bathroom is, okay? And then I need you to describe the windows, how they lock. Can you do that?” I asked, remembering how one of the detectives at the Sixth told me that sometimes, if they cleaned up well, hookers could be great on the witness stand because they were very good at noticing small details; like cabdrivers, they had to assess people very quickly to know if doing business seemed safe. Of course, to help me with the information I needed, Chi Chi wouldn’t have to look middle-class, which was a damn good thing. But she would have to use that ability to remember details about a place rather than a person. I waited for her answer, listening to her blow her nose, cough, spit, light a cigarette. Then she walked me through, from the front door, through the refrigerated first floor, the bodies of the dead pigs hanging cold and silent in rows, as if they were waiting on line for something. “But they’re not,” she said. “Shape they’re in, their waiting days are over.” She took me up the narrow, wooden staircase to the office on the right, describing the messy desk, the row of files, the computer and printer, even the phone, “black, three lines.” And finally, Chi Chi described what she called “the ladies,” only there weren’t any working there. In fact, in all my walks through the meat district, I’d never seen a female butcher, nor any other woman, other than a transvestite hooker picking her away around the clumps of fat, the occasional kidney, the barrels of bones.
    â€œWhat about the windows?” I asked.
    â€œNone downstairs. Regular whatdoyoucall’ems in the two offices.”
    â€œThey look like double-hung windows from the outside. The ones that slide up and down.”
    â€œYeah, whatever.”
    â€œWhat about locks?”
    â€œThose turn thingees on top of the lower window.”
    â€œSo it’s possible, if I’m desperate, to break the glass, turn the lock, and get in that way.”
    â€œNot possible.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œThe glass of those windows, it’s got wire in it, like chicken wire. I don’t think you can break that kind of glass so easy. ’Less you bring your hammer.”
    â€œWhat about the bathroom window?”
    â€œNo wire. Just that kind of glass you can’t see through.”
    â€œFrosted glass?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œWhat about the window? How does it work—like the others?”
    â€œNo. It opens out. You get what I mean? It doesn’t slide up. It opens like a little door for a midget and it’s got this hinge, locks up tight if you push it all the way open, you know the kind? So you want the window to stay open and not blow closed on you, like if the weather’s warm, you push it all the way. Because it will.” Pause, inhale, exhale. “Blow closed.”
    â€œGot it.”
    But she wasn’t finished. “Or if it stinks too