Read Online The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) by Nathan Walpow - Free Book Online

that I had an appointment with Mr. Santini. No reply. I waited. The door opened. The guy who opened up was roughly my age. That was all we had in common. He was tall and muscular and was wearing a stained undershirt and work pants that were somewhere between green and brown. “Yo,” he said. The voice I’d heard on the phone.
    “Hi. I have—”
    “I know. Come on.”
    I walked in. He slammed the door behind me, checked that it was locked. The interior was lit by a few dull overhead fixtures. It was gray and damp and depressing. I followed him to and up a staircase. The second floor hall was marginally brighter. The walls were studded with office doors straight out of a Bogart movie. Battered wood with frosted glass windows. Remnants of gold lettering decorated a few of them. As we passed one on the left, I heard someone say,“Tell that son of a bitch …” but I never found out what the SOB was going to be told because we kept going. We stopped at the last door on the right.
    “In here,” said my escort, knocking.
    “Yeah?” said a voice inside.
    “The Portugal guy.”
    “Send him.”
    The muscular man turned the knob, pushed the door open, waited until I went in, retreated. The office I was in kept up the Bogie look. One wall was lined with filing cabinets that had been around since the Hoover administration. There was a black leather couch, cracked and sagging, the kind you usually find in the waiting room at your mechanic’s. A bare yellow bulb burned overhead; the light it provided was lost in what came in through the windows. The wall opposite the filing cabinets had a calendar that featured a coquettish young woman clad in very short shorts and a strategically placed newspaper. Next to it were a bunch of framed photos. I recognized Sam Yorty in one, Duke Snider in another, Warren Beatty in a third. All three were doing the staged handshake thing with a man who was a younger and thinner version of the one who came out from behind a worn wood desk to greet me. He was my father’s age and a couple of inches shorter than me. He had glasses with the thickest black frames I’d ever seen. He wore a navy cardigan over a white shirt and a cleaner version of the pants the guy who brought me up there was wearing.
    “John Santini,” he said. He took my hand, held it with a strong grip. With his opposite hand he clapped me on the shoulder, and held that one there too.“So,” he said.“Here you are.”
    “Yes.”
    A broad smile revealed an even set of teeth. “You were looking at the pictures.”
    “You know a lot of people.”
    “You live long enough, it happens.” He let go of me, gestured toward the couch. “Sit.” He went to the Yorty photo. “This was back in, what was it, ’66? Testimonial dinner for Pony Petrelli.” He dragged an ancient wood-and-leather chair from behind his desk, positioned it and himself in front of me. “Poor old Pony. A week after that, they found lung cancer. He was dead in a month.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Could’ve expected it, the way he smoked. Like a fucking chimney. Pardon my French.”
    “Pardoned.”
    “Hey. Excuse me. You want something to drink?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “One thing my wife Gloria taught me, God rest her soul. Always offer your guests something to drink.”
    “It’s a wife thing. Mine taught me that too.”
    “How long?”
    “Less than a year.”
    “You held out a while, huh? I mean, no offense, but you’re no spring chicken.”
    “Waited till the right woman came along.”
    “Me and Gloria, we were together forty … ah, you don’t want to hear that. So. I hear I can help you out somehow. What do you need?”
    “It’s about your season tickets to Staples Center.”
    “You need tickets?”
    I smiled and shook my head. “This is about a game that already happened. Last Sunday night. The thing is … well, this is going to sound stupid.”
    “Kid.”
    Before I was no spring chicken. Now I was a kid.