Read Online The Sleeper by Christopher Dickey - Free Book Online Page B

had the keys from her purse. From across the street, I watched the place for about two hours before I made my move. It was in a block that was square and modern but already run-down. There were not many people around in the early afternoon, a few women, fewer men. None had a limp, none could show me the doctor’s face that, I realized now, I’d only imagined.
    The inside of the apartment was almost sterile. The computer was in a little bedroom just off the front hall. The hard drive was gone. There were no floppies, no CDs anywhere. All cleared out.
    I started rooting through the closets, the cabinets, under the beds. But this was a strange kind of home. There were no wedding pictures, no albums. There had never been any children here, I thought.
    On the wall in the living room was an embroidered plaque with the Arabic script for “Allah.” I looked behind it. Nothing.
    Nothing.
    A television with a box of cheap videos next to it, mostly kung-fu movies I’d never heard of.
    I checked the answering machine. No messages. I looked in the trash cans for some scrap of paper, some receipt, anything to give me a clue. But they were clean and empty.
    Â 
    The shred of paper from my pocket, the one Pilar gave me, seemed to puzzle the taxi driver. “Albaicín?” he said. I nodded. He looked closely at me, like he was trying to read the bruises on my face. We drove up a hill into tiny, winding streets. At the entrance to an alley he couldn’t enter, he stopped and declared, “Aljibe del Gato. Is not long. You find number four.”
    There was no number four.
    I looked around the corners to see if there was a tourist shop, or any kind of shop right there that might sell souvenir letter openers. I checked the street signs again. Calle Aljibe del Gato. At one end was Calle María de la Miel. At the other was Calle Pilar Seco. Less than nothing.
    Â 
    â€œJump Start Restaurant, best burgers in Kansas, what can we do for you?”
    â€œHey, Sugar.”
    â€œHey, Stranger.”
    â€œHow’s everybody?”
    â€œ ‘Everybody,’ is fine. My little girl’s not so good.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean she misses her daddy.”
    â€œHe misses her. He misses her so much you can’t believe it. And her mommy, too.”
    There was a long silence.
    â€œYou get a package?”
    â€œI picked up a package yesterday.”
    â€œGood. Good. But, you know, some folks might stop paying their bills.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean? What are you talking about?”
    â€œI mean—I mean, that was a good package, wasn’t it?” It was twenty-five thousand dollars.
    â€œVery good, but I don’t understand what’s going on. What are you talking about? Quit playing this damn game.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI don’t care about the damn money. I want you back here.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œDon’t you think the President and the army and the whole U.S. government can do this without you?”
    â€œNo. I—I can’t have this conversation right now. I have to go, Sugar.”
    â€œCoward,” she said. “You fucking coward.”

    All I wanted to do was sleep, and for an hour or two I did, but the painkillers were wearing off and the aches in my legs, my shoulders, and along my ribs were excruciating. I popped 800 milligrams of ibuprofen. “Ranger candy,” we used to call it. Short of morphine, it was the best you could do. Next door there was another American, so drunk that he knocked from one side of the hall to the other every time he went to the bathroom to get sick, which was a lot. Once he leaned in my door and I thought he was going to heave right there. I turned on the light and got ready for a fight. All he had on were his jockey shorts. He stared at me with glassy blue pupils that jumped out of red nests of veins. I don’t think he really even saw me. Then he managed to