Read Online Twilight at Mac's Place by Ross Thomas - Free Book Online

a steel mesh screen. Safely behind the steel mesh was a three-sided brass stick with raised letters that read, MANAGER . But no manager was in sight.
    Haynes crossed to the four newspaper vending machines that offered the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Times and USA Today. Haynes bought a copy of the New York Times and rang for the elevator.
    When he got out on the fourth floor, the news section of the Times was rolled into a tight cylinder that was one foot long and two inches thick.
    Haynes went slowly down the corridor until he came to apartment 409. Standing well to the right of the door, he knocked on it with his left hand. When nothing happened, he knocked again. When there was still no response, he used his left hand to try the doorknob. It turned.
    Haynes pushed the door open and found no lights on in the apartment. He took one slow step inside and was turning back to flick on the light switch when an arm wrapped itself around his neck in what he immediately diagnosed as an interesting variation on the chokehold he had been taught at the Los Angeles Police Academy. He also had been taught how to break it.
    Haynes stamped down hard with his right heel, drove back hard with his left elbow and connected both times. Behind him somebody’s breath exploded. The chokehold loosened just enough for Haynes to tear himself away, whirl and thrust his pointless paper spear up as hard as possible, hoping for an eye.
    But the light from the still open corridor door gave him a glimpse of his would-be strangler and made him deflect the thrust just enough to miss the left eye and smash the paper spear into Tinker Burns’s nose. The resulting flow of blood was immediate and, Haynes felt, most gratifying.
    “For Chrissake, Granny,” said a snarling, bleeding Burns. “How the fuck’d I know it was you?”
    Leaning forward to let the blood drip onto the carpet instead of his expensive gray suit, Burns plucked the silk display handkerchief from his outside breast pocket and applied it to his nose.
    “Where’s the kitchen?” Haynes said. “You might as well go bleed in the sink.”
    “Over there. One of those Pullman things.”
    The only light in the apartment came from the open corridor door. Haynes switched on a lamp, closed the door and steered Burns to the stainless-steel kitchen unit. Burns bent over the small sink, turned on the cold water, soaked his handkerchief and reapplied it to his nose. “I don’t bleed long,” he announced.
    “Where’s Isabelle?” Haynes said.
    “For Chrissake, give me a second, will you?”
    Burns stood up straight, threw his head back, stared at the ceiling for nearly half a minute, brought his head down, gently blew his nose into the wet handkerchief and inspected the results with obvious satisfaction.
    Back at the sink again, Burns carefully rinsed out his bloody handkerchief, wrung it nearly dry, folded it carefully and tucked it away in a hip pocket. He then switched on the garbage disposal unit and let it and the cold water run for another thirty seconds.
    It was only then that Tinker Burns turned to Haynes and said, “What’d you use?”
    Haynes raised the New York Times, still in its semi-blunt-instrument form.
    “Shit, I taught you that.”
    “I believe you did.”
    “Cute,” Burns said, patted his pockets, found his cigarettes and lit one. “Come on.”
    As they crossed the studio apartment, heading toward a closed door, Haynes took note of the beige couch that probably folded out into a bed; the blond desk that held a personal computer; the round Formica-topped breakfast table just large enough for two; the small TV set and its attendant VCR; and a pair of old Air France posters that gave the otherwise monochromatic room its only touch of color.
    Burns opened the door of what turned out to be the bathroom and switched on a light. Haynes followed him in. A green plastic shower curtain decorated with yellow daisies concealed the bathtub. Burns studied