Sweet Paradise Gene Desrochers (classic novels TXT) 📖

Another nonchalant single-shoulder shrug. “Whatever, man.” He looked at his phone. “I gotta go.”

“Did you know a kid in school named Junior Bacon?”

“Herbert? Rich kid from up the way? Why? He do something? That kid weird. Always standing still and staring at people. Weird. He was friends with one kid who was mean. M.S.D.”

“M.S.D.?”

“Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”

Who’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

Elias read the lost look on my face and sucked his teeth. “You grown-ups, always think you know so much, but you don’t know M.S.D. What about Columbine? You heard of that?”

I nodded, realizing Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a more recent school shooting. The shootings flooded off the news feeds so rapidly these days, I’d stopped paying attention to the names and numbers a while ago.

“We used to worry about some of the kids, you know, like that. Herbert was one of them types. Why? What’s this about? Come on, Boise, you gotta spill.”

Confidentiality. I wasn’t always good at it, but in this case, I didn’t have to be since Elias was like an assistant, or so I reasoned.

“He came by to see me about a missing family member a few days ago. The person turned up dead and when he came to see me a guy got shot with an arrow in my office.”

“What the fuck, man? When were you gonna tell me this? You mean that reporter? Your office?”

The Daily News article Walter had run the day after the murder. He must have left out that it was my office. Probably just said it was in The Daily News building or something equally vague.

“You know, we agreed that we’d let each other know about anything big happening,” he reminded me.

“I didn’t want to distract you,” I replied hollowly. “Besides, my line of work ... ”

“Fuck your line of work! Are we friends?”

“Of course!”

“Then act like it.” He stormed off then had to come back awkwardly. “Forgot this. Asshole.” He jerked his backpack off the ground and slung it over his shoulder.

My phone buzzed. It was Dana, texting me that I was an asshole. She wanted to know why I hadn’t called yet to explain about this shit that went down in my office. Her gruff attitude shined through even when texting. She wasn’t much help lately; too many bad politicians to chase down and expose in The Daily News.

“Winning friends and influencing people,” I muttered to myself. “The Montague way.”

Chapter 15

My brains primal-oozed out of my ears. A pizza box lay on the floor next to my bed. Six Guinness empties crowded my bedside table. The smell of rum made me gag. I capped the half-empty flatty of Bacon rum that I’d somehow managed not to knock over. I’d bought it to punish myself and do research. One headache with two alcohols, so to speak.

As I reached for my phone to check the time, two empty bottles tumbled to the carpet. The stale smell of warm beer wafted up as some trickled out of one bottle.

“Shoot!”

I scurried down the hall, washcloth in hand, wet it and dabbed at the carpet. My phone buzzed.

“What the hell’s going on over there?” Dana asked.

I croaked out, “Morning.”

“It’s almost noon, Jabuti.”

“Shit, Dana, I gotta go.”

“I’m picking you up. You think I wouldn’t come back for my colleague’s memorial? Thirty minutes.”

Advil. I popped two and my colitis meds. Five minutes, just need five minutes to gather.

More pounding. My eyes fluttered open. Crushing the pizza box with my foot, I stumbled to the door. Woman with black hair. I stared a long moment, then realized it was Dana. The whole time I’d known her, she’d had red hair. I decided it was probably a bad time to ask her what her natural color was.

She held her hand over her eyes like she was staring into the sun. “Jesus, Boise, must we repeat this all the time. Put some clothes on. Do you drink alone in the nude? Have you been to a meeting yet?”

“What happened to your hair?” I asked. Behind her the giant print of Christina’s World in its cherry frame whisked me away to a vast mid-western expanse.

“The best hair colorist in the Caribbean works out of her house in Tortola. Got tired of the faded red.”

“Weird,” I muttered as I turned back toward my bed. “Why’re you here already?”

Dana shook her head. “You’re like a goddamned teen. Get dressed and brush your teeth. It’s been forty minutes. I got caught up talking to Lucy downstairs. She’s worried about you.”

I shrugged into a t-shirt, boxers,  and jeans.

“No,” Dana said, wagging her finger like a schoolmarm. “You ever been to a memorial?”

Instead of her usual ensemble of casual clothes and her red Carnegie Mellon cap, she looked, well, elegant and put-together.

“Yeah, but it’s in a bar.”

Then I remembered promising Walter to wear something nice if he invited me. While Dana jabbed at her phone, I changed. The Advil was slowly unscrewing the vise.

“What’s up in Tortola?” The inside of my dressy shirt collar had a ring of dirt. The armpit smelled. It needed a trip to the dry cleaners, but I kept forgetting because months would pass between wearings.

One good thing about murder: my wardrobe would get more use and, of course, people with dead relatives were potential clients. Highly motivated, money-is-no-issue kind of people. The lawyers in Los Angeles had clients like that as well. Like those on trial for murder. When your eternal freedom is on the line, saving money becomes a distant secondary objective. Murder puts things into perspective. And from that perspective, money don’t mean shit.

Finally, Dana looked up from her phone. She tilted her head, assessing my duds. I started to pull on socks. “Jabuti! What the hell, m-f? My granny takes less time to curl her hair than you do to pull on a decent outfit. Let’s go, put the shoes on in the car.”

We headed out the door, then she seemed to recall my Tortola inquiry as she pulled