Hunter's Moon Chuck Logan (novels to read TXT) 📖

“Sure. Hell, Harry, anything.”

“I want the keys to the lodge. I’m going up there and take care of your things for a while. Until this settles down.”

“No way. That’s definitely out. I don’t want you anywhere near that place. Not after—”

“You can’t do it. You made a deal with Hakala. I’m the logical one.”

“God, Harry.”

“Think about it. I’ll be at Ramsey at noon. Meet me in the lobby.”

Harry hung up. Bud would fight it, but he’d cave in.

The introspection of last night was gone. He enjoyed the slant of bronze sunlight against his skin and the texture of the carpet under his bare feet. The day felt brand new and a little bit dangerous.

The phone rang again. It was the department store. His suit was ready. He pulled on his sweats and went through the skyways to Dayton’s, picked up the suit, and charged a pair of dress shoes, two silk ties, a belt, and two shirts.

He hung the suit on his closet door, black and authoritative.

Flipped on his FM tuner and searched for the station that didn’t have a lot of commercials, that played vintage ’60s. He called Linda Margoles at her office. Linda was way ahead of him. The papers were being typed up as they spoke.

He turned the radio up and took a shower. Shaving was tricky, with the scabs, but he grinned and sang along with Bob Dylan’s

“Positively Fourth Street.”

With a scissors, he trimmed the stitch ends down closer to the knot under his left eye. Then he dug out his shoeshine kit and slapped a spitshine on the new shoes until the leather gleamed and twisted the reflection of his face into a crooked smile.

144 / CHUCK LOGAN

Dressed. Threw the Italian silk tie in a half-Windsor, smoothed his hands once down his lapels.

On his way out he slipped the AA medallion in his pocket. He took the elevator to the parking garage and tossed his duffel into his car. Then he hit the skyways with a roll to his walk, cutting smooth angles, a ripple of hipster muscle in a hot-shit black double-breasted suit.

He went to his bank and withdrew $2,000 from savings. The twenty $100 bills were crisp and new. He had never seen an old $100 bill.

Harry walked into the first hair salon he came upon. A blond receptionist stared up from her morning coffee.

“Fit me in. I got a heavy day,” he said, handing her a twenty.

She would have been pretty, the genuine Scandinavian article, if her skin hadn’t been artificially tanned to the texture of a Zulu shield.

She grinned at his face. “Rough night, huh?”

“And I’m going back for more,” Harry smiled.

Down on the street the air nipped the fresh tonic on his ears. He hailed a cab. “Selby and Dale,” he told the driver.

Selby and Dale was an intersection in the Hill District behind the cathedral where turn-of-the-century mansions gave way to vacant lots and run-down storefronts.

“Stop over there,” Harry pointed. “Keep the engine running, I’ll be back in five minutes,” Harry got out.

The bar’s name was a mystery of broken gray neon and two slit windows gave it a besieged inner-city squint. The door was sprayed with the tangled prophecy of gang symbols imported from Chicago.

The interior smelled of stale beer and smoke and the felt on the pool table was patched with duct tape. Beer cases stacked on the peeling linoleum. Cheap Formica tables. Goodwill aluminum tube chairs.

Two sets of eyes clicked on him through the gloom; the bartender and an old dusty fucker in a shapeless overcoat whose knotty fingers grew out of the bar and twisted around a glass.

HUNTER’S MOON / 145

Harry bowed his eyes to the shrine of bottles.

“You lost?” asked the bartender, who was bald, with the wide, calm face of a world-weary African Buddha. His ropey forearms shone with scars.

Harry inhaled, shot his cuffs, and swung onto a barstool.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “I’m lost. Find me a drink.”

“So whaddya want?”

“Jack Daniel’s. Double, straight up.”

The bartender shrugged, wiped his hands on his apron, and poured two shots into a glass. With the deliberation of ceremony, Harry placed the ten-year AA medallion next to the glass. The bartender chewed the inside of his lip and looked directly into Harry’s eyes.

“Know what this is?” Harry asked.

“Uh-huh. But it don’t buy no whiskey,” said the bartender.

“Like a medal,” Harry said, picking up the medallion and weighing it on his index finger. “Got me another medal. That one they give me for saving somebody else’s life. So I’m gonna keep that one. But this one”—he studied the medallion—“they give me for saving my own life. Now what do you call a guy who gives himself a medal for saving his own ass?”

The bartender studied him. “Man, what the fuck is your story?”

“I missed a payment on my clean, safe life and they took it back.”

Harry tipped the drink to his lips and drank half of it. The gasoline tingle evaporated through the roof of his mouth and he felt a boost of fuel-injected sweat. He left the glass half full to prove he was in control.

“Keep the change,” said Harry. He tossed down a twenty and left the AA coin on the bar.

He had the cabby drop him at the cathedral. Down the hill, the windows of St. Paul shimmered like purple seashells in a cold cloak of steam.

146 / CHUCK LOGAN

He wasn’t wearing an overcoat, and it was freezing, but he walked unhurried toward the downtown loop. Halfway there, he stopped in a cafe and had a cup of black coffee.

Then he walked again, using the cold to work an edge. He walked until his nose and his hands were red and his ears stung. The alcohol traveled through his body and affected his balance. Like walking in a pair of ten-year-old shoes.

He’d read somewhere that it takes an hour for your system to process an ounce of alcohol.

He headed for the word factory.

Perfectly creased and coiffed but skewed by the