Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“Yep,” I said.

“What a dump,” she crowed, and meant it for a compliment.

“All that I have is yours.”

“That bed isn’t even big enough for club sandwich sex.”

“One partner always has to stay on the floor.”

“Jesus, what year is that typewriter you’re using?”

“1935 Underwood Standard, old but great.”

“Just like me, huh, kid? You going to invite the

ancient celebrity in and unscrew her earrings?”

“You’ve got to go back and look in Fannie’s icebox, remember? Besides, if you slept over tonight, spoons.”

“Plenty of cutlery, but no fork?”

“No fork, Constance.”

“The memory of your mended underwear is devastating.”

“I’m no boy David.”

“Hell, you’re not even Ralph. Goodnight, kid. It’s me for Fannie’s icebox. Thanks!”

She gave me a kiss that burst my eardrums and drove away.

Reeling with it, I somehow made it to bed.

Which I shouldn’t have done.

Because then I had the Dream.

Every night the small rainfall came outside my door, stayed a moment, whispered, and went away. I was afraid to go look. Afraid I might find Crumley standing there, drenched, with fiery eyes. Or Shapeshade, flickering and moving in jerks, like an old film, seaweed hung from his eyebrows and nose....

Every night I waited, the rain stopped, I slept.

And then came the Dream.

I was a writer in a small, green town in northern Illinois, and seated in a barber chair like Cal’s chair in his empty shop. Then someone rushed in with a telegram that announced I had just made a movie sale for one hundred thousand dollars!

In the chair, yelling with happiness, waving the telegram, I saw the faces of all the men and boys, with the barber, turn to glaciers, turn to permafrost, and when they did pretend at smiles of congratulation their teeth were icicles.

Suddenly I was the outsider. The wind from their mouths blew cold on me. I had changed forever. I could not be forgiven.

The barber finished my haircut much too quickly, as if I were untouchable, and I went home with my telegram gripped in my sweating hands.

Late that night, from the edge of the woods not far from my house, in that small town, I heard a monster crying beyond the forest.

I sat up in bed, with crystals of cold frost skinning my body. The monster roared, coming nearer. I opened my eyes to hear better. I gaped my mouth to relax my ears. The monster shrieked closer, half through the forest now, thrashing and plunging, crushing the wildflowers, frightening rabbits and clouds of birds that rose screaming to the stars.

I could not move or scream myself. I felt the blood drain from my face. I saw the celebratory telegram on the bureau nearby. The monster shouted a terrible cry of death and plunged again, as if chopping trees along the way with its horrible scimitar teeth.

I leaped from bed, seized the telegram, ran to the front door, threw it wide. The monster was almost out of the forest. It brayed, it shrieked, it knocked the night winds with threats.