Darkness of the Soul Read Free Page B

push me down when I nagged him a little too hard about something. I’m riding with Perez this week. He says, ‘Hi,’ by the by.”
    “Awww. How sweet.” Drakanis’s vision was becoming slightly blurred, and his head had gone nice and swimmy; it was almost worth quitting smoking just to get the buzz back when you started again, in his opinion.
    “Yeah, yeah, sweet as sugar and as lickable as your mother, Mikey. Anyway, I came out here special just for you. Least you can do is get me a damn cup of coffee. I gave you my last smoke even! So, coffee first, then I talk. Maybe.”
    Parker gave him a serene smile, while he sat there still trying to glare and letting ash fall on the floor to join the rest of the crap. Gina’d been a neat freak, but he himself wasn’t much in the cleaning department since those days. He finally got up and filled a pair of cups, looking sullen and petulant. He could feel things sharpening in his mind, old tools gone to rot that were now eager to be put to use again, no matter his apparent feelings and attitude.
    “There. Coffee. Talk.”
    Parker took his time about it, sniffing at it in his best impersonation of a wine connoisseur and then sipping it daintily, pinky thrust out and all. Finally, he set the cup down and sighed.
    “It’s been three years, man. You need to—”
    “Don’t tell me what I do or don’t need, Vince. Get to it. I’m in. You’ve got me. I want it. Whatever you want to hear, just don’t give me a goddamn lecture. Get on with it.”
    Shaking his head and snuffing the cigarette in a puddle of slopped coffee, Parker let the matter drop. For now, he reminded himself. It ain’t healthy the way he lives, and you know it. He did indeed, but he also felt like there wasn’t much he could do for the man; Mikey’d either snap out of it, or he wouldn’t. Maybe giving him something to do, something tied to that old mess, would help. That was the idea anyway.
    “All right, check it out. Two weeks ago, couple of old fags—s’ what I think they were anyway, and who gives a shit, they’re dead anyway and I ain’t hurting their feelings none—Nathaniel Boris and Roget Deway—and with names like that? I mean, seriously—stop in this little pawnshop and find this picture they just gotta have. So they dicker, they deal, they whine, they cream themselves and pay full price anyway, they want it that bad. With me so far?”
    Drakanis felt his chest tightening and tried to convince himself it was due to the smoke and the effort not to cough, but he knew better. Parker had already told him what was stolen from the death scene, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but how the old guys—fags or not—had managed to get their hands on it bothered him, because it was basically the same way Gina’d ended up with it.
    If he tells me what I think he’s going to, I’m going to go insane. No other option really. I don’t want to hear this, don’t want to know this, and I don’t have to if I don’t want to. Part of him decided to prove it was being helpful by pointing out that most people thought he was pretty much insane anyway, but Drakanis shoved it down. It was no time to listen to drivel like that and better to put the brain to work on the problem at hand, whether or not it was the kind that’d force him to act on such a promise. He just nodded at Parker and then got back up from the table. He started banging cabinets and shoving odds and ends aside.
    “Keep talking. I need something.”
    “All right. So they take it home, hang it up, fuck for celebration, I dunno. Doesn’t matter. Week goes by, maybe two—the codgers paid cash and got it down at Eddie’s, and you know that bastard doesn’t bother with little things like receipts, not with half the shit he’s got in there, so we’re not entirely sure on the time line—they think it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, best piece of shit artwork they’ve had in the house for decades. Then, two nights ago, boom.