Greenmantle Read Free

was drinking whiskey—straight, with a beer chaser.
    Howie’d met Earl in the can—they were both in the Don Jail on drunk and disorderly charges at the time. Right off, Howie knew Earl was his man. Howie wasn’t too big and he wasn’t too smart. He had survived the street scene by latching on to someone who was both. He’d run errands, do a little of whatever, just to keep on the good side of whoever was his main man at the time. Right now that man was Earl.
    Earl was the kind of guy you could really respect. Smart and tough and he didn’t take shit from nobody. Even the screws in the can had been a little leery of him. First night they were out, he and Earl hit a gas bar and made off with a clean $243 plus change just by sticking a gun in some pimply-faced kid’s nose. Earl’d even split fifty-fifty. No way he was letting go of this gig, Howie thought.
    Tandy Hots was down to her G-string and pasties now, moving slowly across the stage until she was right in front of their table.
    “They really get off on being up there, huh, Earl?” Howie said. He licked his lips, looking up into the dancer’s crotch.
    Earl grunted and glanced at her. “Who gives a fuck what they like,” he said. “Just so’s they do what they’re told.”
    Howie nodded. The dancer moved farther down the stage and he tried to imagine a woman like that being his, doing just what he told her to. If they were in a hotel or someplace, just the two of them, instead of this strip joint on Yonge Street… His dreamy mood left him as he sensed Earl stiffen across the table.
    “Look at this,” Earl said.
    He turned the paper around so that Howie could see. There was a photograph of a good-looking woman accepting a check from a Wintario official. She wasn’t built like Tandy Hots, Howie thought, but she wasn’t bad at all.
    He read the caption. Her name was Frances Treasure and she’d just won two hundred grand in the lottery. He shook his head slowly. Jesus. Two hundred grand! And all she was planning to do with it was buy back the place where she’d grown up and fix it up.
    “I tell you, Howie,” Earl said, “somebody’s looking after me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Earl put his finger down on the photograph. “See this broad?”
    “Yeah. Lucky bitch.”
    “She’s my ex,” Earl said.
    Howie looked at the photo again. “No shit?”
    “No shit,” Earl said. He looked Howie in the eye. “And you know what I think, Howie, m’man?”
    Howie shook his head.
    “I figure she owes me,” Earl said. “Course, first we got to find her. That could take a little time. But then…” He grinned, a slow and wicked grin that gave him a crazy look. Howie grinned back. Sonovabitch had a weird streak in him a mile wide, no doubt about it, but there was no way Howie was letting go of this gig. Not when the good times were just starting to roll.
    “What’re we gonna do then?” Howie asked.
    Earl’s grin grew wider. “Then we’re gonna party.”

The Riddles of Evening
     
     
    Pan pipes a tune but once
    And all the forests dance.
    —Joshua Stanhold,
    from “Goatboy”
     
    And suddenly they knew
    that the mystery of the hills, and
    the deep enchantment of evening,
    had found a voice
    and would speak with them.
    —Lord Dunsany,
    from The Blessing of Pan
     
     
    1
     
     
    Frankie followed the moving van down the short driveway and watched it head off down the road; then she turned to look at the house. The difference between the half-gutted structure that had stood there when she bought the place and what was there now was phenomenal. In the bright sunlight of a perfect day in late May, the site of all her childhood nightmares had been transformed into the house of her dreams. A little smaller, perhaps, but cozy enough for her and Ali.
    There was still a lot of work to be done. The workmen had left their typical battlefield of litter and debris behind them, but Frankie was looking forward to doing some work around the place with her own