Herbie's Game Read Free Page A

“Awww, come on. There’s other people and then there’s Wattles. The day I can’t find you I should close my office. What’s that?” He was limping toward the table with the jewelry box on it.
    “Junk,” I said, zipping around him and picking it up. I put it into my pocket. “I’d be embarrassed to show it to you.”
    “You don’t usually got junk,” Wattles said. “Lemme see. And why the gun?”
    I looked down at the Glock. “This is in case someone undesirable knocks on the door. And speaking of that, what do you want?”
    “Look at this place,” Wattles said. “Looks like something Dreamworks burped.”
    “This may be difficult for you to believe, but I’ve got a day in front of me.”
    “So here you are, with a beautiful girl, way too good for you, and you’re grumpy?” He put his hands in his pockets. All the cheer left his face, and Ronnie sat back on the bed as though Wattles had suddenly sprouted spikes. “Junior,” he said, “when was the last time you were in my office?”
    “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
    “You need to convince me of that,” Wattles said. He went back to the door and opened it to reveal a six-foot-three skeletonof a man in a black suit and a pair of thick, crepe-soled work boots. The stovepipe pants had a thrift-shop shine on them, and their legs were far too short; white socks glimmered above the black boots. His narrow, bony face was asymmetrical and the color of old envelope glue, but the most disconcerting thing was that the whites of his eyes were the cheap, vivid blue of mouthwash. He’d trained dead-black hair down over his forehead and pasted it there, like Hitler’s. His shoulders were hunched, painfully and, it looked, permanently, up near his ears. The suit hung on him like it was waiting for someone to join him inside it.
    “Hey, Bones,” I said.
    Bones was looking at the floor about halfway between him and me, and he didn’t acknowledge the greeting.
    “Close the door,” I said to Wattles. “He sucks light out of the room.”
    Wattles pulled his right hand out of his jacket pocket and handed four or five red and blue capsules to Bones. “Have a party, but don’t invite no one,” he said, closing the door.
    “
Tuinal
?” I said. “Rainbows? I thought those were outlawed decades ago.”
    “Not in India,” Wattles said. “Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals, stepping into the void between Tuinal junkies and the danger of waking up.”
    “So you made a point of showing me Bones, and since you’re carrying his pet treats around, I suppose he’s working for you. I wasn’t in your office last night.”
    “Did I say anything about last night?”
    “No. But here you are, eleven-thirty on a beautiful Monday morning if you don’t count Bones, and you’re trying to push a burglar around. Sounds like something happened last night.”
    “I gotta sit down,” Wattles said. He turned to Ronnie. “If I sit on the bed with you, you gonna bite me?”
    “You wish,” Ronnie said.
    “I love the smell of nail polish,” he said, sitting down. He released an enormous whoosh of air and began to rub the small of his back.
    “Let me,” Ronnie said, and she began to work his back with her feet. Wattles emitted a humid-sounding sigh, like an old steam radiator, and closed his eyes. “Why haven’t I got one of you?” he asked.
    I said, “Can you just leave Bones out there in the sun? Won’t he melt?”
    “He don’t know where he is. He could be at the bottom of the pool and he’d be okay.” He opened his eyes and glanced back at Ronnie. “I don’t get it, Junior. You’re an okay-looking guy, or you would be if you cut your hair, and you always got fine, fine trim—no offense, Miss, just a figure of speech. Old Janice, you remember Janice, she thought birds flew out of your butt.”
    Looking at me, Ronnie said, “Janice?”
    “A go-between,” I said. “Works for Wattles.”
    Wattles said, “Thought birds flew out—”
    “Yes, we’ve heard