Rhode Island Red Read Free Page B

him—for all the good that was going to do. I laughed when I thought back to that question Sig had asked me: Who are you really? I should have been the one to ask him that.
    What I wanted to do was rage and scream and put my fist through a wall. But there had been enough violent acting-out in my home. I was wrung out—and just really sad.
    I looked up searchingly into Billie’s cloudy eyes. She knew!

CHAPTER 3
    Nutty
    The sleep I was getting was more trouble than it was worth. I went and fixed a tray and had my coffee in bed. And eventually I got up and put some Monk on the turntable. Thelonious at his quirkiest—all the old ballads turned on their head. Boy, did that fit in with my life.
    It could be worse, I kept telling myself while I located the vacuum cleaner and filled the scrub bucket. It could be worse. Though I couldn’t think how. Well, yeah, I could have been the corpse. That would be worse. Or Leman Sweet, instead of calling me the “c” word, could have said I looked like Odetta, as some drunk asshole had done in a restaurant once. Nothing against that venerable lady, but I do not appreciate being taken for a sixty year old folk singer.
    On my hands and knees, I scrubbed away at the bloodstain. Then I gathered up the splinters from Sweet’s guitar. I wondered what street corner he played on—that street I was never going to walk down as long as I lived.
    I also wondered what two detectives were doing posing as funky street musicians.
    The building super knocked on the door and wanted to know what had happened here last night … why all the cops and what kind of trouble had I plunged the building into.
    â€œA corpse,” I told him.
    â€œWhat corpse?”
    â€œA dead man’s corpse.”
    â€œBut who was the dead corpse?”
    â€œSig,” I said.
    â€œThis is very bad. This is terrible.”
    I agreed.
    He shook his head, promising me retribution from the landlord.
    I finished the washing-up. The place looked a little frazzled around the edges, but it was clean. Now I was hungry. But the cupboard was bare. I didn’t have the strength to face the supermarket. Even the easy way out—the corner deli—would mean cooking eggs and toasting bread. Too much.
    I decided to take a nap. If I felt just as lazy when I woke up, I’d go ahead and blow five bucks in the coffee shop.
    As I slogged over to the divan, I saw my poor sax and its case lying abandoned in the corner. I went over and straightened the instrument in its carrier. Then I pulled it back to the spot it had originally occupied on the floor, before Officer Sweet’s temper had sent it flying.
    Something was sticking out of the bowl of my sax. I peered in there. For godsakes—it was a dirty sock! At least that’s what it looked like—a long, dirty white sock.
    I pulled on the tip of the sock. At first it wouldn’t budge. But then, slowly, it began to loosen and move. Then it became stuck again. There was something hard and ridged in the toe, something like a sewing spool. I gave it one good yank, and the whole sock popped out. And then another one rolled out after it.
    The first one felt heavy in my hand. The way I imagined a sap would heft in one’s hand. I had never seen a sap in my life, but it’s something they’re always talking about in those old black and white detective movies.
    I shook out the sock. What I had arrayed before me on the rug were six tightly rolled wads of fifty dollar bills fastened with rubber bands. About 100 fifties to each roll. That came to five thousand dollars a wad.
    Sock number two was identical. All together there were twelve rolls.
    There was sixty thousand dollars—in cash—in fifties—inside my little sax.
    I backed away from the heap and collapsed onto the divan. This was too much. Too crazy … even for me.
    Only one person could have filled my stocking like that: Siggy. Also known as Officer Charlie