Suicide Season Read Free Page A

Uncle Wyn wasn’t happy to see me or Bunch swiveled around to prop our feet on the iron rail that fenced off the office’s large, arched window while we stared out across the flat roofs of neighboring warehouses and office buildings toward the gleam of snowfields in the distant mountains. But he wasn’t happy, either, at the thought that Bunch and I occasionally looked into windows from the outside. We had tried to convince my uncle that what we did had some redeeming social value and was worth the money he’d invested. But neither Bunch nor I could make him believe that our occupation wasn’t slightly pornographic.
    “Hey, listen, some porno I like.” Bunch sat on the tired stenographer’s chair in front of the glass, his hams spilling over the Naugahyde and pinched by the cuffs of running shorts that on anyone else would have been baggy.
    “That’s the kind we call erotic.”
    “You call it erotic. Susan, she calls it dirty. Me, I call it fun.” He scrubbed with a towel at the mat of hair on his chest and then sniffed it. “God I smell good. Sweat. Sunshine. A light coat of carbon monoxide. I love it.”
    “You jog through that traffic, you’ll lose more years of life than you save,” said Uncle Wyn. Like Bunch, he was in the middle of his morning routine. Which, today, meant a visit to the office to check on his investment.
    “No, no—I’m contributing to evolution. Five, six more generations, and my descendants will have these carburetors instead of lungs. And it all started with me.” He hocked something out of his throat and stood to spit through an open window panel into the street three floors below. “They’ll think it was a pigeon. Speaking of which, did you tell your uncle about our big client?”
    I told him about McAllister.
    “The McAllister? Carnival Ball Owen McAllister—the guy that’s into movies and oil and real estate and whatever?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “He wants to hire you two?”
    “Has hired us, Uncle.” I held up the check with its string of numbers. “If things go right, Kirk and Associates is on its way.”
    Uncle Wyn, his arthritic leg stiffly out in front of the chair, leaned forward to read the check. “Jesus H. It’s for real.”
    “That’s just the retainer,” said Bunch. “Wait till he gets our final bill.”
    “I never met the man, but he’s solid. His name’s worth a lot on the street,” Uncle Wyn said. “How did Loomis know him?”
    “I’m not sure. But they call each other Mike and Owen.”
    Uncle Wyn grunted. “I was surprised you’d even talk to that guy.”
    “It wasn’t his fault. And he lost money, too.”
    “Crap,” said Uncle Wyn.
    “Loomis didn’t lose as much as your old man, Dev. And he got it back damned fast. And he didn’t blow himself away, either.”
    “You want to talk about this case or not?”
    “Sure, Dev. But you know what Susan says?”
    “What makes you think I give a damn what Susan says?”
    “Mr. Kirk, you know what Susan says about your nephew? She says he keeps it inside too much. He never talks about it, you know? She says it’s going to blow up some day—that he’s got to ventilate it.”
    “Ventilate?”
    “Yeah. It’s psychology talk for mental farting.”
    “Susan has enough patients without worrying about me. Or about my flatulence.”
    “Don’t get huffy. You always use big words when you get huffy. And then our communication, as they say, breaks down.”
    “Let’s communicate about McAllister.”
    Uncle Wyn heaved to his feet, levering his stiff leg up neatly with the cane. “For a change, you boys got real work to do—congratulations. Me, I got the Cubs game coming on. So good luck with your big chance.”
    “Hey, when your lenders wish you luck, you know they mean it.”
    I closed the door behind my uncle; his uneven tread on the landing was a pale echo of the years he had spent sprinting across the grass of a baseball diamond.
    “He’s a tough old bird, your uncle.”
    “He