The Haze Read Free Page B

still in bed together. They’d been making love all afternoon and now they were smoking cigarettes and blowing the smoke up at the ceiling.
    â€œHow do you feel?” Varla asked him.
    â€œGot my ashes hauled three times in a row, how’m I supposed to feel? Good, real good.”
    â€œI mean about killing your little girl, your own flesh and blood.”
    â€œKind of shitty. But there was no choice, was there?”
    â€œThere wasn’t.”
    â€œI feel shitty anyway.”
    â€œHow many is that for you?”
    â€œHow many what?”
    â€œNotches on your pistola.”
    â€œI stopped counting years ago. It’s just a number.”
    â€œI’m at sixteen,” she said. “I’m going to stop soon. It’s lost its thrill.”
    â€œI never got a thrill. It was just work. A job.”
    â€œYou didn’t enjoy it at all?”
    â€œThat’s sick,” he said.
    â€œYou’re calling me sick?”
    â€œThrill killing is sick, yeah. Don’t take it personally.”
    â€œHow else am I going to take it?”
    Varla got out of bed. Her breasts were sagging, her pubes were half gone. But Little Mo thought she was hot anyway.
    â€œWe having another fight?”
    â€œThis is turning into a stormy relationship. I’m not sure I want that.”
    Someone was knocking on the door.
    â€œIt’s the cops,” Little Mo said. “Come to arrest us for all our sex noise.”
    It wasn’t the cops. It was Javier. He kept his eyes down, not looking at Varla’s nakedness.
    â€œI’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Connors and Mrs. Hardy. I apologize, but something happened. Something bad happened. I got to tell you some bad news.”
    Varla said, “His daughter’s dead. Little Miss Priss got herself shot. Selling violent books, it came back to bite her in the ass.”
    â€œHow’d you know that?” Javier said. “Somebody call you?”
    â€œGo on, Little Mo, tell Javier. Confess what you did.”
    He didn’t know what to say. He’d never confessed to anything. His lawyers told him that. Keep your mouth shut, take the fifth, I’ll do the talking.
    Javier picked up the book that was lying on the floor and brought it over to the bed and set it on the bedside table.
    â€œYou were throwing books again, Mr. Connors. Your daughter asked me to tell her if you did that again. And I got to report you to the supervisor.”
    â€œWhy would you report me?”
    â€œYou could be dangerous to yourself or others. These are hardbacks. Somebody could get knocked down.”
    â€œPaperbacks, the print is too small.”
    â€œMaybe you should find a different kind of book doesn’t stir you up so much.”
    â€œWhat? A boring book? That what you’re saying? If I read a bunch of boring books you’ll let me stay in this hellhole?”
    â€œIt’s time for your pills, Mr. Connors.”
    â€œOf course it is. Keep me stoned, I can’t read, I can’t do anything but look out the window at the palm trees.”
    â€œYou’re a funny guy, Mr. Connors. Always with the joke.”
    He took the pills. Walked around the room. He stopped. He pressed his ear to the door. Nobody in the hallway. He opened the door, looked out. Hallway empty. He slipped out, headed up the hall away from the lobby and the card room and the exercise room and the TV room.
    He didn’t need his .38. He’d killed before with his hands. He wasn’t as strong as before, but the moves were still there, the sharp hand blade to the throat, the eye gouge, bring them down, knees on the chest, snap the windpipe. He’d taken out Uncle Marvin Shuster that way. He’d turned off the lights on Billy Shapely and Shorty Crump with his bare hands. It was coming back to him through the haze, his history, his triumphs, his fearsome power, the respect he’d once commanded. Not like the killers in the books he