The Man Who Killed His Brother Read Free Page B

Ginny to marry me. Not an unpleasant kind of indecision, and I had enough stuff in me to glow while I thought about it. It was almost dark outside, but the streetlights hadn’t come on yet so I couldn’t see very well, and the air was dim and relaxed.
    Then I heard gunfire. I snapped a look out the window and saw a man running away from the bank in my direction. He was carrying a bag of some kind and waving a gun over his shoulder, shooting at something behind him. There was a cop chasing him. I jumped to the conclusion he’d just robbed the bank.
    I was out the door and on the sidewalk in no time. I had the .45 in my hand. I shouted at the man to stop. When he pointed his gun at me, I fired a couple of times. He kept running, but the cop chasing him went down.
    It turned out the man was a purse snatcher. Richard had already been chasing him for three blocks. If the snatcher hadn’t had a gun, I would’ve been indicted for manslaughter. As it was, the commission read the results of my blood-alcohol test, charged me with “negligence,” and took away my license. For good.
    The cops were not amused. For a while, a bunch of them used to roust me every time we ran across each other. I spent a lot of time in the drunk tank in those days while bruises I couldn’t remember getting turned black-and-blue on my ribs and face. Probably that was where I got in the habit of not letting anybody touch me. But after a couple of years they let it ride. Then I got into trouble only when some cop got the bright idea I was working for Ginny without a
license. But that’s pretty hard to prove, because I was careful and I never got caught doing the kinds of things you’re not allowed to do without a license. So far I’ve been able to get away with it.
    So what? So now I don’t drink in bars like Norman’s anymore. I go down to the old part of town, where they don’t care what I look like or smell like as long as my money’s green and my Spanish doesn’t sound like it came out of a textbook in some Anglo school. When I’m not working on a case for Ginny, I’m drunk. When I am working on a case, I’m sober. She’s the one friend I’ve got, and everybody who remembers Richard hates me. Except Alathea. She doesn’t know I shot her father.
    Or at least she didn’t know. Maybe she was missing because she ran away when she found out the truth—the truth her mother hadn’t told her.
    I was trembling deep down inside my gut. When Lona brought the coffee, I had to hold the cup with both hands to keep from spilling it. While I drank it down, she stood right in front of me as if she was waiting until I finished to start screaming at me. But she just refilled my cup, then put the pot down where Ginny could reach it, and went to sit in the armchair beside the TV. Her hands she knotted in her lap, as if she were trying to keep them out of trouble.
    When she spoke, her face was aimed at me, and her voice was brittle. “Will you take the case?”
    “Of course,” Ginny said smoothly. Her tone was sympathetic-neutral. Gentle but businesslike. The kind of tone she uses when she doesn’t want a client to break down. “But I have to ask you a lot of questions.”
    “Yes.” Lona sounded small and far away. The light was so dim I couldn’t even see her lips move—her voice could’ve come from anywhere in the room. All of a sudden, I knew for a fact it was serious. Lona wouldn’t have me sitting in front of her like this if it wasn’t serious. She kept the room dark so I couldn’t see the need in her face.
    The trembling climbed up through my bones. I had to clamp my forearms between my knees to keep from shivering.

    “How long has she been gone?” Ginny asked.
    “Eight days.” Her voice was as brittle as it could get. Brittleness was the only defense she had left. “Last week Tuesday she went to school and didn’t come home.”
    “Did you call the school?”
    “Yes. That evening. First I called some of her friends, but they