The Unlucky Man Read Free Page B

skill-set to make it happen.
    "I heard the police have stopped even crossing the river," I said.
    "So they say," Corg assented. I knew for a fact that from time to time Corg’s other work took him over to that side of town and that he had affiliations with one of the families in some way or another. Sometimes, in his cups, he would talk about it but it didn’t seem I was going to get anything out of him today.
    "One of us better give Danvers a ring," I said at last. "I guess the police already talked to him, best give him our side of it, right, let him know about the car if he doesn’t already. You want to do it?"
    Corg shook his head and knocked back a whiskey. "Nah," he said, "You do it. I do it he’ll just chew me out, probably think I’m trying to steal the fucking thing."
    That sounded about right. I nodded, threw back my own drink, and stepped out into the drab grey evening and the torrential rain.
    When I came back in, shaking droplets from my hair, Corg was smoking a cigarette and had been back to the bar and returned with a whole bottle of Mash and two tumblers. "What’d he say?" Corg asked as I sat down, pouring me a generous tipple and passing it over.
    "He wasn’t too pleased. Said the police had already been on to him." I slugged back a mouthful, swirling the smoky liquid around my mouth, savoring the amber burn as it slipped down my throat.
    "Well then, bottoms up," Corg said, raising his glass in a toast and we both drank.
     
    It was some time later that he asked the question that I guess had been on his mind the whole time.
    "So," he said, by now slurring very slightly and with a feigned nonchalance, "What did he give you?"
    It took me a moment to pull myself out of the heavy whiskey stupor that had wrapped itself around my head to find my tongue and answer. When I did it felt too big for my mouth.
    "What?" I said, blankly. "Who?"
    "Who?" Corg chuckled incredulously, a long throaty, dirty laugh. "Who? Fuckin’ Cadaverous Joe ornamenting the company car man, that’s who."
    It took me another moment, but at last I cottoned on. "Shit," I said, rummaging in the pocket of my suit. "I’d forgotten!" After some fumbling I produced the thing that the stranger had used his final moments to hand on to me. Or two things as it turned out, one wrapped around the other.
    The first was a slip of stained note paper – though stained with what I tried not to think - torn from a spined legal pad, on which was a hastily scrawled number - a phone number at a guess but all jumbled up together without any spaces. Below this, in the same hurried hand was a single word: "Whimsy."
    The other item was more disturbing - a small clear capsule, the sort that some medicines come in, inside which was a tiny amount of something black and glistening that didn’t seem able to decide what form to take. From one angle it seemed liquid but with a twitch of the wrist, melted into slime then coalesced into gas. Whatever it was, there was no more than a smear of it, shining darkly with an unhealthy vivid pallor. Just looking at it sent a needle of pain dancing through my temples.
    We were both quiet for a time, staring at the thing I’d laid on the dark wood of the table.
    "This is very bad shit," Corg said at last. I was forced to agree.
    "Why didn’t you tell the cop about this?" he asked after a while, somewhat hypocritically I felt.
    "I’d forgotten about it," I said. "Honestly," I added, seeing the disbelieving look on his face, "Heat of the moment I guess?" Though I wasn’t sure that this was the truth, not really. Then, "Why didn’t you?"
    "I was following your lead," he said, with something like a twinkle in his eye.
    "Right."
    "Believe me brother," he said, face suddenly leering into a devilish grin, "Last thing you wanna do with mystery shit like this is hand it over to the man." He spoke like one who knew and I could kind of see his point.
    I secured the pill back in my inner pocket and looked at the number again.