The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [78]
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Great since they shot me up with painkillers. This is my friend Heidi.”
Heidi and I exchanged nods. She had waist-length blond hair and fake tits. Young enough to be his daughter and old enough to know that was why she was here.
“Jack and I need to talk,” Long said.
“I’ll go to the cafeteria and get a drink,” Heidi said. “Nice to meet you, Jack.”
Heidi left. I took her chair and leaned on the arm rail of Long’s bed.
“Any luck finding those guys?” Long whispered.
I shook my head.
“I heard you yelling at my pilot. We lost our chance, didn’t we?”
I nearly said yes, but bit my tongue instead. The pilot had made his choice, and talking about it was not going to change anything.
“We’ll get another,” I said optimistically.
Long nodded and shut his eyes. He looked asleep, and I considered leaving. Then his eyes snapped open, and he placed his hand on my arm. “There’s something I need to tell you about Sara,” he said. “I think it’s important.”
“Go ahead.”
“When Sara was a little girl, a man tried to kidnap her from a school playground. Sara bit him on the arm, and got away. She’s always been like that. Once my daughter sees an opportunity to get away from these guys, she’ll take it.”
I felt a sharp stabbing in my gut. Lonnie and Mouse weren’t playground perverts. They were sociopaths, and would kill Sara if she tried to escape. I needed to step up my search before that happened.
“That’s good to know,” I said.
Long eventually shut his eyes and fell asleep. Going outside to the parking lot, I took Buster for a walk on Andrews Avenue when my cell phone started to ring. It was my old pal, Sonny. Our last conversation hadn’t been friendly, and I wondered what he wanted.
“What’s up,” I answered.
“You want your room above the bar back?” Sonny asked.
I stopped walking. That was exactly what I wanted; a familiar place to rest my head, and have a burger and a beer with people that I knew. The skeptic in me held back.
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I talked to Ralph about it this afternoon, and he agreed.”
“What about Buster?”
“Buster, too.”
“What about the subpoena?”
“Ralph made it go away.”
Cars whizzed past me on the street. I should have been happy to get my old place back, but it didn’t feel right.
“You still haven’t told me what the deal is,” I said.
“We got held up this afternoon,” Sonny said. “A Hispanic junkie came in, and stuck a gun in my face. Made me clean out the till and give him my jewelry and then the little prick robbed the guys sitting at the bar. Then he grabbed a bottle of Jameson’s off the bar and waltzed out.”
“I’m sorry. You okay?”
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Went to the hospital, and they got me calmed down. Then I called Ralph, and told him what happened. I reminded him that as part of your rent, you used to sit at the bar when it got busy, and make sure the place didn’t get robbed. I told him that if he didn’t hire you back, I was going to quit.”
“And he said yes?”
“What the fuck else was he going to say? You want your room, or not?”
Buster got excited when I pulled into the Sunset’s parking lot. I popped the trunk and took my stuff back up to my room. Then I found a washed-up stick by the shoreline, and engaged in some serious quality time with my dog.
The Sunset was quiet when I entered. The Seven Dwarfs sat at the bar, nursing their drinks. Sonny sat behind the bar on a stool, channel surfing. He made eye contact with me, and nodded without speaking. He looked shook up. So did the Dwarfs.
“What are you having?” Sonny asked.
“The usual. What did this guy take besides the cash?” I asked.
Sonny pulled down the neck of his T-shirt. An ugly red line circled his throat. Sonny’s father had died when he was young, and Sonny had taken his father’s dog tags from Vietnam, and gotten them gold-plated. The junkie who’d robbed the place had ripped those tags right off Sonny’s neck.
“What about you