5 Crime Czar Read Online Free Page B

its plastic noose.
    “I’ll split that one with you.” She sat down on the only chair in the room and crossed her legs.
    “Sure,” he said, popping the top. Daisy frowned when he started to hand her the can, and he got the message. She watched him trying to locate two glasses and shook her head.
    “This place sure could use a woman’s hand.” It surprised her when she said that, because it sounded like something her mother would have said.
    “I do all right,” Charlie said.
    “Who does your cooking?”
    “Popeye’s.” He laughed and poured her beer into a plastic Endymion cup. He gave up trying to find another for himself and leaned against the stove holding the can.
    “Hrumph,” she snorted. “You can’t live on that.”
    “To tell you the truth, when I get off work I’m not hungry a lot of the time. It’s all the fumes from the spray paint. I always want a couple of beers, but I usually ain’t that hungry.”
    “You ever think that job might be bad for you?”
    “Yeah, but it’s what I know how to do. I’m sort of good at it, too,” Charlie said proudly.
    “How’d you learn how to paint cars in the first place?”
    “My father and brother did it back home in Luling. I could have worked for them, but I got tired of living at home. You know.”
    “I know what you mean,” Daisy said.
    “Is that why you came to New Orleans, to get away from home?”
    She studied her beer and her pink fingernails.
    “Something like that, Charlie. I didn’t really have no home. You ever heard that country song, ‘Fancy’? ‘Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down’?”
    “Not really.”
    Daisy shrugged. “It’s just a song. Let’s say there wasn’t much for me in Alabama, and they didn’t line up to say good-bye when I caught the bus.”
    “I had a big family,” Charlie said. “We get together sometimes and cook, man. They make lots of food— gumbo and shrimp, and they fry up lots of fish. Man, it’s good.”
    “Maybe you ought to go back out to the country and live.”
    “No, there’s no work. And a lot of people ain’t too friendly to my family. I had a little trouble back home, too. My dad said it was time to get away and let it all cool down.”
    “What kind of trouble?” Daisy was interested.
    “Nothing. I got caught with some dope. Nothing bad.”
    “You still mess with that?” Daisy asked. “ ’Cause I don’t.”
    Charlie, who had been about to pull open a drawer and offer her a joint he had rolled this afternoon, shook his head. “No way,” he said emphatically.
    “Good,” she said, and smiled at him for the first time.
    “You like living out there at the motel?” he asked.
    “It’s all right. I miss having a stove…”
    “Well, you could come over here and cook, whenever you wanted to.”
    She laughed, and he thought her teeth looked very pretty, even though one was missing way in the back.
    “I imagine you’d like having a cook around,” Daisy said.
    “Really, Daisy,” he said. “You could come over here any time you wanted to. You wouldn’t have to cook.” Charlie blushed. Mrs. Winters would blow a fuse if she caught on, but he would think of something.
    Daisy stood up and crossed the room to face him. She took his fingers in hers and looked up into his eyes.
    “Don’t get cozy with me, weirdo, unless you mean it,” she said in a husky voice. “The only kind of man I want is one who can keep on caring.”
    Charlie swelled up with caring. He gripped her shoulders through the soft cotton top and pressed them tightly. “I ain’t never felt this way about nobody before,” he managed to get out.
    “Just so you understand,” she said, and gave him a hard squeeze below the belt.
    “C’mon,” she said and led him out of the kitchen.
    * * *
    “It’s good to be surrounded by such a brain trust,” Judge Hughes leaned back in his pillowy leather armchair, hands clasped over his ample middle, and smiled affectionately at his guests. Tubby