Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves Read Online Free

you?”
    â€œBuffalo, New York. By way of any way I can get there.”
    I was curious about why anyone would be going to Buffalo in January. Or to Buffalo, come to think of it, in any month of the year. I didn’t really want to go into why I was going to St. Louis, though. No reason not to go into it. It wasn’t a secret. It just seemed a little complicated and, if I thought about it too much, a little too “undefined.” So I didn’t pursue the topic. Before I’d even gotten the car up to highway speed, she tilted her head back onto the seat rest and closed her eyes. I drove south.

4
    Rule #3: Incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.
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    â€œWally Reed?” she asked.
    I glanced over at her. She’d been sleeping, her breathing slow and deep and steady, for over an hour. It was night now. Full-on dark. Snow had started falling not long after we’d left the rest stop, snow that had begun to alternate with a sleety, freezing rain that peppered the top of the car with a soft patter. We were stopped, along with the five sets of taillights I could see in front of us. Beyond them flashed rotating wheels of red that I assumed had a state police car under them. The dashboard lights lit up the side of her face as she turned to me. The rest of it was in shadow. She hadn’t taken off her knit stocking cap. “You said I thought you might be a Wally Reed.”
    â€œYeah, Walter Reed,” I said. “You ever hear of him?”
    She paused and thought for a minute. “The doctor? The one who went to Cuba or someplace back during the Spanish-American War; discovered the cause of—” She stopped. “Ohhh. I get it.”
    It was quiet some more. “That’s a good one,” she said finally. “Yellow fever.”
    â€œSure,” I said. “What do you call them?”
    â€œGee-Gees.”
    â€œGee-Gees?”
    â€œAcronym,” she said. “Stands for ‘Geisha Guys.’ Guys who have a thing for Asian girls. Guys who have, as you put it, ‘Yellow Fever.’”
    â€œA trifle creepy.”
    â€œWe still haven’t established that you aren’t one of them,” she said.
    â€œI haven’t asked you to give me a massage.”
    â€œOr to pour you some sake.”
    â€œAre you hungry?” I asked.
    â€œNope,” she said. “You?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œYeah, given that banquet I saw you indulge in back at the rest stop, I can see why not,” she said.
    â€œA sound diet is the cornerstone to a healthy life.”
    She rubbed her face briskly, with both hands. “Why are we stopped?” she asked.
    â€œMoose would be my guess,” I said.
    â€œMoose?”
    â€œMoose. Somebody probably hit one crossing the road.”
    â€œDoes traffic stop for the funeral?”
    â€œEver see a moose?” I asked.
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œYou’d know it,” I said. “They’re big. Hit one with a car and you’ll take him out, pretty messily, and do about the same to your car. The combined mess of moose and machine tends to shut down the road until they can get a tow truck out to haul off the car and the moose.”
    â€œWhere are we?” she asked, covering an impressive yawn.
    â€œGetting close to New Hampton,” I said. “You were asleep all through the middle of the White Mountains.”
    â€œWere they scenic?” she asked.
    â€œSpectacular,” I said, “though arguably not so much when it’s pitch-black.”
    From behind our car, from our right, I saw more flashing, moving slowly off on the side of the road, that came close and turned out to be another highway patrol car. It slowed, then stopped beside us, and I leaned over when my new friend rolled down her window. The patrolman had lowered his as well.
    â€œMoose?” I asked.
    â€œMoose.” Then he added,