Civil Twilight Read Online Free Page A

“What’d you think, John’s my patron? I do some work for him. He’s front of the queue, but he’s not keeping me in gas. There’ve been times I’ve missed airport runs for him. Fast fares. It’s a big loss I incur for John.”
    If I’d been biting my lip I’d have bled to death. “But you could pick up fares at Coit Tower the times you dropped him off, right?” I was trying to make sense of it all.
    “I never dropped him off there.”
    Was he lying? Damn! What was my brother doing up there that he was so hot to hide? Wait a minute. “So you’ve just picked him up there.”
    He nodded, with a grunt.
    Of course. “Cheapskate. You mean he’d have called another cab to get him up there? So he didn’t have to pay you to wait?” Pay him to sit around enjoying the view while the meter ticked? To note whatever it was he was doing up there. So Morratt could tell me.
    He studied my face in the mirror. Now he had his eyes on the rearview the whole time. The road was incidental. “Yeah.”
    “There were times he called you, right, and you dropped everything, right, and then he wasn’t ready and you had to sit around and wait, on your own sweet time, right?”
    His eyes narrowed. Even Webb Morratt had a limit. Just as I was deciding on a different approach, he said grudgingly, “Nah. If he made me wait, he made it up.”
    “And when you had to go out of your way to take his friend down with him, was that on the meter, too?”
    “Nah, that wasn’t the problem. It was him driving around dead silent after, going crazy if I said two words. You know what a bummer that is
when you’re alone hauling hack all day and finally you get someone you can shoot the breeze with and he clams up, plus makes you clam, and even—get this—turn off the radio. Like a tomb. And when he—”
    A horn honked.
    Morratt shot a glance out the window. Traffic was almost stopped. Ahead on the left was the Ferry Building and for a moment I wondered whether there was a reception or rally there. Then I spotted the cause of the hold-up. It was the set. My set, where I’d be doing my stunt in—yikes!—fifty-five minutes. As I’d told Karen Johnson, Market Street was closed for two blocks, from here up past California Street, which was where the action would be. I could see two fire engines and an ambulance, and a huge crowd—workers stopping on their way to the Embarcadero BART station, streetcars out to the Castro, Glen Park, the avenues, or buses to the East Bay.
    The black-and-white stayed on the Embarcadero under the Bay Bridge and cut right on Brannan. From there it was an easy shot to the bridge entry at Second Street. If John got on the bridge, I was sunk. No pedestrian walk. But he didn’t. He shot across Second Street on Brannan. He was headed toward the Mission. Damn! Toward the Hall of Justice. He’d flagged the patrol car to take him back to the police station! Ahead, the light was turning red. John shot through it. I thought the police were being more careful about jumping lights now that the city was making a big deal about it. Morratt followed.
    Was this really a prank? Karen Johnson an actress set up by Gary to ensnare me? I’d even asked her to dinner. But I couldn’t believe—
    Like John said, I couldn’t believe it of Karen, nor could I of Gary. Definitely not.
    He passed Sixth Street without slowing, without veering from the left-hand lane. The Hall was at Seventh and Bryant, one block north.
I watched for his taillight, but cops don’t always announce their intentions. Still, when he neared the corner without signaling I wondered if I’d been made and he was just running out the game. In the distance a siren pierced the air.
    He crossed Seventh, kept going. Between Eighth and Ninth John turned around and the driver hit the gas. I had been made. But he was almost into the mix of streets under the freeway, not a place to lose someone. What was he doing here in the Mission? He was a detective; maybe in the middle