Dead and Gone Read Online Free

plan. Full coverage. From my job. I was an … I couldn’t remember, but I knew I had coverage. Her lizard lips told me the police said I was a man with a long criminal record and no known employment. I told her that was silly. She said they took my fingerprints. I told her that was silly, too. She was angry at something. Later, she brought me a bunch of papers to sign. I signed them all. With an “X,” like she said to.
    I t was a teaching hospital. That’s why they were always studying me, this one resident said. He was working on his skills just by talking to me, perfecting that superior-snotty-scary tone they all need to armor themselves against the world’s knowing that they don’t know much.
    E arly one morning, Morales showed up. I’d known him a long time. A cop. He’d never liked me, but I didn’t take it personally. Morales didn’t like anyone except his old partner MacGowan. And MacGowan was long gone—pulled the pin on himself rather than talk to IAD after Morales smoked a bad guy and then flaked him with the throwdown piece he always carried. Morales was an old-style street roller, not a trace of slickness in him. A pit bull—once he locked on, he’d die holding the bite. And if he owed you, he’d pay it off or die trying.
    He owed me, heavy.
    “What happened?” he asked, no preamble.
    “Who’re you?”
    “Gonna be like that, huh?”
    “Like … what? Who are you?”
    He pinned me with his black ball-bearing eyes, as communicative as mirrored sunglasses. I looked back at him, blankness burning through haze.
    “You really don’t …?”
    “You … you’re a cop, right?”
    “How’d you guess, pal?”
    “The only people who come to see me are cops. There’s two others. Blade and Weber, or something.”
    “Baird and Wheelwright. They’re out of the Four-Four in the South Bronx.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah. You don’t know me?”
    “Was I … Am I a cop?”
    His laugh was metallic. He reached down, took my hand. He turned it over, looked at the palm, as if he was going to tell my fortune. “You didn’t have a piece on you when they dumped you here,” he said. “That don’t mean nothing by itself. But the gauntlet came up clean. You passed the paraffin.”
    I made a noise. Less than a grunt, just enough to let him know I was listening.
    “Deal is, the hospital’s got to call us whenever there’s a gunshot wound. It’s the law, okay? There was no ID on you. Nothing. So they run your prints. That’s when they tested your hands for powder residue.”
    I made another low noise.
    Morales reached over and took my hand. “Give me your best,” he told me, squeezing slightly.
    I squeezed back. With all I had.
    “Not yet,” Morales said.
    He dropped my hand, turned his back, and walked out of the room.
    W hen you’re in solitary, either you spend all your time getting ready, or you go somewhere else … inside your head. But the ticket to that other place costs too much. And there’s no guarantee it’ll be a round-trip.
    So you do push-ups. Start wherever you can. Maybe just five, before you fall on your face. Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s watching. Do more the next time. Every time.
    Isometrics are good, too. Walls are perfect for that.
    Then you work on your mind. Remembering. Trying for every tiny detail. Every ridge, warp, taste, and texture. You do replays. In slow motion. Paying attention to the women you’ve been with the way you never did when you were right next to them. No fantasies allowed. They’re dangerous … part of that ticket to somewhere else. Got to be real. Memories. Truth. Whatever happened. Whatever really happened—nothing else allowed.
    You can’t force memories. What color were those striped pants Belle used to wear? Vertical stripes. Michelle told the big girl they were slimming. Remember those stripes. They climbed up her long legs nice and parallel, but when they got to her butt, they ran in opposite directions like they were scared of each