Down and Out on Murder Mile Read Online Free

crack! My stomach began to churn and fear welled up inside me. I started to talk fast.
    Â 
    â€œYou know I wasn’t concentrating on what I was doing. Preoccupied. Completely my fault, I’m really sorry.”
    Â 
    â€œWhat are you doing out here? This isn’t a good neighborhood.”
    Â 
    â€œI live right down there. I’m on my way home.”
    Â 
    â€œWell, we’re gonna radio for an ambulance to have you checked out.”
    Â 
    â€œNo need!” I insisted. “I’m fine. Listen, my wife is at home, she’s gonna freak out if I’m not back in twenty minutes. You know how it is in this neighborhood. I’d rather just go home and forget about it.”
    Â 
    The cops eyed me for a while. It was quite obvious to them that I was half out of my mind on drugs. It was also obvious that I could create abunch of paperwork for them if I went to the hospital because they hit me while I crossed the road. They didn’t want the paperwork and I didn’t want to have my pockets turned out.
    Â 
    â€œWell,” said the cop with the buzz cut, “if you’re sure you’re all right….”
    â€œPositive.” I beamed. “Never better! Happy Christmas officers!” “Yeah, you too,” they growled, getting back into their car.
    Â 
    I limped back into the guesthouse. I sat down and rolled up my pant leg, exposing a large ugly gash running up my shin.
    Â 
    â€œJesus!” Susan said, coming over to look. “What happened?”
    Â 
    â€œI got knocked over by a cop car. They let me go. I told you it’s a fucking mess out there tonight. I should have never gone…Fuck!”
    Â 
    I went to the bathroom and peeled off my bloody jeans, trying to wash the dirt out of the wound as best I could. Susan popped her head in the door after a few minutes.
    Â 
    â€œYou could have been busted,” she said, quietly.
    Â 
    â€œI know. Or killed. Imagine that. Killed on Christmas Eve by a speeding cop car. Jesus!”
    Â 
    Susan smiled a little and said, “Pretty funny, huh?”
    Â 
    I just glowered at her.
    Â 
    â€œNo,” I told her eventually. “Not really.”
    Â 
    â€œDid you get the rock?”
    Â 
    I sighed and nodded toward the bloody jeans. She retrieved it and scuttled out of the room.
    Â 
    I got cleaned up and found her playing with the pipe, exhaling white smoke. I limped over and said, “Where’s mine?” She handed me the pipe. I held the lighter up and took a long drag. Nothing. Not even a glimmer of something.
    Â 
    â€œWhere’s the rest?” I asked her. “You killed this one.”
    â€œThat’s it.”
    Â 
    â€œThat’s it?”
    Â 
    â€œYeah…it was a small rock. That’s it.”
    Â 
    â€œWell thanks,” I told her. “That’s fucking great. Thank you so fucking much.”
    Â 
    â€œDon’t yell at me!” she said, before adding quietly “It is Christmas, you know.”
    Â 
    I looked at the clock. Ten after midnight. Well, she was right about something. It was Christmas.I looked out of the window and could see nothing but vast, endless black. Somewhere out there was the moon and the stars and the Pacific Ocean, but from where I was looking I could have been a thousand feet underground. I could hear her, somewhere behind me, starting to nervously clean out the pipe again. It would be less than an hour before she started up again, maybe two before she started bashing herself in the face with my books and sobbing. But for now, for a moment, there was peace on earth.

4
HOMECOMING
    Airports hold a special sense of horror for me. They rank in my top five least favorite places in the world. They are especially awful if seven days ago you kicked heroin cold turkey in a shithole motel called the Deville—you and your junkie wife puking into the toilet, the sink, the shower, watching reruns of The Golden