Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time Read Online Free Page B

work he don’t wanna touch himself, that either means he’s damn lazy or he’s lying ’bout what kinda job you’re gonna end up doin’ fo’ him. Just remember: man needs money, but he also needs to be able to sleep at night once he’s earned it. You be sure you can do that, Joseph, just be sure.”
    It was the kind of good advice I knew was worth taking, but sometimes, the advice from those who love us dearly is also the most difficult to accept. And in not heeding their words of warning and making those fateful mistakes, our fall from grace in their eyes is so much harder to bear.
    Today I was again about to ignore the words of the wise. My own previous fall from grace, which until now had been a well-kept secret, was to return to haunt me as I looked into the eyes of my elderly relation. It was a darkly clandestine past that my uncle and I never spoke of.

3
    I didn’t speak of the missing girl or my involvement with Earl Linney to Gabe and Pearl again while we sat finishing our coffees. I felt I’d disturbed the calm of their Sunday morning with my talk of Stella Hopkins and the up-front easy money Linney had paid me to find her.
    Gabe saw the world and those who lived in it simply. You were either good or bad, and I got the feeling he thought that the Jamaican politician didn’t fit into either of those categories. Gabe had said his piece and in doing so had heightened my distrust of Earl Linney’s motives and made me question whether he’d been straight with me.
    I’d promised Pearl that I’d drop by on Wednesday evening, her invite to supper too good to miss. I thanked her for breakfast, grabbed my coat and hat, and kissed her cheek before turning to Gabe, who had returned to reading his newspaper. He’d just lit up a cigar and was drawing on it before blowing out plumes of grey smoke around the kitchen. I could tell he wasn’t happy about my involvement with the alderman and the flash up-front cash he’d handed over. He sat with a face like an angry old goat that was ready to butt his way out of a farmyard pen. I approached my curmudgeonly relation cautiously before speaking.
    “Hey Gabe, you have any idea where Vic is?”
    “That boy was up with the lark, said he was going to meet Carnell Harris at Perry’s gym down on Grosvenor Street, they shifting someting or other down there.”
    He sucked some more on his stogie and shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, aggressively shaking the opened pages of his newspaper out in front of him in frustration at my continuing probing as to the whereabouts of his nefariously felonious child.
    “So you ain’t expecting him back any time soon?” The overeagerness of my questioning had started to provoke my uncle to become suspicious of my motives in wanting to meet up with his son. Gabe was guarded in his reply and was in his own way protecting me as much as he was his own boy. The old man knew that when Vic and I got together we had a habit of finding trouble for ourselves.
    “Vic makes up the rules as he goes along. He could be back tonight or it could be tomorrow night. Vic’s never lived by God’s time.” Gabe shook his head at me, a look of weary resignation on his face as he considered for a moment what criminal activity his wayward offspring may be up to.
    He knew Vic was as cunning as a fox, handy with his fists and could take care of himself, and yet he worried constantly for his child’s well-being. He was the kind of father I wished I’d had, and after my own old man’s untimely death he’d done his very best for me. The thought of worrying about both Vic and myself was clearly a great strain upon my uncle and it showed in his manner. He deserved better from the two of us, and a wave of shame crashed over me, dragging at my heart like a lead weight.
    “OK, thanks, both. I’m going to try and catch up with Vic at Perry’s.”
    I could see that Gabe was getting increasingly agitated. I’d spooked him by bringing into his home the prospect of