Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) Read Online Free Page A

call. So, did he
get tired of waiting and decide to look you up himself?
    In a manner of speaking.
    Say again?
    See you later, Will.
    The beauty of America's trolley system is that a man could
go all the way from New York City to Boston just by changing cars once you got to the end of town and one line ended
where another picked up. So the time it took me to run the
ten miles to where the line started in Middle Grove was longer than it took to travel the remaining forty miles to Albany
and cost me no more than half the coins in my pocket.
    I hadn't bothered to go back home to change into the
slightly better clothes I had. My nondescript well-worn apparel was just fine for what I had in mind. No one ever notices
laborers. The white painter's cap, the brush, and the can of
Putnam's bone-white that I borrowed from the hand truck in
front of the building were all I needed to amble in unimpeded
and take the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

    The name on the door matched the moniker on the
card-just as fancy and in big gold letters, even bigger than
the word INVESTMENTS below it. I turned the knob and
pushed the door open with my shoulder, backed in diffidently,
holding my paint can and brush as proof of identity and motive. Nobody said anything, and when I turned to look I saw
that the receptionist's desk was empty as I'd hoped. Five
o'clock. Quitting time. But the door was unlocked, the light
still on in the boss's office.
    I took off the cap, put down the paint can and brush, and
stepped through the door.
    He was standing by the window, looking down toward the
street below.
    Put it on my desk, he said.
    Whatever it is, I don't have it, I replied.
    He turned around faster than I had expected. But whatever he had in mind left him when I pulled my right hand out
of my shirt and showed him the bone-handled skinning knife
I'd just pulled from the sheath under my left arm. He froze.
    You? he said.
    Only one word, but it was as good as an entire book. No
doubt about it now. My Helper felt like a burning coal.
    Me, I agreed.
    Where? he asked. I had to hand it to him. He was really
good at one-word questions that spoke volumes.
    You mean Mutt and Jeff? They're not coming. They got
tied up elsewhere.
    You should be dead.
    Disappointing. Now that he was speaking in longer sentences he was telling me things I already knew, though he
was still talking about himself when I gave his words a second
thought.

    You'd think with the current state of the market, I observed, that you would have left the Bull at the start of your
name, Mr. Weathers. Then you might have given your investors some confidence.
    My second attempt at humorous banter fell as flat as the
first. No response other than opening his mouth a little wider.
Time to get serious
    I'm not going to kill you here, I said. Even though you
deserve it for what you and your family did back then. How
old were you? Eighteen, right? But you took part just as much
as they did. A coward too. You just watched without trying to
save them from me? Where were you?
    Up on the hill, he said. His lips tight. There was sweat on
his forehead now.
    So, aside from investments, what have you been doing
since then? Keeping up the family hobbies?
    I looked over at the safe against the wall. You have a souvenir or two in there? No, don't open it to show me. People
keep guns in safes. Sit. Not at the desk. Right there on the
windowsill.
    What are you going to do?
    Deliver you to the police. I took a pad and a pen off the
desk. Along with a confession. Write it now, starting with
what you and your family did at your farm and including anyone else you've hurt since then.
    There was an almost eager look on his weaselly face as
he took the paper and pen from my hands. That look grew
calmer and more superior as he wrote. Clearly, he knew he
was a being of a different order than common humans. As far
above us as those self-centered scientists say modern men are
above the