La Brava (1983) Read Online Free

seen an eagle."
    The rigid man said, "Did it have hair?"
    "The one I saw had feathers."
    The rigid man said, "Oh." He looked at Pam now. "You ever see an eagle?"
    Pam said, "Excuse me, Walter, but I have to finish with Earl first. Okay? Be nice." She glanced down at a clipboard. "Earl, if I call this person Eileen, will she come and get you?"
    "She don't keep up her house," the drunk said. "You go in the kitchen... I tell her, Jesus Christ, get some wash powder. I can't live in a place like that."
    Pam looked up at LaBrava in the doorway. "Sit down. Make yourself at home."
    He took the end seat, two metal chairs away from the drunk hunched over his crossed legs, the drunk staring, trying to focus, saying, "Do I know you?"
    "I don't know," LaBrava said, "we might've met one time. How you doing?"
    "See, I don't want to go to court drunk. I don't want to go in there, maybe get sick."
    Pam said, "Earl, I told you, there no charges against you." She said, "You ever drink anything like aftershave?"
    "No, not ever. Just some home brew, some wine. Eileen, if I'm staying over there, she fixes these toddies are nice. Bourbon and ice cubes, you sprinkle some sugar on top. 'bout a teaspoonful's all..."
    A scream came from a room close by, a wail of obscenities that rose and died off, and LaBrava looked at Pam, expecting her to get up.
    "It's okay. One of our consumers," Pam said. "She's catharting, sort of working it out on her own. But there's someone with her, don't worry."
    "Consumer," LaBrava said.
    The girl had a nice smile, very natural; she seemed too young and vulnerable to be working here. Psych major no more than a year out of college. "That's what we call the people we screen. They're not, you know, patients technically till they're admitted somewhere. This's just a temporary stop more or less."
    The drunk said, "Then I'm leaving." He got up, stumbling against the rigid man, pushed off and tilted toward the girl lying on the mattress before finding his balance. He reached the back door and began working at the locks.
    Pam said, "Come on, Earl, sit down and be good. You have to stay here till you've sobered up and you're a little more appropriate."
    Earl turned from the door, falling against it. "More 'propriate? Shit, I'm 'propriate."
    "You are not," Pam said, a young schoolteacher at her desk. "Please sit down so we can finish."
    The drunk fell against the chairs, almost into the rigid man whose hands remained flat on his thighs. The girl with sores on her legs moaned and rolled from her side to her back, eyes lightly closed, lids fluttering in the overhead light.
    LaBrava was looking at her and Pam said, "She's Haitian. She got stoned and walked out on the Interstate. A car had to swerve out of the way and hit another car and one of the drivers, I don't know which one, had to have twenty stitches in his head."
    The drunk said, "Shit, I was at Louisville Veterans, they put sixty-four stitches in my leg. Boy jammed a bottle, broke it off, jammed the end of it in my leg. See? Right there. Sixty-four stitches. Doc said he stopped counting."
    "It's a beauty," LaBrava said. "Cut you good, didn't he?" He saw the drunk look up.
    LaBrava turned. Maurice was standing over him.
    "Get the camera."
    LaBrava kept his voice down. "You sure you want to? Maybe they won't like it."
    Maurice said to the girl, "Sweetheart, would you do something for my friend here? Unlock the door? He's got to get a camera outta the car."
    Pam let him out the back telling him to knock and she'd open it again.
    What Maurice wanted to do--LaBrava was sure now--was take a picture of his friend smashed, bleary-eyed, then show it to her tomorrow. "See what a beauty you are when you're drunk?" Shame her into sobriety. But if the woman had a problem with booze it would be a waste of time. He wouldn't mind, though, getting a shot of Earl. Earl showing his scar. Shoot it from down on the floor. The guy's leg crossed, pants pulled up, shin in the foreground, shiny