Los Angeles Stories Read Online Free

someone who will understand.” Finchley unrolled the paper and smoothed it out on the table. It was a photo­graph of three men, taken at a restaurant table. The men were looking straight at the camera. Their faces were flat and bright, like a flashbulb had been used. The picture was old, and the men were wearing clothes from another time.
    I recognized one man. “It’s Mr. John,” I said. “He was my friend, up on the Hill. He’s dead now. But this is him, a long time ago. I know it’s him.”
    â€œYou have the clarinet, and you know this man.”
    â€œBut I don’t know why I have it,” I said. I explained how the widow Clark mistook me for someone else.
    â€œBut you might have been the right man. She was expecting somebody. She blamed them.” I told Finchley about Leo and the shotgun. “We’ll get to that presently,” he said.
    â€œBut what if they’re looking for me now?” I said. “Leo was scared. I’m scared.”
    â€œThat’s good. Danger sharpens up the mind.” The woman came in through the curtain. “The midget was ashking for you. I shaid you’d been here and gone,” she said.
    â€œThat’s fine, Lydia. Have a drink.”
    â€œWell, I don’ mind if I do.” She held out her glass. Finchley poured her a tall one, and she tossed it down in one gulp.
    â€œShammysh rot­gut is the worsht shince canned heat,” she said.
    â€œHave one more,” said Finchley. She took her drink in both hands and went out through the curtain.
    â€œWhat’s that about a midget?” I asked.
    â€œJust a fellow I know. Trouble follows him, he’s like a human lightning rod. A sure sign that something’s up. ” Finchley rubbed his hands with enthusiasm.
    I was beginning to form an opinion of Finchley. Had I fallen in with a madman? I kept hearing Leo, “They’ll wash you into the street.” It wasn’t hard to imagine: The gutter on Spring Street. Sewer pipes. Garbage in the riverbed down by Aliso Flats. “What about the dead man on Utah Street?” I said.
    â€œOmit nothing,” said Finchley. I tried to remember details. The blood caught his attention. “Blood on the walls, delightful! Sprayed, smeared, how was it done? Think, man, think!”
    â€œSmeared, I would say. I didn’t stick around there, I had to find a telephone.”
    â€œSmeared how? Up high? Down low?”
    â€œLow, definitely. It looked a little like letters. Maybe it meant something.”
    â€œClose your eyes. What do you see? You knock. You open the screen door. You look about for someone in the house. Something makes you look down. Is something moving?”
    â€œNo, it’s just feet.”
    â€œDo you smell anything?”
    â€œFrying lard.”
    â€œMusic?”
    â€œA radio. A soap opera. Ma Perkins ?”
    â€œExcellent. Eleven o’clock to eleven fifteen, followed by Our Gal Sunday . You get the idea?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œMy friend, consider. A man is listening to the radio while making lunch, sometime between eleven and eleven fifteen. But by the time you arrive, he’s been murdered, his blood smeared on the wall down by the floor. I suggest he named the killer with his own blood, then crawled into the kitchen and died. What did the blood spell?”
    Then I saw it. “It spelled ‘Book.’ ” Finchley picked up the telephone and dialed.
    â€œHomicide,” he said into the receiver. He waited. Then he said, “They’re putting me through.”
    After what seemed like days and days, a big man in a suit came into the room and sat down at the desk. I was handcuffed to a chair. He shuffled some papers around and looked over at me.
    â€œSo, Mr. St. Claire. Frank St. Claire. I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t waste my time, but there’s too many connections.”
    My mouth was dry and my tongue