Off the Edge (The Associates) Read Online Free Page A

knee-highs like those had been designed for wearing under 1970s pants suits. You rarely saw them anymore what with today’s fashions, but such out-of-date garments were still available in Bangkok. This woman was wearing them wrong, like socks. The effect was dirty and delicious.
    Macmillan couldn’t take his eyes off her.
    He wished she would pull off her hat so he could see her face. And good God, he wanted to hear her speak. Her tone. Her words.
    Macmillan could feel Rio’s eyes on him. He needed to stop staring at the singer. He tore his gaze away and focused on Thorne, who stood up and moved to where the Finns sat. He fought to find something intelligent to say. “Tenacious, painful, annoyingly indestructible. Have to admire a man who lives up to his name.”
    “Thorne?” Rio asked.
    Macmillan nodded. It wasn’t like him to get distracted. He’d been feeling a little feverish in the last day or two, maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the hat, hiding her identity.
    “I would love to hear Thorne speak,” he continued. “Thorne could be Jazzman. Or the Finns. Or Valdez. That whole table is suspect. What I wouldn’t give to be that potted palm.”
    The potted palm stood at the intersection of four tables of arms dealers. They wouldn’t be saying anything sensitive out there, but Macmillan didn’t care. A rambling conversation about the weather would work for his purposes.
    “If we could get a listening device in that potted palm—”
    “Wouldn’t work,” Rio said. “The dealers cluster in different areas every night. And these minimalist tables. Candles and drinks.” Nowhere to hide a microphone, he meant. Putting it underneath would be ineffective in this din.
    “We should have tech look all the same.”
    Up on the stage, a boy brought the singer a guitar. She hooked the strap around her neck and tuned a string or two, then strummed a chord. “How’s it goin’ out there?”
    Macmillan straightened. Rio had thought her unmemorable? Walking wallpaper?
    Nobody answered, but she kept on. “I’m pretty goddamn happy to be here tonight, singing for y’all,” she said.
    The accent. Florida, or maybe lower Alabama, Macmillan thought.
    Again she smiled. “Now my mama always said, Laney, you want to have a friend, you gotta be a friend. And my mama was one of the best friends I ever had, I’ll tell you that right off. A little bit crazy maybe…” She tuned a string, strummed. “But a girl’ll forgive her mama a whole lot of things if she’s just doin’ her best.”
    With that she began to sing in a breathy, husky voice. You could barely call it singing, though there was a certain cadence to it.
    The lyrics were unusual; hardly lyrics at all, really, more a list of commonplace things. But as he listened on, it came to him that this was a list of things lost. Lost forever.
    Macmillan’s throat began to feel thick as he dug into the song. It was relentless, the way she piled up the details. Out-of-ink pens in the kitchen junk drawer. An inside joke. The phone-answering voice of somebody long gone.
    He swallowed, chest full of ragged energy.
    Stop.
    Was it possible his fever was worse than he thought? That sometimes happened in the tropics.
    “What?” Rio’s whisper was like a shotgun in the torchlight.
    Macmillan shook his head. “Nothing.” He had to pull himself together. Quickly he set to analyzing the song, breaking it into manageable parts. The objects on the list: commonplace enough to evoke the universal, but specific enough to feel real. Style: folksy, even a bit alternative. Basic singer-songwriter stuff. Yes, she was a decent songwriter. Clever, that was all.
    He took a deep breath. Analyzing her did the trick. He was feeling much more under control.
    She was clever with words, and he had a fever. Case closed.
    “What is it?” Rio asked, scanning the audience. He’d thought Macmillan had seen trouble.
    Macmillan waved his hand at the stage. “Please. Couldn’t Jazzman have picked a