The Last Good Day Read Online Free Page A
Harold’s eyes quickly found a light surgical scar on the underside of a breast. But Paco was pointing out another small white line in the flesh, this one low on the left buttock, a mark the size of half a matchstick.
“What is that?” asked Harold.
“Maybe she sat on a nail or something when she was a kid,” Mike said in an unsteady voice as he crouched down to get a better look.
“No, man”—Paco dropped the sheet in disgust—“that’s liposuction.”
“What?” said Harold.
He was aware of Mike becoming very still, staring down so intently that the chief could almost hear the liquid dab of his blink.
“She had her fat sucked.” Paco lifted the sheet again so they could see for themselves. “And that ain’t cheap, bro. That operation costs about three thousand dollars. I’m thinking this lady wasn’t broke, and I’m thinking maybe she was from around here.”
3
THERE . SHE TOOK the shot and moved back into the doorway again like a sniper. You rarely saw grown men looking that scared in broad daylight.
She quickly changed her angle, worried that she was about to lose this moment. Something about the way the sun broke over the old warehouses and abandoned factories on Evergreen Avenue turned the clouds into light boxes and made the men down the street look dwarfed and vulnerable, like shadowy figures in a nineteenth-century daguerreotype. She ducked behind a Dumpster and changed to a shorter telephoto lens, reeling off a couple more quick shots from thirty yards away, making sure she was at least covered in case they didn’t want their pictures taken today.
It had been such a struggle to get here in time for the morning shape-up, when eighty or ninety men from Mexico and Guatemala gathered in front of the Starbucks around the corner from the train station and waited for contractors to drive by and offer them work. She’d had to get up early, fix breakfast for the kids, make sure her equipment was ready, drive Barry to the station because the other car was still in the shop, drop Hannah and Clay off at school, sign up for the book drive and karate classes, make appointments for parent-teacher conferences, call the Dryer Man and Tree Guy again, and then race back here to find a place to park before the crowd dispersed.
A blue-and-white Chevy Suburban cruised by slowly, the contractor behind the wheel looking saturnine and jowly, a surly lump of a man with rolls of fat on his neck and a tiny stump of cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth. He could’ve been a corrupt Eastern bloc bureaucrat or the owner of a carnival with dangerous rides. Yet the laborers came rushing at him as if they were bobby-soxers and he was Frank Sinatra in the trim glory of youth. And for a few seconds, she was no longer Lynn Schulman, loving wife and mother of two children. She was all hand and eye. She shot and advanced, shot and advanced, as the men surrounded the van in their Gap T-shirts, Spackle-covered 501 jeans, and dusty Timberlands. She adjusted the f-stop, making sure she had the Starbucks sign and the flag in the window framed behind them. In their rising voices, she could hear that there was no longer enough work to go around. Friends and relatives—men who’d dragged one another barely alive across the Arizona border—were elbowing and shoving one another out of the way for the right to build a stone wall around some investment banker’s McMansion up in the hills.
She found a milk crate to stand on as two muscular guys jumped in the back of the van, leaving their unemployed friends behind on the sidewalk. She clicked away, capturing the half-open mouths, the raised hands, and the hope getting extinguished in their eyes.
A powerfully built little guy with the face of an Aztec warrior and the haircut of a Beatle fan turned to a taller dejected friend, a frayed rope of a man in a straw cowboy hat and a ragged plaid shirt. The little guy grabbed the cowboy’s stringy arm and patted his muscle, as if
“What is that?” asked Harold.
“Maybe she sat on a nail or something when she was a kid,” Mike said in an unsteady voice as he crouched down to get a better look.
“No, man”—Paco dropped the sheet in disgust—“that’s liposuction.”
“What?” said Harold.
He was aware of Mike becoming very still, staring down so intently that the chief could almost hear the liquid dab of his blink.
“She had her fat sucked.” Paco lifted the sheet again so they could see for themselves. “And that ain’t cheap, bro. That operation costs about three thousand dollars. I’m thinking this lady wasn’t broke, and I’m thinking maybe she was from around here.”
3
THERE . SHE TOOK the shot and moved back into the doorway again like a sniper. You rarely saw grown men looking that scared in broad daylight.
She quickly changed her angle, worried that she was about to lose this moment. Something about the way the sun broke over the old warehouses and abandoned factories on Evergreen Avenue turned the clouds into light boxes and made the men down the street look dwarfed and vulnerable, like shadowy figures in a nineteenth-century daguerreotype. She ducked behind a Dumpster and changed to a shorter telephoto lens, reeling off a couple more quick shots from thirty yards away, making sure she was at least covered in case they didn’t want their pictures taken today.
It had been such a struggle to get here in time for the morning shape-up, when eighty or ninety men from Mexico and Guatemala gathered in front of the Starbucks around the corner from the train station and waited for contractors to drive by and offer them work. She’d had to get up early, fix breakfast for the kids, make sure her equipment was ready, drive Barry to the station because the other car was still in the shop, drop Hannah and Clay off at school, sign up for the book drive and karate classes, make appointments for parent-teacher conferences, call the Dryer Man and Tree Guy again, and then race back here to find a place to park before the crowd dispersed.
A blue-and-white Chevy Suburban cruised by slowly, the contractor behind the wheel looking saturnine and jowly, a surly lump of a man with rolls of fat on his neck and a tiny stump of cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth. He could’ve been a corrupt Eastern bloc bureaucrat or the owner of a carnival with dangerous rides. Yet the laborers came rushing at him as if they were bobby-soxers and he was Frank Sinatra in the trim glory of youth. And for a few seconds, she was no longer Lynn Schulman, loving wife and mother of two children. She was all hand and eye. She shot and advanced, shot and advanced, as the men surrounded the van in their Gap T-shirts, Spackle-covered 501 jeans, and dusty Timberlands. She adjusted the f-stop, making sure she had the Starbucks sign and the flag in the window framed behind them. In their rising voices, she could hear that there was no longer enough work to go around. Friends and relatives—men who’d dragged one another barely alive across the Arizona border—were elbowing and shoving one another out of the way for the right to build a stone wall around some investment banker’s McMansion up in the hills.
She found a milk crate to stand on as two muscular guys jumped in the back of the van, leaving their unemployed friends behind on the sidewalk. She clicked away, capturing the half-open mouths, the raised hands, and the hope getting extinguished in their eyes.
A powerfully built little guy with the face of an Aztec warrior and the haircut of a Beatle fan turned to a taller dejected friend, a frayed rope of a man in a straw cowboy hat and a ragged plaid shirt. The little guy grabbed the cowboy’s stringy arm and patted his muscle, as if
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