The Sleeping and the Dead Read Online Free

American Edward Bond!”
    â€œThank you ever so much for not calling me the American Tom Stoppard.” Cole smiled at me again. “I get that all the time, you know.”
    â€œBut I rather liked Cahoot’s Macbeth ,” I said.
    He snorted and nearly dropped his martini. “Dinner theater!”
    â€œCole’s from Memphis,” Adam continued. “He went to East High School, and now he’s world-famous!”
    â€œMarvelous.” I turned on the Leica and looked at him in the viewscreen.
    Cole leaned against the doorframe, faux casual, posing as though in one of his own plays. “Do you know, I can hardly walk down the street in Paris without a dozen people stopping me, but in Memphis I can’t even get a table at Paulette’s.”
    â€œIt must be tough being you,” I said.
    He shrugged. “Prophets are not without honor, except in their own country.”
    Adam took his notepad out of his pocket. “I had no idea you were in town.”
    â€œI try not to let the press know my whereabouts,” Cole said. He probably called the newspaper from the airport to let them know he had arrived. He took a sip of his martini and looked me up and down once, his eyes lingering momentarily over the camera in my hand; then he turned his moist gaze on Adam. “But I like to come home a couple of times a year just to catch up on the gossip. You’re obviously not here for the party, though I’m sure you’d be welcome.” His eyes never left Adam as he said this. “Are y’all from the newspaper?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œBecause I don’t sign autographs.”
    â€œI’m Detective Sergeant Adam McPeake.” The fanboy vanished, quick as that, and I wondered if he hadn’t been playing it up just to put this supercilious old pouf off his guard. “We’re here to see Mr. Mori.”
    â€œOh my!” Cole drolly exclaimed, one hand quivering over his lips in mock surprise. “A policeman! I had no idea.”
    â€œThis is Jackie Lyons.”
    â€œMichi-san’s little photographer?” His teeth were too perfect, a façade of gleaming white caps behind paper-thin lips. “It seems I’ve heard of you, too.”
    â€œIsn’t it marvelous how famous we all are?” I said.
    â€œDon’t you try to steal my lines.”
    â€œMay we come in?” Adam asked.
    â€œOf course.” Cole stepped back and allowed the door to swing open. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of the police.”
    We entered and Cole closed the door behind us before continuing, “You’ll have to excuse Michi-san. He’s entertaining.” He took another sip of his martini. A hard driving techno-beat thumped through the ceiling. “I’ll see if I can drag him away from his guests. Y’all make yourselves comfortable in the parlor.” He pointed to a small, dark room just off the hall, then sauntered away in none too great a hurry.
    Adam wandered down the hall without removing his shoes. I stripped off my wet jacket and hung it on the hall tree, then kicked my shoes into the corner beside a wet pair of black high-top sneakers. The walls of the entry hall were grotesque, the trim and crown molding carved into phantasmagoric scenes of orgies between men and animals, the antique wallpaper dripping with scarlet and gold foil, every surface swirled and feathered and coraled. What the Romans called horror vacui —the fear of unadorned spaces.
    I found Adam standing thunderstruck just inside the parlor door, staring at a hideous clutter of Victorian furnishings and glass curios. Shelf after shelf lined the walls, Lenox and Baccarat figurines sharing space with glass porpoises and seagulls picked up on the Mississippi Riviera. They seemed chosen with absolutely no sense of taste or even apparent consciousness of value.
    â€œNobody actually lives here, do they?” he