Three Days to Never Read Online Free Page A

old woman’s crystals and copper bells and paintings of unicorns and eyes in pyramids and sleepy-looking bearded guys wearing robes.
    â€œWe’ll want to inventory it all, get an appraiser,” Bennett went on. “She was a collector, and she might have happened to pick up some valuable items, amid all the crap. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
    Daphne could feel that the mention of broken clocks, in this house, jarred her father. There were a lot of things she wanted to remember to ask him about, once they were in their truck again.

Two
    O utside the vibrating windowpane, the narrow trunks of palm trees swayed in the hard sun glare over the glittering traffic on La Brea Avenue. This was south of Olympic, south of the dressy stores around Melrose with black or green awnings out front, and way south of Charlie Chaplin’s old studio up at Sunset where you could see the individual houses on the green Hollywood hills; down here it was car washes and Chinese fast food and one-hour photo booths and old apartment buildings, like this one, with fenced-in front lawns. The apartment was stuffy, and reeked of coffee and cigarette smoke.
    Oren Lepidopt had crushed out his latest cigarette in the coffee cup on the blocky living room table, and he held the telephone receiver tight to his ear. Answer the page, he thought. It’s a land line, obviously it’s something I don’t want broadcast.
    The only sound in the apartment aside from the faintmusic at the window was the soft rattle of keystrokes on an electronic keyboard in the kitchen.
    At last Malk’s voice came on the line—“Hello?”—and Lepidopt leaned back against the couch cushions.
    â€œBert,” he said. “It’s daylight here.”
    There was a pause, then Malk said, “I thought it was daylight here too.”
    â€œWell I think it’s…brighter, here. Now. We got another installment from the ether. I think more is going on here than where you were going.”
    â€œI probably can’t get a refund on the ticket.”
    â€œScrew the ticket. You need to hear Sam’s new tape.”
    â€œAla bab Allah,” sighed Malk.
    Lepidopt laughed at the ironic use of the Arabic phrase—it meant, more or less, “What will be will be.” “So get back here now. Full APAM dry-cleaning while you’re driving too—stops and double backs, watch for multiple cars, and if you can even see a helicopter, drive on by and lose the car.”
    â€œOkay. Don’t start the John Wayne stuff till I get there.”
    Lepidopt’s elbows jerked in against his ribs in a sudden shudder.
    The line went dead, and Lepidopt’s face was cold as he replaced the receiver in its cradle.
    Don’t start the John Wayne stuff till I get there. Bert, Bert, he thought, so carelessly and unknowingly you shorten my life! Or show me a new, even closer boundary of it, anyway.
    He made himself take a deep breath and then let it out.
    The faint clicking of the keyboard had stopped. “You were laughing,” said young Ernie Bozzaris from the table in the kitchen, “and then you look as if you saw a demon. What did he say?”
    Lepidopt waved his left hand in a dismissive gesture. “I shouldn’t have borscht for lunch,” he said gruffly. “He’s coming back here, not getting on the plane. Should be here in half an hour or less.” Suddenly self-conscious, he slid his maimed right hand into his pocket.
    Bozzaris stared at him for another moment, thenshrugged and returned his attention to his computer monitor. He was in his late twenties, fresh from the Midrasha academy; there was no gray in his black hair yet, and though he shaved several times a day, his lean jaw always seemed to be dark. “It’s not the borscht,” he said absently, “it’s the Tabasco you pour into it.”
    With his left hand Lepidopt shook out another Camel from the pack,