Treasure Hunt Read Online Free

through the press, Mickey got back next to him and put a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder, gathering him in a half hug. He kissed him on the top of his cue-ball head. “Hey.”
    Jim leaned into him for a second, then pulled away, grabbed the bar napkin, and wiped at his eyes. “How’d you get here so fast?”
    “I ignored the speed limit. And I’m double-parked. You think you can walk?”
    “ ’Course. I could walk home if I needed to.”
    “Well, luckily you don’t need to. You paid up here?”
    “Paid as I went. Only way to live.”
    “So I’ve heard. Like a million times. Okay. Let’s go.”
    The old man got his feet onto the floor and straightened up, leaning into Mickey. The bartender saw what was happening and gave Mickey an approving nod. He mouthed a silent thank-you.
    Parr managed to keep upright as the two of them negotiated their way out of the bar and out onto the sidewalk. It was still a clear, warm day, and the sun was in their eyes as they made their way to the car. After Mickey poured Parr into the front seat, he went around and got in.
    “This about Dominic Como?” he asked.
    His grandfather, head back against the seat with his eyes closed, turned toward Mickey and another tear broke. “I loved that guy,” he said.
     
     
    Mickey facilitated his parking around the city by the judicious use of a handicap placard that he kept in his glove compartment and that he could put onto his dashboard whenever he needed it. His grandfather had given him this surprisingly valuable little blue item. In theory, only handicapped individuals had access to them, and there was nothing handicapped about Jim Parr.
    And there had been nothing handicapped about Dominic Como, either, for that matter.
    But Como nevertheless had always possessed a handicapped card for those special occasions when nothing else would do. When Parr had retired eight years ago, Como gave him one as a present. Como could get things that other people didn’t seem to have access to. It had been one of his talents, and access to those things was one of the perks of Parr’s old job.
    So parking wasn’t its usual awful and automatic hassle. Today Mickey pulled up into a spot by the emergency entrance to the UC Medical Center, only a couple of blocks from their apartment. By this time, Jim was snoring.
    Fifteen minutes later, the old man was in his bed, still dressed except for his shoes, and with the covers pulled up around him. Mickey closed the bedroom door and, sweating from having basically carried Jim up to the second floor where they lived, he took a dispirited glance around the cluttered living room: Tamara’s Murphy bed pulled down from the wall and unmade. Newspapers from several days scattered around. Coffee mugs on just about every flat surface.
    He straightened up, and when he’d finished, he opened the door to his own bedroom, essentially a large closet with a window facing the wall of the apartment behind them. Here was his bed, a board-and-cinder-block bookcase, a small dresser/desk combo unit, a few prints on the walls.
    But he didn’t go into his room. Dead in his tracks, he stopped in its doorway. No wonder he fled from this place as often as he could.
    This was no way to live.
     
     
    The death of Dominic Como, now confirmed as a murder, led off the five o’clock news. The cause, as Mickey had suspected, was not drowning, but rather someone had hit him with a blunt object on the back of the head. Como had already been missing for four days by the time he was found partially submerged in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts by . . .
    Mickey, sitting in front of his television, came forward in mild shock as his own image appeared on the screen as part of the big story of the day. He had talked to several reporters that morning at the scene, of course, but never really believed that they’d run with any of the footage of him, since his own role in the larger story was at best only a footnote. But there he was on TV,