Dark Men Read Online Free Page A

passed over. Bo joined a private security firm, the kind that requires short-sleeve blue uniforms and patches with names on them. He was content to punch the clock and collect his sixty-five a year, though he did it with a scowl on his face. His first couple of years he spent on a bench at an airport warehouse. The last three, he held down an Aero chair behind a security console in Archibald Grant’s building.
    We didn’t have to knock on his door; Bo eats breakfast each morning at a place called Willard’s Diner, occupying a booth near the front where he can spread out his newspaper. He looks up for a moment when Risina walks by, and follows her with his eyes until she passes. I want her to hear my conversation with the security guard, but I make a mental note that I’m going to have to talk to her about her appearance. In a business where invisibility is a weapon, I can’t afford to have Risina turning heads by simply walking into the room.
    I give Bo a few minutes to settle into the sports page and then slide into the booth opposite him. He starts, unused to having his territory invaded, and that’s a good place to put him: uncomfortable, on defense before he even knows he’s entered the arena.
    “This is my booth, guy,” he says when I just stare at him. He has a flat Midwestern accent, and his voice comes out a little pinched, like air escaping a punctured tire.
    “I know it’s your booth, Bo. It’s your booth every goddamned morning.”
    “Do we know each other?” He’s somewhere between puzzled and pissed. For a big guy, that voice is high, and does his tough guy stance a disservice. I wonder if it cut into his effectiveness as a cop. I wonder if he’s been battling it his whole life.
    “You don’t know me, but I know you.”
    “Listen, if this—”
    “Shut up, Bo. Shut up and use your ears. You’re going to have the opportunity to open your mouth again, and when you do, I want it to be to tell the truth.”
    “I don’t—”
    “Who paid you to look the other way on March 25th?”
    He blinks once, twice, swallowing hard. He’s a headline in large type, as easy to read as the newspaper in front of him. “I don’t—”
    “I’m going to describe your sister’s house to you, Bo. It’s on Wilmette Avenue, about thirty minutes from here, a white clapboard two-story number with a green mailbox out front. Your nephew, Mike, occupies the bedroom in the upper right corner and your niece, Kate, right? She sleeps in the lower left below a pink Hannah Montana poster. Your sister, Laura, she’s been living alone now for what? Two years?”
    Bo’s face turns bright red, like a brake light. His voice rattles now. “I don’t know who you think you are—”
    I cut him off. “I’ll tell you. I think I’m the guy who will kill your sister, your niece, and your nephew in the next hour if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know. And when I get done killing them, I’ll head to your parents’ house in Glen Ellyn. The brick number set back from the street with the two-door garage? Eventually I’ll come back for you, Bo.”
    He starts to open his mouth, but I’m quicker. “I know you were a cop. I know you still have friends on the force. But I’m going to tell you as directly as you’ll ever hear anything in your life: you and your friends have never dealt with someone like me. There’s already a file on your family that will read ‘unsolved homicide’ if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know.”
    He lowers his eyes, and I’ve got him. I growl through clenched teeth, “Who paid you to look the other way?”
    For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just pushes waffle crumbs around the table. Then, so softly I almost don’t hear him, “Not look the other way . . .”
    “Speak up.”
    “Not look the other way. He paid me to leave. To get up and head out. Said he’d only need an hour. Gave me two thousand bucks. I didn’t know what he was up to, I swear.”
    “What’d