So Nude, So Dead Read Online Free

secret enjoyment inside him, with his mind functioning like a well-tuned machine.
    He liked it then. He went back to it. It wasn’t expensive, and he enjoyed the feeling.
    And then somebody gave him a sniff of the big stuff. He’d dreamt he was swimming under water the first time. And the fish moved silently around him, swishing, swishing. And there were brilliant coral fans and luminescent eyes, and the warm gentle lap of the water.
    That had been cocaine. He had continued snorting it until someone told him the drug would destroy the mucus membranes in his nose. He had seen graphic enough proof, had seen snorters with open sores on their nostrils. He had learned, too, that heroin was easier to get than cocaine. Most addicts were on H, and the demand dictated the supply, and so he had made a heroin buy, and someone had shown him how to cook the deck, how to shoot it into his arm. He had started with simple skin pops until someone else told him that mainlining was the only way.
    From the first snort to the first mainline shot there had been a total of exactly two months. At the end of that time, he was hooked—and unlike most addicts, he was willing to admit he was hooked, even though such an admission was made with revulsion and reluctance. He had hopped on an innocent-looking merry-go-round, and suddenly the carrousel had begun to pick up speed. It was at top speed now, and it would never slow down, never. He needed a shot every four hours, like clockwork, right on the button. Keep that shot from him and his entire system began to scream for it.
    Where did the merry-go-round end? Did it ever run down?
    Maybe it had run down already.
    Maybe it had run down with the body of a blonde singer stretched out on a hotel bed with two slugs in her belly. Maybe—
    “Ray!” The voice was soft, with an undertone of anxiety in it.
    He turned rapidly, took his father by the arms.
    “Dad, Jesus, what kept you?”
    “Let’s go inside,” his father said.
    “Sure, sure.” He held open the door, his lips moving nervously, his teeth rattling. “Did you bring the money, Dad?”
    “Yes, I brought it.”
    “Good, good.” He laughed a quick, forced laugh. “Good.”
    They walked inside, past the bar with the lights streaming through the lined-up bottles, past the phone booths, into the rear of the place, a dimly lit rectangle surrounded by a dozen or so round tables.
    “Sit down, Dad, sit down,” he offered, pulling a chair out.
    He hated himself while he went through the buttering-up routine, but he went through it. He had no choice, he told himself. He had to have money, and he was going to get it.
    They sat down together, and he leaned across the table, staring into his father’s face.
    “How—how much did you bring?”
    “Tell me about the dead girl,” his father said. He was a small man with an aquiline nose and soft brown eyes. The eyes were moist and deep now, spaniel-like, and Ray felt again the deep guilt for having complicated his father’s simple, easy life. His father—
    “The girl?” Ray snapped himself back to the scene in the hotel room. “She’s dead, Dad. I left her in the room.”
    “How much did you steal from her?”
    “What?”
    “I said—”
    “I heard you! I heard you, all right.” Sudden indignation flooded over Ray. “Are you crazy or something?”
    “I knew it would come to this, Ray.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His hands were trembling again, more violently this time. He tried to calm himself. He couldn’t blame his father for jumping to conclusions. “I know what, you’re thinking, Dad, but it isn’t the goods. Look, look, I haven’t got time to talk. I—I need a shot. I need it real bad.”
    “Is that why you wanted the money?”
    “Yes.”
    Ray watched his father’s face, and he knew something of the struggle that was going on within the older man.
    “I can’t give you money for that stuff, Ray. I can’t. I’d feel like a murderer.”
    “I