and you might luck into a hot date at the Corral. Get your first squirt on the Tower of Power. So that buzzes him bigtime and he goes, If you’re going to get personal about this . . .”
Anyway, if the old cop wants to follow the computer trail, he’ll have to turn the letter over to the cops in the technical section, and Brady doesn’t think he’ll do that. Not right away, at least. He’s got to be bored sitting there with nothing but the TV for company. And the revolver, of course, the one he keeps beside him with his beer and magazines. Can’t forget the revolver. Brady has never seen him actually stick it in his mouth, but several times he’s seen him holding it. Shiny happy people don’t hold guns in their laps that way.
“So I tell him, I go, Don’t get mad. Somebody pushes back against your precious ideas, you guys always get mad. Have you noticed that about the Christers?”
He hasn’t but says he has.
“Only this one listened. He actually did. And we ended up going down to Hosseni’s Bakery and having coffee. Where, I know this is hard to believe, we actually did have something approaching a dialogue. I don’t hold out much hope for the human race, but every now and then . . .”
Brady is pretty sure his letter will pep the old cop up, at least to start with. He didn’t get all those citations for being stupid, and he’ll see right through the veiled suggestion that he commit suicide the way Mrs. Trelawney did. Veiled? Not very. It’s pretty much right out front. Brady believes the old cop will go all gung ho, at least for awhile. But when he fails to get anywhere, it will make the fall even more jarring. Then, assuming the old cop takes the Blue Umbrella bait, Brady can really go to work.
The old cop is thinking, If I can get you talking, I can goad you.
Only Brady is betting the old cop never read Nietzsche; Brady’s betting the old cop is more of a John Grisham man. If he reads at all. When you gaze into the abyss, Nietzsche wrote, the abyss also gazes into you.
I am the abyss, old boy. Me.
The old cop is certainly a bigger challenge than poor guilt-ridden Olivia Trelawney . . . but getting to her was such a hot hit to the nervous system that Brady can’t help wanting to try it again. In some ways prodding Sweet Livvy into high-siding it was a bigger thrill than cutting a bloody swath through that pack of job-hunting assholes at City Center. Because it took brains. It took dedication. It took planning. And a little bit of help from the cops didn’t hurt, either. Did they guess their faulty deductions were partly to blame for Sweet Livvy’s suicide? Probably not Huntley, such a possibility would never cross his plodder’s mind. Ah, but Hodges. He might have his doubts. A few little mice nibbling at the wires back there in his smart-cop brain. Brady hopes so. If not, he may get a chance to tell him. On the Blue Umbrella.
Mostly, though, it was him. Brady Hartsfield. Credit where credit is due. City Center was a sledgehammer. On Olivia Trelawney, he used a scalpel.
“Are you listening to me?” Freddi asks.
He smiles. “Guess I drifted away there for a minute.”
Never tell a lie when you can tell the truth. The truth isn’t always the safest course, but mostly it is. He wonders idly what she’d say if he told her, Freddi, I am the Mercedes Killer. Or if he said, Freddi, there are nine pounds of homemade plastic explosive in my basement closet.
She is looking at him as if she can read these thoughts, and Brady has a moment of unease. Then she says, “It’s working two jobs, pal. That’ll wear you down.”
“Yes, but I’d like to get back to college, and nobody’s going to pay for it but me. Also there’s my mother.”
“The wino.”
He smiles. “My mother is actually more of a vodka-o.”
“Invite me over,” Freddi says grimly. “I’ll drag her to a fucking AA meeting.”
“Wouldn’t work. You know what Dorothy Parker said, right? You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”
Freddi considers this for a moment, then throws back her head and voices a Marlboro-raspy laugh. “I don’t know who Dorothy Parker is, but I’m gonna save that one.” She sobers. “Seriously, why don’t you