Read Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) for Free Online Page B

my
shoulders. “Besides, it’s open twenty-four hours.”
    Sanchez shook his head.
     
     
     
    12.
     
     
    He was watching me knowingly with those
nondescript eyes. Nondescript only in color, that is. Everything
else about them was, well, very non-nondescript.
    He knows what you’re thinking.
    The words flashed across my mind, along with
the popular Christmas tune, and a chill went through me.
    I was having another Big Mac. Or three. He
was drinking another coffee. Lukewarm and black. Just like I like
my women. Kidding.
    “So have you told anyone about me?” he
asked.
    “That I speak to God in a McDonald’s?”
    “Yes.”
    “Everyone I know. Hell, even people I don’t
know. In fact, I just told the sixteen-year-old gal working behind
the counter that I was meeting with God in a few minutes and could
she hurry.”
    “And what did she say?”
    “Said she was going to call the cops.”
    Jack shook his head and sipped some more of
his coffee. I noticed he still had the same streaks of dirt along
his forehead.
    “So your answer is no,” he said.
    “Of course it’s no, and if you were God you
would know that.”
    He said nothing; I said nothing. A very old
man had sat in a booth next to us. The old man smiled at Jack, and
Jack smiled back. The man leaned over and spoke to us.
    “I’m coming home soon,” he said.
    “Yes,” said Jack. “You are.”
    “I’m ready,” said the old man, and sat back
in his seat and proceeded to consume a gooey cinnamon roll.
    “What was that about?” I asked Jack, not
bothering to lower my voice. Hell, the man was as old as the hills,
no way he could overhear us.
    “He’s going to die tonight,” said Jack,
rather nonchalantly, I thought.
    “Well,” I said after a moment, “his heart
could only take so many cinnamon rolls.”
    Jack looked at me and sipped his coffee
carefully, cradling the paper cup in both hands. He said
nothing.
    “Why do you drink with both hands?” I finally
asked.
    “I enjoy the feel of the warm cup.”
    “And why do you look at me so closely?”
    “I enjoy soaking in the details of a
moment.”
    We had gone over this before.
    “Live in the moment,” I repeated. “And all
that other bullshit.”
    “Yes,” he said. “And all that other
bullshit.”
    “There is no past and there is no future,” I
continued, on a holy roll.
    “Exactly.”
    “Only the moment,” I said.
    “You’re getting it, Jim. Good.”
    “No, I’m not, actually. You see, Jack, I know
for a fact that there is a past because a young girl got
slaughtered outside her house. In the past.”
    “You have taken a personal interest in the
case, I see.”
    “And now someone has killed themselves. A
coach at the same high school—but, of course, you know all of
this.”
    Jack sat unmovingly, watching me closely.
    “I saw his brains on the wall and I saw the
hole in his head,” I continued. “Damn straight this case has gotten
personal.”
    We were silent. I could hear myself
breathing, my breath running ragged in my throat. I had gotten
worked up.
    “You know, it’s damn hard having a
conversation with someone who claims to know everything,” I said,
concluding.
    “I never claimed to know everything. You
assume I know everything.”
    “Well, do you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, fuck me. There you go.”
    “But you’re forgetting something,” said Jack
patiently. He was always patient, whoever the hell he was.
    “No,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”
    “Yes,” he said, telling me anyway. “You, too,
know everything.”
    We had gone over this before, dozens of
times.
    “The answers are always within you,” he
said.
    “Would have been nice to know during algebra
tests.”
    “You knew the answers then, just as you know
them now.”
    “Bullshit.”
    He smiled serenely.
    “If you say so,” he said.
    “Fine,” I said, “So how is it that I know
everything, when, in fact, I don’t feel like I know shit?”
    “First of all, you know everything because
you are