Read Long After Midnight for Free Online

No answer. I touched the door. It drifted open. I stepped in upon a
scene much too dreadful for Bosch to have painted.
                 Around
the pigpen living room were strewn various life-size dolls, eyes half-cracked
open, cigarettes smoking in burned, limp fingers, empty Scotch glasses in
hands, and all the while the radio belted them with concussions of music
broadcast from some Stateside asylum. The place was sheer carnage. Not ten
seconds ago, I felt, a large dirty locomotive must have plunged through here.
Its victims had been hurled in all directions and now lay upside down in
various parts of the room, moaning for first aid.
                 In
the midst of this hell, seated erect and proper, well dressed in velveteen
jerkin, persimmon bow tie, and bottle-green booties, was, of course, Shelley
Capon. Who with no surprise at all waved a drink at me and cried:
                 "I knew that was you on the phone. I am
absolutely telepathic! Welcome, Raimundo !"
                 He
always called me Raimundo . Ray was plain bread and
butter. Raimundo made me a don with a breeding farm
full of bulls. I let it be Raimundo .
                 " Raimundo , sit down! No . . . fling yourself into an interesting position."
                 "Sorry,"
I said in my best Dashiell Hammett manner, sharpening
my chin and steeling my eyes. "No time."
                 I
began to walk around the room among his friends Fester and Soft and Ripply and Mild Innocuous and some actor I remembered who,
when asked how he would do a part in a film, had said, "I'll play it like
a doe."
                 I
shut off the radio. That made a lot of people in the room stir: I yanked the
radio's roots out of the wall. Some people sat up. I raised a window. I threw
the radio out. They all screamed as if I had thrown their mothers down an
elevator shaft.
                 The
radio made a satisfying sound on the cement sidewalk below. I turned, with a
beatific smile on my face. A number of people were on their feet, swaying
toward me with faint menace. I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket,
handed it to someone without looking at him, and said, "Go buy a new
one." He ran out the door slowly. The door slammed. I heard him fall down
the stairs as if he were after his morning shot in the arm.
                 "All
right, Shelley," I said, "where is it?"
                 "Where
is what, dear boy?" he said,
eyes wide with innocence.
                 "You
know what I mean." I stared at the drink in his tiny hand.
                 Which
was a Papa drink, the Cuba Libre's very own special
blend of papaya, lime, lemon, and rum. As if to destroy evidence, he drank it
down quickly.
                 I
walked over to three doors in a wall and touched one.
                 "That's
a closet, dear boy." I put my hand on the second door.
                 "Don't
go in. You'll be sorry what you see." I didn't go in.
                 I
put my hand on the third door. "Oh, dear, well, go ahead," said
Shelley petulantly. I opened the door.
                 Beyond
it was a small anteroom with a mere cot and a table near the window.
                 On
the table sat a bird cage with a shawl over it. Under the shawl I could hear
the rustle of feathers and the scrape of a beak on the wires.
                 Shelley
Capon came to stand small beside me, looking in at the cage, a fresh drink in
his little fingers.
                 "What
a shame you didn't arrive at seven tonight," he said.
                 "Why
seven?"
                 "Why,
then, Raimundo , we would have just finished our
curried fowl stuffed with wild rice. I wonder, is there much white meat, or any
at all, under a parrot's feathers?"
                 "You
wouldn't!?" I cried.
                 I
stared at him.