Read Nightbird for Free Online Page B

know.”
    Danny’s phone and his computer sat on an old maple butcher block–style table near the apartment’s lone window, the monitor
     raised by the Manhattan Yellow Pages. The table had once resided in the kitchen of his boyhood. It was a gift from Mom, intended
     for dining, but Danny’s culinary conflicts were rare.
    His mother seemed to know more than he expected. Her long silences during his phoned-in confession were the worst penance
     he’d ever received. On the wall directly above the computer screen were pictures of his heroes: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Jimmy
     Breslin, Pete Hamill, Groucho Marx, and Rip Ryan. To his left: the window. Danny liked working near the window; he could watch
     all the other budding writers walking the street, and he knew he was pounding out more pages than they. Plus he could see
     over the small park adjacent to a luxury high-rise, across Fifty-seventh Street, keep an eye on the front window of Kennedy’s.
     Many nights he heard the siren call of neon. Finally Danny told his mother someone was at the door.
    He began writing the minute he hung up. He knew he had to jump on the story while the images were still fresh. Get words on
     paper when the fire was burning. Write in the wild flames of passion, edit in the cool blue afterglow. Starting with Gillian’s
     bedroom: family pictures in silver frames, mostly people in shorts and T-shirts; a cactus garden in a red clay pot; the head
     of an American Indian carved out of a chunk of solid turquoise the size of a peach; the smell of perfumes and powders; a gold
     tassel slung across a framed theater program, the Arizona State University production of
Oklahoma!
at Gammage Auditorium, a building Gillian had once told him was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
    On Gillian’s nightstand sat a familiar music box that Danny knew played “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” a gift from Evan Stone.
     It was engraved, “To my shining star, From Daddy.” The gift from Daddy was the key detail. Soften the reader with a universal
     tug of the heart, then snap them back into real life. Describe the black fingerprint powder swirled on glasses and tabletops.
     The fat asshole detective sitting on the bed among tiny lacy underwear. Juxtaposition.
    Danny typed for three full hours before he realized he was starved. The act of banging the keys had calmed him. He went into
     the kitchen, barely wide enough for one slender adult standing sideways. Technically his apartment was a studio, but a previous
     tenant had built a wall to create a tiny bedroom. The wall lacked electrical outlets, and the bedroom lacked a door. Only
     a landlord could imagine it as a junior three.
    He flicked on the small portable TV that took up too much of his kitchen counter space. The news at six. The teaser hinted
     at new information on the dead actress.
    Danny started a pot of water heating on the stove. He had a small repertoire of meals, most of them centered around pasta.
     Yesterday rigatoni, today… rigatoni. From the refrigerator he took the leftover canned asparagus. And the butter, real butter,
     let it melt a little for the baguette. Then he poured a glass of wine from the box in the refrigerator. Chillable red, five
     liters for eight bucks, you couldn’t beat it. He was set. A man with cheap wine and a mission.
    On the TV screen Evan Stone, with perfect white hair and a desert tan, pushed through cameramen hustling backward through
     the crowds at JFK airport. A woman, probably Gillian’s mom, walked head down, her face buried in an upturned collar. They
     were moving fast toward the departing gates, leaving reporters breathless in the pursuit of a sound bite.
    It was this kind of banzai journalism that gave the business a bad name. Not his style. He knew exactly how he was going to
     get his story, the old-fashioned way: digging it out detail by detail. Danny scooped out a rigatoni noodle and tasted it cautiously.
     It was still a beat away from al dente.
    Danny