Free A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow

dorm-room door was a breeze, one of those spring-bolt locks that yodel, “Come on in, pardner.”
    The room was your typical boys’ school hovel with a sort of dirty laundry Cristo effect. Neal found Scott’s desk and went straight to the top right drawer, the locked one. It was a little less friendly than the door lock, but opened up after a little persuasion.
    The usual collection of bullshit was in there. A bunch of letters from a girl named Marsha, another bunch from a Debbie. Lots of pictures: Marsha or Debbie with Scott on a beach; Marsha or Debbie with Scott at a dance; just Marsha or Debbie on a boat; just Scott on the boat, taken by Marsha or Debbie; Marsha or Debbie posed romantically under a willow tree. Neal didn’t see any of Marsha and Debbie pounding the crap out of Scott. He leafed through a couple of Penthouse magazines, a passport, and a brochure on Brown University before he came to a thin packet of pictures secured by a rubber band. Bingo. Scott and a friend with arms around two girls who were neither Marsha nor Debbie—in a hotel room. Hello, Ginger. Greetings, Yvonne.
    Neal took the best picture and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He locked the desk drawer and walked out of the room, whistling a happy tune, wondering how Scott was doing in class.
    Joe Graham, listening from the stairway, heard the whistling and left by a side door.
    They met in the parking lot of the post office. Neal slid into the passenger seat of Graham’s car.
    “So what do you have so important I have to come to Connecticut to hold your hand for?”
    “I have Allie hooked up to a dealer, name unknown, naturally, who has friends in the ‘love for rent’ business. I have two working girls, names unknown, naturally, but narrowed down to about twelve phone numbers, who know the aforementioned dealer. I have skit.”
    “You’re doing okay.”
    “Yeah, right. Do you want to lay the odds on our finding Allie Chase in London?”
    “About the same as Jackie O peeling my banana at Lincoln Center.”
    Neal laid the photo on the dashboard.
    “Visual aids, very nice,” Graham said.
    “I’ve been thinking about something.”
    “Hard to believe.”
    “Allie Chase ran before.”
    “So?”
    “Twice to New York.”
    Graham pretended to study the picture.
    “If I’d have picked her up, I would have told you about it,” he said.
    “So you didn’t, and I didn’t, and—”
    “There’s nothing about it in the file.”
    “At least not in the file we’ve seen.”
    Graham perused the picture some more. “Nice-looking girls.”
    “What’s going on, Dad?”
    “Son, I don’t know.”
    I hope you don’t, Dad. Goddamn, I hope you don’t.

6
    A few weeks and a few jobs after Neal had started working for Graham, he answered a knock on the door, to find the gremlin standing there, his arms full of packages and a brand-new mop and broom clutched in one hand.
    “What’s this?” Neal asked.
    “I’m fine, thank you. How are you? Your mother home?”
    “Not lately.”
    Graham brushed him aside and stepped in.
    “You live in a toilet. A toilet.”
    “It’s the maid’s year off.”
    Graham swept off some garbage from the kitchen counter and set the packages down. “We’re going to fix that.”
    “You buy me this stuff?”
    “No, you bought you this stuff. I took it out of your pay for the last job.”
    “You better be kidding me, man.”
    “This,” said Graham with an appropriate flourish, “is a mop. You use it to clean floors.”
    “Just give me the money.”
    “This is a broom. You also use it to clean floors,” Graham said, looking around, “although maybe I should have brought some dynamite.”
    That morning, Neal discovered that Graham was a first-class neatnik, a psychopathic cleaner of the highest order. Out of the bags came sponges, dishrags, dish towels, Brillo pads, bug spray, disinfectant, lemon oil, Windex, paper towels, detergent, Comet cleanser (“The best, don’t let anybody kid you.”),