Free Sleepless by Charlie Huston Page B

and saw, in this new light, a subtle emphasis put on certain of them, a seeming willful distancing on the part of the surrounding machines, as if even the inanimate wished to avoid proximity to tragedy and madness.
    "Ah."
    I nodded.
    "Yes."
    I turned to her.
    "I see."
    And bowed my head again, in appreciation of her trust, sharing this detail with me.
    Her mutilated hand lifted slightly from her side, dismissing my tribute.
    "The provenance of these particular typewriters is unquestionable. Must be so. But they do not, of late, draw me as they have in the past. They seem dulled. And I wonder. An appetite such as I have had for these things."
    A muscle in her forearm pulsed several times, causing the heart to beat beneath the dragon's breast.
    "What will possibly fill it?"
    She looked at me; eyes nearly black showed the same rim of fire as the mountains.
    "A portable hard drive. It contains property of mine. It must be returned to me. And no memory of it remain."
    I bowed a final time, accepting the contract.
    Noticing as I did so, a tension revealed in the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles of her neck, betraying an intense effort. An effort, I had no doubt, that was preventing an opposing tension, one that would produce the unmistakable stiff-neck posture that was the first outward sign of sleeplessness.
    I turned away, not wishing to betray my discovery. And thus I betrayed to myself my own doubt that I could employ the blade concealed upon my person before she realized I had discerned her new weakness and let loose the dragon her tattoo proclaimed was just beneath her skin, waiting, not patiently.

    Chapter 5.
    7/9/10
    CAPTAIN BARTOLOME HAD me arrested again. Old-timers named Hounds and Kleiner. They took Ecstasy (30 tablets of Belgian Blue), Demerol (15 commercial caps) and Valium (20 commercial) from my stash and replaced them with what appeared to be no more than an ounce of poor quality Mexican marijuana. Captain says the busts are still the safest way for us to talk face-to-face. I say the arrest record tells too much to anyone who takes a look. I keep getting picked up and kicked loose. Doesn't matter that the booking is always at a different precinct with different cops. Anyone who makes an effort looking in the file will put it together. Either I'm a snitch or I'm undercover. Either way I'll be against the wall. Bartolome says not to worry. He says no one but other cops see the jacket. I say that's what I'm worried about. Hounds and Kleiner. What would it take to buy those two? Or maybe not. Just because they're pre-Rampart, that doesn't make them dirty. Or not any dirtier than any narcs cherry-picking from a dealer's stash. But if not them, then some other cop. Some other cop could be paid off to look in my jacket. Bartolome says it won't happen. He says he won't push it too far. I say it's already too far. Too long. I've been doing this too long. Sitting and talking with him, I worried as much about the customers blowing up my phone as I did about letting Rose know I was okay. Bartolome says that dealers always make their customers wait. He says it's like "part of their credo." But he's not out there. The people he wants me dealing to are not used to waiting. That was supposed to be the whole point of me doing this. He says my client list is getting too big, anyway. He says there is no point in keeping them for more than a few weeks. He says we're not trying to bust users, we're trying to find Dreamer. "If they don't connect to Dreamer, stop taking their texts." But I need the good referrals to get the new customers. And some of them, they need what I get for them.
    Srivar Dhar left five messages. He's in final stages, the suffering, and only Shabu keeps him from falling into waking REM states. Every time he hits a REM cycle, he hallucinates the Kargil War. He was an officer in the frontal assaults on Pakistani positions that were inaccessible to Bofors howitzers and airpower. Uphill at eighteen thousand