Free The Glass Highway by Loren D. Estleman Page B

married.”
    “Once did it for me. It’s not at all like peanuts.” I got my arm loose and turned on the heater. The fan pushed refrigerator air at my feet. New cars.
    “Who killed Johnny Ralph Dorchet?” I asked, after we had gone a couple of blocks in silence.
    “I thought it was Cock Robin.” She stirred a little at my side. Her tone was sleepy.
    “I figured maybe you’d heard something. It couldn’t have been the local crowd. They’d have replaced him with someone who could handle Dorchet’s racket without having to be told when to go to the bathroom and what to do when he got there. Anyone but Moses True.”
    She sat up, looking at me. Her face was taut in the light of a passing bar sign. “You are full of surprises.”
    “I thought you’d know True.”
    “Only by reputation. All bad. Why should I pay for pills when I get them free at parties?”
    “Sometimes you might need a little something to get you from one to the next. I don’t guess it’s a disgrace anymore in your neighborhood. Maybe it never was. The air up there’s too rare for a lug like me.”
    “You’re a reverse snob, you know it?”
    “I’m a dark-eyed Adonis who snaps women’s hearts like breadsticks. Who killed Johnny Ralph?”
    “I’d have to know he lived in the first place. I seem to have gotten along for twenty-six years not knowing.” She slid low in the seat, resting the back of her head on top of it. It didn’t make her look the least bit petite. “Was he a friend of yours?”
    “I only know him by reputation,” I said. “All bad.”
    “Then what’s it to you who showed him the door?”
    “I think Paula Royce knows. She isn’t saying.”
    “Same question. Her account’s paid, I heard. As far as you’re concerned, anyway.”
    “Yeah.” I whumped through an axle-deep puddle, spraying wings of muddy water up past the windows. The wipers came up once, shrugged some stray drops off the windshield, and went back to bed.
    “I’ll be damned,” she said. “She did it again.”
    Her voice sounded strained. I looked at her, but I couldn’t see her face for shadows. “I didn’t know she did it before. Did what?”
    “Did you just like she did Bud. How’s she do it without apples?”
    “You’re snockered.”
    “And right. And sick. Stop the car.”
    I glanced at her again, then leaned into the curb, braked, and snapped on the dome light. Her face was gray-white and she was shivering. The rouge on her cheeks stood out like red wax.
    “What were you drinking?” I asked.
    “Gin and tonic.” She smiled weakly. “Must’ve been the tonic.”
    “Can you hold out till your place?”
    “I don’t think so.” The words came out in a string. She clawed open the door on the passenger’s side.
    I watched my reflection in the windshield, tinted green from the reflected dash light, and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I was spending a good deal of time lately listening to people throw up. The pay was lousy, but you couldn’t beat the glamour.
    She sagged back against the seat, breathing heavily. I gave her my handkerchief. She pressed it against her mouth and closed her eyes. The door on her side drifted almost shut. I reached across her lap and jerked it the rest of the way. “Going to live?”
    She nodded with her eyes closed. “With my luck.” It came from just in back of her tongue.
    We resumed rolling. “Three drinks don’t usually come down so heavy on you hardboiled types,” I said. “That pill-and-alcohol combination’s dynamite. It’ll land you in a box one of these nights.”
    “I told you I only drop them at parties. I drank too fast, that’s all.” Her breath was coming more easily now. She tried to give me back my handkerchief. I told her to keep it.
    The rain started up again, drumming the roof and stitching up the puddles standing in the street. Then it was over. I took the Edsel Ford to East Jefferson and turned down a private road lined with large brick houses, finally