Free Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

crackling noise, and I thought for a moment that I really had scratched the bar so I stood upright. Fresco watched me, then smiled, then returned his attention to his cigarette.
    The crackling sound kept on going. It sounded like eggs in a pan. I looked at Fresco but he seemed to be happy smoking and he certainly wasn’t frying any eggs I could see.
    I looked around. The sound kept on going.
    “So what brings you to our little Temple, Sparks?”
    I turned to face Fresco. He was leaning on the bar with his elbow now. I looked at his dinner jacket and wondered if I should break the news. I decided not to.
    “Business before pleasure, I’m afraid,” I said.
    “Aren’t they one in the same?”
    Fresco laughed again and I stood wondering what he varnished his hair with. He puffed hard enough on his cigarette to send a message to the East Coast and then he clicked his fingers. A woman appeared out of the smoke. She was standing behind the bar and maybe she always had been there. She was Chinese like all the staff seemed to be but unlike the servers canvassing the room she had her long hair straight down and when she turned around to fill Fresco’s order I saw the back of her silk dress was missing. She had a tattoo of a dragon curling down her spine.
    Then she turned back around and moved three long thin glasses of fizzy wine onto the bar. Fresco nodded but didn’t say thanks and he didn’t swap the glasses for any money either. The woman faded away and the movie star pushed a glass toward me. I said thanks and took it and held it by the thin stem. Fresco finished half of his in a single gulp and didn’t say anything when I didn’t do the same.
    “Truth is, Mr. Peterman,” I said, “is that I’m here looking for someone.” I paused and changed my mind. “Actually, a couple of people.”
    “Looking?”
    “I’m a private eye, as a matter of fact.”
    “No trouble I hope, Sparks?”
    “Can’t say.”
    The smile that darted around Fresco’s thin lips was playful and furtive at the same time. I figured that if you put that smile up on a silver screen say sixty to seventy feet across and half that high you could make a lot of women swoon and a lot of money in the process.
    Whatever it took to make it in this town, Fresco Peterman had it. Even in a plaid dinner jacket you could see from the moon, he had it.
    “Can’t say or won’t say?” said Fresco, and he said it somewhere on the road between an accusation and a weary but wry question. It was like he was reading from a script, feeling out the emotions and the tone and the voice of the character he was playing. Maybe he wasn’t so happy to chat now he knew I was detective.
    “Can’t,” I said, ad-libbing as fast as my circuits could manage. “I’m hoping they’re okay, but you never know.”
    “They?”
    The crackling sound was still there. I wondered what the hell it was. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by it and it was so faint it surely couldn’t be heard over the hubbub of the club anyway. Must have been a bug in my audio. I glanced around the bar, looking for a phone. I didn’t have much time before I had to head back to the office but I thought I should probably dial in and say hello to the boss.
    I turned back to Fresco. He still had that smile on his lips and his cigarette didn’t seem to burning any lower. Now that’s what I call acting.
    “They?” he asked again, like I was drying on the stage and he was giving me a prompt.
    “You know Charles David, I expect. Eva McLuckie, too.” I asked.
    Fresco barked a laugh. It was staccato and loud but while it bounced against the noise of the club no problem it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
    I rolled my neck, in case that crackling was cellophane stuck in my collar from the dry cleaners. It wasn’t.
    “Charles is a great friend, Sparks, and Eva is a great gal.” He said it like he had no idea who I was talking about and like he couldn’t have cared less. Then he drained his fizzy wine