Free Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello by Michael Lister

side of Armando he’d ever seen.
    “Skip it.”
    “I really am sorry, Mr. Perkins. It won’t happen again.”
    “I said forget it.”
    “Okay sir. Thank you, sir.”
    Perkins looked at me. It was like looking into a dead man’s eyes. They were flat, opaque, lifeless, dim windows to nothing, no soul, nothing human.
    “You’re looking for my sister,” he said. “Wanna tell me why?”
    I did.
    “You think her disappearance is connected to this Lewis dame who may have died or disappeared herself?”
    “I do.”
    “That’s why I brought him,” Armando said. “I knew you’d want to know about the connection.”
    Following Perkins’s lead, Armando was ignoring Clip again.
    Perkins studied me for a long moment.
    Being here alone with us, unarmed, in his pajamas no less, demonstrated how little threat he perceived us to pose, but even more so just how very invulnerable he felt.
    He wasn’t just a hard hood. He was powerful. And fearless. He didn’t hide from anything or anyone. He didn’t hide behind anyone or anything either.
    “Daniel,” Perkins said, “you and the nigger wait outside.”
    “Of the room, Mr. Perkins?”
    “Of the hotel,” he said.
    Clip looked at me.
    I frowned but nodded.
    He turned and walked out without waiting for Armando.
    “You sure, Mr. Perkins?”
    “You just keep taking chances, don’t you, fella. In the street, now.”
    “I’ll be right out there if you need me, Mr. Perkins.”
    “Sure, guy,” he said with a self-amused smile. “I can’t handle the one-armed wounded soldier who forced you to bring him here in the first place, you’ll be the first person I call.”
    When Armando was gone, Perkins stood, walked over behind the bar, and began to mix himself a drink.
    As he did, I thought about how most of us in the country were suffering, sacrificing for the war, but not Lee Perkins and those like him. They were actually turning a profit, living better than ever before.
    I knew his kind. In an earlier era, he’d have been a ridge runner, a bootlegger, a moonshiner. Before that, he’d have run guns. Before that, who knows, but it would’ve been on the backs of others, of decent people who couldn’t begin to guess at the depth of cruelty and lack of humanity in the dark void at the center of someone like Perkins.
    For a little over a month now, rationed items included bicycles, fuel oil, stoves, shoes, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods, dried fruits, canned milk, firewood, coal, jams, jellies, and fruit butter. OPA, the federal Office of Price Administration, had also set limits on the number of gallons of gasoline we could buy each week.
    Most of us, most everyone I knew, willingly, even gladly, gave, saved, helped. Over a year and a half ago now every man, woman, and child had been issued a ration book filled with coupons that limited the amounts of meat, sugar, canned goods, and other food we could buy each week. But not people like Perkins––not those who had the money to buy black market and who didn’t have the character not to, and not the criminals who supplied their demand.
    When he finished fixing his drink, he rejoined me back at the table.
    “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
    “I do.”
    “And yet you get me out of bed in the night in this disrespectful manner. Why?”
    “No time to do it any other way,” I said. “And …”
    “And?”
    “And I couldn’t’ve guessed you’d be in bed this early.”
    He smiled. “All decent people are,” he said. “Bit player like you wouldn’t be, wouldn’t understand.”
    I nodded. He was probably right.
    “And?” he said.
    “And?” I asked.
    “There is more.”
    “And I’d do anything to find the woman I’m looking for.”
    “Anything?” he said. “That is interesting. Many a man tosses that around––anything. I believe it may actually be true of you. No way to know for certain until … until you get a certain test. But there is