Free A Song In The Dark by P. N. Elrod

He’s seen men hurt before. Looking at what Bristow did to you ain’t gonna bring a guy like him out in hearts and flowers. How’d you do it?”
    I gave a minimal shrug like I’d seen Gordy do a hundred times. “There was stuff going on under the talk. I could see Kroun didn’t want me killed. That would create more problems he didn’t want to bother with. He just needed a reasonable way out and took the one I offered.”
    â€œWho’da thought it?”
    Me. Just now.
    â€œRadio,” I said, not wanting more questions. “Put it on.”
    â€œGot it.”
    Strome turned the knob and fiddled the tuning until I said stop when he found a comedy. We listened to the remaining ten minutes of Jack Benny. The stuff was funny enough that Strome actually smiled once. I thought his skin would buckle and crack under the strain.
    I lay back, well out of range of the rearview mirror, andshut my eyes against the growing brightness of Chicago. The jokes and puns and sound effects washed over me, and I didn’t have to think about anything.
    I couldn’t sleep, of course, not until sunrise, and then it’s a different kind of sleep, a shutdown of everything, dreamless, silent, too peaceful to last. I longed to be able to voluntarily conk myself out like that whenever I wanted, but the night wouldn’t let me go.
    The next program was longhair music, so I had Strome find a station with another comedy going. It was good to hear familiar tinny voices talking about ridiculous situations that had nothing to do with my own personal disasters. I was too isolated inside myself to be able to appreciate the humor just yet, but maybe in a couple weeks . . .
    Or months. A couple years. Maybe never. But could I live with never?
    My girlfriend, Bobbi, one of the reasons I was still more or less sane after Bristow’s damage, would have something unsympathetic to say about that kind of thinking. She had plenty of caring for me, but no patience for self-pity. It was sometimes hard to know the difference between it and honest pain. I used Bobbi’s probable response to my unspoken thoughts as a way of keeping the balance. Angst or honesty? Hell, she’d just tell me to flip a coin about it, then walk away from the result without looking.
    Sensible gal, my Bobbi.
    We were well into Chicago when the comedy ran out, replaced by a weather report. The announcer mentioned sleet, which roused me enough to look outside. Yeah, nice and wet and miserable, cold, but not to the point that the frozen rain glazed the streets yet. The stuff was smaller than rice grains, ticking gently against the windows, clinging for a moment, melting, sliding down, gone. This was a night tobe inside next to a fire. I could arrange it, but couldn’t trust that the thoughts keeping me company would be the warm and cozy kind.
    I asked Strome to find another radio show. A broadcast of The Shadow was on, so we listened to it. I liked that guy. Life was simple for him. All his troubles could be solved by clouding a man’s mind or shooting him—the kind of stuff I’d fallen into—but Lamont Cranston always made a fresh start with each episode. He didn’t have to think about consequences to himself or others in between or carry them along all the time with him like a lead suitcase full of bricks.
    We headed north a few blocks until I directed Strome to go east.
    â€œYou wanting Escott’s place?” he asked.
    My occasional partner’s office was in the right area. Close enough. It didn’t surprise me that Strome knew the location of the business. “Yeah, there.”
    The Caddy had special modifications to support the extra weight of the bulletproof windows and armor, but you could tell from the ride there was something different about the car, especially the heavy way it had of taking corners. That gave a nice feeling of security. Escott’s Nash was similarly smartened