Free Manifesto for the Dead by Domenic Stansberry Page A

His manner was still boyish. He sat with his hands together, resting between his knees, his hair greased up pretty well, though not well enough to control his cowlick. A shank of black hair stuck straight up. At the moment, Lieutenant Mann didn’t look so much like a cop as he did a preacher’s son, the kind of kid who spent his days nailing up loose boards around the chapel.
    â€œI was at home,” Thompson lied.
    â€œHere?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œAt the Ardmore penthouse. With my wife.”
    Mann chewed on that. “Alberta?” he asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Thompson felt a quiver in his knees. If Mann knew Alberta’s name, perhaps he’d been up to see her. If so, the cop likely knew his alibi was a lie.
    â€œLet me ask you something,” said the cop. “I got a chance to look at some of those books of yours. And I been wondering. They got much biography in them? Auto, I mean. Tales of the self.” Thompson looked at him blankly. The cop’s face was guileless as the moon. “I mean, you seem like a nice guy. And I ask myself, how could a nice guy write books like those. I tell myself, well, all of us, we got something a little weird inside. I say, okay, so it’s there inside him too. Then I wonder, what is it like? You know, to be thinking those kind of things you think. A man up to his neck in a pile of shit. A women cutting off her husband’s privates with a piece of glass. A man hitting his girlfriend with his fist. In the gut. Hitting her so hard her stomach busts. That blood bursts out her mouth like some kind of star exploding between her teeth. It makes me wonder.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œWell us cops, we see so much stuff sometimes. We walk so close to the edge, sometimes a man crosses over. For example, a vice man, undercover. After a while he isn’t undercover anymore. He’s just under. He’s not just watching. He’s part of the show.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œSo don’t you ever worry, the things you write, just describing things like that, back there in the recesses, about what might happen? You contemplate a thing long enough, you describe it—you make it part of the world. And some things, maybe they should be left alone.”
    Thompson didn’t have an answer. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he’d wondered the same thing himself, a time or two. That voice inside, though, it was hard to deny. You could try for a little while, maybe. Walk over to the shelf, uncork the bottle—but then a whole new batch of demons came flying out.
    â€œYou were working on a project with Mr. Lombard?” asked Mann.
    â€œYes. But the status now—it’s kind of murky.”
    Mann wandered over to the window, studied the street. From his angle, Thompson could see out too. The street was pretty much empty, except for a young man on crutches, thin and scraggly. The guy looked as if he had just walked across the desert on those crutches. Thompson expected the cop to ask him more about his relationship with Lombard, but instead he just stood there, studying the cripple.
    â€œWhy do you do it?” Mann asked at last.
    Thompson felt a bit of panic, as if he were being accused of the murder. Then he realized the cop was asking about his writing again.
    â€œIt’s my talent,” Thompson said. “And I get paid.”
    â€œWhat does your wife think about it?”
    â€œShe likes it.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    Thompson hesitated. “Yeah.”
    Mann waited at the window. The young man had been joined by a woman now. On crutches too. Heavy as the man was thin, twice as battered. They hobbled together down the street.
    â€œIt takes all kinds to make a world.” Mann nodded in the way country people do at such expressions, as if he had just said something original. There was a gleam in his eye, though. “You know how they say, a lid for every