بخش 03 - فصل 18

18 Once upon a simpler time, before apps, iPads, Samsung Galaxies, and the world of blazing-fast 4G, weekends were the busiest days of the week at Discount Electronix.

Now the kids who used to

come in to buy CDs are

downloading

Vampire

Weekend from iTunes, while

their elders are surfing eBay or

watching the TV shows they

missed on Hulu.

This Saturday morning the

Birch Hill Mall DE is a

wasteland.

Tones is down front, trying

to sell an old lady an HDTV

that’s already an antique. Freddi Linklatter is out back, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds and probably rehearsing her latest gay rights rant. Brady is sitting at one of the computers in the back row, an ancient Vizio that he’s rigged to leave no keystroke tracks, let alone a history. He’s staring at Hodges’s latest message. One

eye, his left, has picked up a rapid, irregular tic. Quit dumping on my mother, okay? Not her fault you got caught in a bunch of stupid lies. Got a key out of the glove compartment, did you? That’s pretty good, since Olivia Trelawney had both of them. The one missing was the valet key. She kept it in a small magnetic box

under the rear bumper. The

REAL Mercedes Killer must

have scoped it.

I think I’m done writing

to you, dickwad. Your Fun

Quotient is currently

hovering around zero, and I

have it on good authority

that Donald Davis is going

to cop to the City Center

killings. Which leaves you

where? Just living your

shitty little unexciting life, I

guess. One other thing

before I close this charming

correspondence.

You

threatened to kill me. That’s a felony offense, but guess what? I don’t care. Buddy, you are just another chickenshit asshole. The Internet is full of them. Want to come to my house (I know you know where I live) and make that threat in person? No? I thought not. Let me close with two words so simple even a thud like you should be able to understand them. Go away.

Brady’s rage is so great he feels frozen in place. Yet he’s also still burning. He thinks he will stay this way, hunched over the piece-of-shit Vizio ridiculously sale-priced at eighty-seven dollars and eighty-seven cents, until he either dies of frostbite or goes up in flames or somehow does both at the same time.

But when a shadow rises on the wall, Brady finds he can move after all. He clicks away from the fat ex-cop’s message just before Freddi bends over to peer at the screen. “What you looking at, Brades? You moved awful fast to hide it, whatever it was.” “A National Geographic documentary. It’s called When Lesbians Attack.”

“Your humor,” she says, “might be exceeded by your sperm count, but I tend to doubt it.” Tones Frobisher joins them. “Got a service call over on Edgemont,” he says. “Which one of you wants it?” Freddi says, “Given a choice between a service call in Hillbilly Heaven and having a

wild weasel stuck up my ass, I’d have to pick the weasel.” “I’ll take it,” Brady says. He’s decided he has an errand to run. One that can’t wait.