Hair of the Dog, Gordon Carroll [top 100 novels of all time TXT] 📗

and for a change, it worked. He started helping as a member of a consumer rights organization called Illinois Public Action where he met a young political activist who later became the mayor of Chicago and started him on his path to politics. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yawn. I drank some coffee and gave my cheeks a few slaps… politics makes me sleepy.

5

Senator Alvin Marsh sat across from his longtime friend and trusted body guard as the driver made his way down the twisting hog back.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Clyde continued to scan the mountain outside the window.

“Not impressed,” he said.

Marsh chuckled. “You’d say that about Jason Bourne if you met up with him.”

Clyde swiveled his eyes toward his master then back out the window.

Marsh chuckled again.

“You think different?” asked Clyde.

“What I think is that Mr. Gil Mason is a lot more than what he lets on to be.”

“Yeah?” said Clyde. “What’s that?”

“Driven,” said Marsh. “Our Mr. Mason is a very driven man.”

“And that makes him?”

“The right man for the job,” said Marsh.

“You think he’ll find her?”

Marsh didn’t hesitate. “Yes. It may take some time, but he will locate her and Mr. Larkin.”

“Larkin will kill him,” said Clyde.

Marsh’s white eyebrows went up. “You think so?”

“Yes.”

Marsh chuckled. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“He’s nothing,” said Clyde.

“You wait. I think Mr. Mason will surprise you, old friend. I really do.”

Clyde didn’t say anything and Marsh knew he was brooding the way he had a tendency to do. Clyde was a man who liked to take care of things himself in his own way.

Marsh himself thought that Mason in some ways reminded him of his older brother, Patrick. Alvin had always looked up to him. Of course he was long dead, having been murdered by rival gang members. But not before he’d helped Alvin into the brotherhood. After all, it was Chicago and being in a gang back then was required, at least it was if you were black and poor and wanted to live without getting jumped and beaten and stolen from every day of your life. Patrick was wicked smart and fast and tough. And once he made a plan he followed it to completion. Alvin idolized his older sibling and tried to follow his every move. But it wasn’t until he reached the age of twenty that he came into his inheritance of the patient planning gene that Patrick had exhibited at a much younger age. Alvin often wondered what his brother might have become if he hadn’t been taken. He thought now that maybe he might have been something like this private investigator. There was something in the man’s eyes. Something that made Alvin think that he was much more than he let on to others. That the gears were working at a faster speed than a normal human’s. Fast enough for him to allow others to see him as less and to use that to his advantage. Clyde didn’t see it, but then Clyde didn’t see a lot of things.

“I think you are wrong this time, Clyde. I think Mr. Mason is the real deal and that he will deliver just as promised.”

The SUV continued down the winding road with its lead car’s brake lights never showing once. Behind them, the last car maintained a perfect one car spacing.

At the bottom of the hill, maybe thirty seconds later, Clyde finally responded as if Marsh had just finished speaking.

“If he finds her, he won’t get her away from Larkin. Larkin will kill him, just like I said.”

Marsh gave that some thought.

“Maybe,” he said. “But so long as we get the girl, what happens to Mason is irrelevant.”

Clyde continued to scan the environment, but for the first time since he got into the car he smiled.

6

I stopped going through the files long enough to make a call to Sarah Gallagher, a friend of mine who works at CBI (The Colorado Bureau of Investigation). She’s the most beautiful woman on the planet and smarter than Einstein, Newton, Plato and Vizzini (the little guy in Princess Bride) combined. I know, inconceivable, but it’s true.

“Gil Mason,” she purred into the phone. “The man, the myth, the legend.”

“Hi, Sarah.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m free tonight. What time will you pick me up?”

“Stop playing hard to get,” I said.

“How are the wounds?” she asked, real concern tinging her voice.

“All better. Thanks for asking.” Sarah had visited me every day during my recent stay in the hospital.

“Liar,” she countered. “How’s Pilgrim?”

“He’s doing better, but it’s rough at his age. Taking a lot longer for him to bounce back.”

“If you aren’t calling for a date, then I assume you want to know about the DNA you sent me. Well tracking through several data bases, including regional and ancestry sites, it turns out your man Martin is not Lorraine’s father after all. They aren’t even related. However, checking through local police agencies I did find that he is an exact match in a burglary from back in two thousand and nine in Colorado Springs. From there I…”

“Sorry, Sarah,” I broke in, stopping her, “but that’s not why I called.”

“Really? Then who are you saving now and what do you need?”

“Always to the point,” I said. “I love that about you.”

“Well, at least there is something about me you love,” she teased.

“Stop teasing,” I said.

“I’m not teasing,” she said.

What a joker.

“I need some information on a Senator from Chicago.”

“Senator?”

“Yes.”

“As in, United States Senator?”

“That’s the kind,” I said.

“United States of America Senator?”

“Yeeeees.”

There was a pause, then a sigh. “You’re scaring me, Gil. What kind of information do you need on a United States Senator?”

“Everything you can find,” I said.

Another pause and this time I could hear one of her perfectly manicured fingernails tapping against her teeth, a cute habit of hers that drives all men crazy with desire.

“Gil, you do know that United States Senators are protected by a little agency called the Secret Service, don’t you?”

I laughed. “Well, I’m not going to kill the