A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) Read Online Free

completely slipped Charlie’s mind.
    It was a warm day in October, the light had gone autumn soft over the city, the summer fog had ceased its relentless crawl out of the Bay each morning, and there was just enough breeze that the few sailboats that dotted the Bay looked like they might have been posing for an Impressionist painter. In the split second that Charlie’s victim realized that he was being run over, he might not have been happy about the event, but he couldn’t have picked a nicer day for it.
    The guy’s name was
William
Creek
. He was thirty-two and worked as a market analyst in the financial district, where he had been headed that morning when he decided to stop at the auto-teller. He was wearing a light wool suit and running shoes, his work shoes were tucked into a leather satchel under his arm. The handle of a compact umbrella protruded from the side pocket of the satchel, and it was this that caught Charlie’s attention, for while the handle of the umbrella appeared to be made of faux walnut burl, it was glowing a dull red as if it had been heated in a forge.
    Charlie stood in the ATM line trying not to notice, trying to appear uninterested, but he couldn’t help but stare. It was glowing, for fuck’s sake, didn’t anyone see it?
    William
Creek glanced over his shoulder as he slid his card into the machine, saw Charlie looking at him, then tried to will his suit coat to expand into great manta-ray wings to block Charlie’s view as he keyed in his PIN number. Creek snatched his card and the expectorated cash from the machine, turned, and headed away quickly toward the corner.
    Charlie couldn’t stand it any longer. The umbrella handle had begun to pulsate red, like a beating heart. As Creek reached the curb, Charlie said, “Excuse me. Excuse me, sir!”
    When Creek turned, Charlie said, “Your umbrella—”
    At that point, the number forty-one bus was coming through the intersection at Columbus and Vallejo at about thirty-five miles per hour, angling toward the curb for its next stop. Creek looked down at the satchel under his arm where Charlie was pointing, and the heel of his running shoe caught the slight rise of the curb. He started to lose his balance, the sort of thing we all might do on any given day while walking through the city, trip on a crack in the sidewalk and take a couple of quick steps to regain equilibrium, but William Creek took only one step. Back. Off the curb.
    You can’t really sugarcoat it at this point, can you? The number forty-one bus creamed him. He flew a good fifty feet through the air before he hit the back window of a SAAB like a great gabardine sack of meat, then bounced back to the pavement and commenced to ooze fluids. His belongings—the satchel, the umbrella, a gold tie bar, a Tag Heuer watch—skittered on down the street, ricocheting off tires, shoes, manhole covers, some coming to rest nearly a block away.
    Charlie stood at the curb trying to breathe. He could hear a tooting sound, like someone was blowing a toy train whistle—it was all he could hear, then someone ran into him and he realized it was the sound of his own rhythmic whimpering. The guy—the guy with the umbrella—had just been wiped out of the world. People rushed, crowded around, a dozen were barking into cell phones, the bus driver nearly flattened Charlie as he rushed down the sidewalk toward the carnage. Charlie staggered after him.
    “I was just going to ask him—”
    No one looked at Charlie. It had taken all of his will, as well as a pep talk from his sister, to leave the apartment, and now this?
    “I was just going to tell him that his umbrella was on fire,” Charlie said, as if he was explaining to his accusers. But no one accused him, really. They ran by him, some headed toward the body, some away from it—they batted him around and looked back, baffled, like they’d collided with a rough air current or a ghost instead of a man.
    “The umbrella,” Charlie said, looking for