The Penguin Sleeps With the Fishes
A Yellow and Bird Mystery
From my perch I watched Frank’s face in the mirror over the cheaply made veneer dresser. The dresser was pushed against the wall at the end of the bed of our rent-by-the-hour hotel room. He carefully shaved the two day’s worth of grey and black stubble off his product-of-the-mean-streets puss. In between strokes of the straight razor he wiped the edge of the blade on a faded grey towel, placed next to the aluminum bowl. The surface of the water in the bowel was shiny with oily soap. A smoldering Camel, stuck from the side of his cruel mouth, made me cough. The cigarette was stinking up my air.
I shuffled down the wooden perch closer to the window and wished for the tenth time, in the past fifteen minutes, it was open. But for
