Read Online Short Money by Pete Hautman - Free Book Online

his teeth. “I loved the way you handled Ricky.”
    Crow felt no pleasure at the compliment. The episode had cost him far too much. He looked at Getter.
    “You having a good time there, Dave?”
    Getter squelched a smile and held out his empty palms as if to say, Who, me? Crow gave him a blank stare, the same expression he had found so useful as a cop, and held it until Getter looked away, finding something fascinating about the wallpaper. Crow turned back to the doctor. “What’s going on here?”
    Bellweather turned up his smile. “Joe, I can’t tell you how pleased I was when David told me you had agreed to work for me.”
    Crow raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that I had agreed to anything,” he said.
    Bellweather tipped his head back another five degrees and swiveled it toward Getter. “David?”
    Getter jerked his head around. “Yes? What?”
    “Didn’t you tell me that Joe was on board?”
    “That was my understanding. I told Dr. Bellweather he could count on having you, Joe.”
    “I don’t remember saying anybody could ‘have’ me, Dave,” Crow said. “I want to know what’s going on here before I agree to anything.” The last time he’d felt like this was when a friend—now an ex-friend—had invited him over for a beer and he’d found himself in the midst of an Amway recruiting seminar.
    Getter reached out and put a hand on Crow’s shoulder. “Joe—” he began. Crow twitched his upper body, and Getter’s arm bounced off him as if repelled by a magnetic field. Getter backed off a step. “Now listen, Joe, this is exactly the kind of attitude that gets you in trouble. Dr. Bellweather has offered you a good job here, and I’ve gone to a lot of trouble—”
    Bellweather interrupted. “Why don’t you let me and Joe talk, David. I’m sure we can work this out. He has some very legitimate concerns, and I’m confident that I can satisfy him. You’ve done your part, and I thank you for it. Mary must be waiting up for you.”
    Getter looked from Crow to Bellweather. “You sure?”
    “Quite sure.”
    Getter shrugged and left the room.
    “You don’t like him,” Bellweather said. “I don’t blame you. David is a good lawyer, but he likes to make people uncomfortable. It was never my intention to take you by surprise. David is like that. He likes to blindside people, catch them off guard, make them uncomfortable. It’s part of his power trip.”
    Crow looked again at the mounted leopard.
    Bellweather followed his glance and laughed. “I guess we all have our power trips. Do you hunt, Joe?”
    “Just birds. I like duck hunting. So what’s this all about? Why do you think you need protection?”
    “Because I’ve been threatened. So you’re a hunter then? I should take you out sometime. We could go duck hunting, if that’s what you like. Me, I like every kind of hunting.”
    Crow looked from the leopard to the bison head to the elephant tusk, thinking that a day in a duck blind with this man would be enough to make him give up hunting forever.
    “I’m living here alone now, as David may have mentioned. My wife left me a few months ago.”
    “Dave didn’t mention anything. I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”
    “It was no big deal, getting the divorce, except it cost me a lot of money. We were married only a year and a half. Just long enough for her to spend a fortune decorating this place. What did you think of the front parlor?” He read Crow’s expression and laughed. “It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?”
    “So you’re being threatened by your ex-wife?”
    Bellweather frowned. “I don’t believe I said anything like that.”
    “You haven’t said anything at all.”
    “David warned me you were feisty. Did he ever tell you how he came to represent me?”
    “He didn’t even tell me who you were .”
    “Oh—of course. We just went over that, didn’t we? Well, when my wife decided to divorce me, I didn’t have a lawyer I liked. The guy I was using