Read Online April Evil by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A

of an old joker is he?”
    “Tall. Cold eyes. Very dignified. A culture bug. Music and books and paintings and so on. Keeps his distance. No friends. He doesn’t like Dil at all. I don’t know whether he likes me.” She leaned toward the mirror to make up her mouth.
    Mooney sat on the edge of the bed, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, watching her. “As I get it, people think he’s pretty crazy. But they like him. Like a town monument to something or other. The thing is to have him act more crazy.”
    “Like what?”
    “It would have to be faked.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “If he did something really off-beat, something the whole town talked about, then one of the lawyers would take it.”
    “I’m positive they would. One was nearly willing. I could sense it. But not quite. Ben Piersall is the one I really want to handle it, but he wanted no part of it.”
    “But even Piersall would reconsider if, for example, the old doc started hearing voices, or coming to town without his pants.”
    “Of course, but …”
    “We have to think of how to make him do something irrational, something he won’t be able to explain.”
    Her face in the mirror nodded at him. “I see what you’re thinking, darling. I think maybe it’s pretty bright.”
    “It wouldn’t have to be anything too startling. It could be a lot of little things. If I could hear him talk, I could imitate his voice. You could brief me on what he calls people. Hell, I could call up Flamingo Builders Supply and order fifty gallons of polka dot paint. Or I could use his voice and put a wild ad in the paper, put it in over the phone. He’ll deny it. People will say he just didn’t remember doing it. Hell, Lennie, in a week or two I can have the whole town saying he’s really flipped. Where do I stand?”
    “Would you do it?” She turned around on the bench.
    “Where do I fit? What comes to me?”
    “I don’t know. I’d have to see if it works. I’d have to see what we get out of it.”
    “You said there’d be no risk. There’s risk in this.”
    “Not very much.”
    “Enough to be paid for.”
    “I can’t pay you any money. Not until afterward. I can’t pay you anything.”
    “Not anything at all?”
    Her eyes turned sly. She sat facing him. She arched her back a tiny bit, lowered her head, looked at him through her lashes. “I could be a sort of … sort of promissory note.”
    “You certainly show promise.”
    “Is that all, Mooney? Hey, go away. Not now, darling. There isn’t time.”
    “Then when?”
    “When do you start?”
    “After you make a chance for me to hear the old coot talk.”
    “Tomorrow is Wednesday. Let me see. Pick me up here at ten in the morning. We’ll go out there. I’ll think of something. He’s never refused to see me. He’s just … cool toward me. Can you get away?”
    “I’ll get away.”
    “After we see him, we can talk about us.”
    “Just talk?”
    “About us and a place where we can meet and plan this thing. A quiet private place. You can think about that, about such a place, and you can think of ways we can make Uncle Paul look weird. I’ll try to think of some too. Where do you live, Mooney?”
    “A room at the Palm Lodge. It’s a little crummy, but it’s near the center of town.”
    “Dang it, I hoped maybe you lived in one of those nice private little cabanas at South Flamingo Beach.”
    “I’ve been considering a change.”
    They looked at each other. Mooney could feel the pulse in his throat. “I could move today,” he said.
    “Get one with a phone, darling.”
    He left by the back door and walked around the house. The motor scooter started on the third try. He drove back down the key, squinting against the warm wind. He thought of her, all wet and silky, and his loins felt an urgency that superseded the warm sense of depletion. He found that to be entirely at ease, he had to keep thinking of her. He did not like thinking of the other thing, the old man and his