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

craziness. Nor did he want to think of the money. There were small shrill alarms in the back of his mind that could only be stilled by thinking intently of Lennie Parks.
    During his life he had cut corners in many small safe ways.But this was more than sharpshooting. Once, when he was twenty-five, he had been roughed up by a pair of cops. It had made him sick to his stomach. It was one of the memories he seldom took out and examined. This could be trouble before it was over. Maybe it would be best to forget it. He had finally had the woman. That should be enough. Pull stakes and roll. But it was much woman. Fire and ice. Too much to turn your back on, yet. Stay a while. Until it began to look too shaky, and then take off. The cabana rent would make a hole in the bankroll. With the season rolling to a stop, there wouldn’t be much coming in. But the woman was worth it. Thirty-four years or so of knowledge in a young girl body. It certainly wasn’t attraction or love on her part. She was trading. She was using what she had to make a deal with. It was his language, and he knew he had accepted it at its proper value. They weren’t kidding each other.
    He left the agency a little earlier than usual. He took his own car to South Flamingo Beach. The rental agent was still there. Six of the cabanas were empty. He picked one on the end. Cars parked by it could not be seen from either the beach or the road. It was on pilings. Heavy draperies could be drawn across the front windows. He paid a one-month rental, and took possession. He moved his stuff out of the Lodge into the cabana. He laid in a small stock of liquor. He dusted the place, rearranged the few pieces of furniture, fluffed the pillows—and ceased only when he realized that he was acting like a nervous and elderly bride. He was sardonically amused at himself.
    Before he went to bed he washed out an overdue stack of socks and underwear. In the night when the wind awoke him he thought of the old man and he was frightened. But it was her price, and he would pay it, and maybe there was no risk. Maybe there was no risk at all.

CHAPTER SIX
    Ronnie arrived in Flamingo on Wednesday, the thirteenth day of April. He stepped down from the silver car of the Seaboard Airline Railroad onto the open platform. He tipped the porter, picked his pigskin bag out of the lineup and moved off to one side, smelling the warmth of the air, looking at the women in their thin bright clothing.
    He spotted coin lockers in the waiting room. He put his bag in one, bundled his tweed topcoat in on top of it and, after a moment of hesitation, put his brown felt hat in also before slamming the door. He bounced the key on his palm, slipped it into his side pocket and turned, whistling thinly, back out into the sunlight.
    He was in his late twenties. He was slim and erect and blond and his suit sat well on him, gray gabardine hanging properly from good shoulders. He walked in a springy way and his expression was that of a man just about to smile. He had the nordic look of a ski instructor, the pale blue eyes of snow-country distances. He looked alert, intelligent and friendly.
    Ronnie was in the mood of a man on vacation. He walked slowly down Bay Avenue from the station, absorbing the mood and flavor of the town. He had seldom worked in a town this small. And though he was not here to perform his practiced,specialized task, habit was strong. He mapped streets as he walked, studied traffic density, measured the timing of the traffic lights.
    He had walked in just this way in many strange cities. He took infinite pains. Inattention to detail has ruined many small businesses. Ronnie was, in effect, a small business enterprise, solvent, successful. He had been on call for seven years, ever since he completed his first and only prison term at the age of twenty-one. When any syndicate underling became too greedy, or too ambitious or too unmanageable, or whenever a particularly vicious doublecross had been