Read Online Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard - Free Book Online Page B

double-park in front of a Coney, run in for a hot dog, it costs us forty bucks. And this guy also I find out never worked a day in his life. Anyway, what’d you do yesterday? You break down and call Phyllis?”
    “That’s over with.”
    “You feel okay about it?”
    “I’m fine. I brought some case files home with me. Start reading up on sex crimes.”
    “How’s it look?”
    “There some weird people out there.”
    “Woody,” his dad said, “that’s the guy’s name, Woody something.”
    Sunday afternoon Robin sprayed a circle around the Ricks brothers on the wall and began to fill it in, sweeping the surface with layers of red paint, gradually closing in on the names to take out WOODY first, then paused to look at
MARK
    in the white center. Mark in the bull’s-eye. The new Mark revealed last night at his brother’s weird swimming party.
    Mark doing lines at poolside in his wet silk undies. Mark getting high, talking about Goose Lake, playing tapes of groups they used to listen to in the sixties and early seventies. That was still the old Mark. The new one emerged as Mark came down from his high, sort of crash-landed and began to whine and roll his eyes, Mark trying to dramatize what it was like to have an idiot for a partner. (Interesting, Woody was an actual partner.) Robin, at ease in her black panties, began to frown and sympathize.
    “But Mark, you’re the one who makes it happen. You’re the name, the star.”
    Of course he was, he admitted it, glancing at herbreasts, telling her what it was like to feel his talent smothered. “What a waste,” Robin said, noticing that as she continued to sympathize, Mark’s gaze remained on her breasts. Before long he seemed to be speaking to them as Robin listened, telling her breasts he could be doing rock concerts at Cobo Hall and Joe Louis Arena. The money was there, all kinds of it. The problem was the immovable 250-pound moron sitting on it. Mark, before her eyes, presenting a new possibility, a different approach.
    Monday afternoon Skip phoned from the bar in the Yale Hotel, Yale, Michigan.
    “This town, I don’t think it’s changed a bit, except I couldn’t find the goddamn dynamite place. I drove up and down M-19, I came back, went in the feed store and they said, Yeah, that’s where it is, how come you couldn’t find it? Shitkickers love to get smart with you, if you don’t look like one of them. See, there isn’t any sign on the place. I guess the house is the same, but there are a lot more trees than I remember and they have a big new red barn with a white roof.”
    “Trees grow,” Robin said.
    “Is that right? Well, see, I didn’t know that. So I got the guy’s phone number and called, but nobody answered.”
    Robin said, “You’re not going to buy it, are you?”
    “No way. Michigan, I find out, you have to get permission from the State Police. No, I’m gonna wait till some farmer with ninety dollars and stumps to blow comes along and buys a case. He gets it home, then I’ll lift it off him. Otherwise, if nobody comes along by tomorrow evening I’ll have to bust into that barn. It’s riskier, but then I know I’ll get exactly what we need.”
    “Tomorrow,” Robin said. “You’re going to spend the night in Yale?”
    “I don’t have a choice. I don’t want to drive all the way back to Detroit, I’m tired. We worked late to finish, then had to pack up. I’m suppose to go to the wrap party tonight but I’ll be right here at the Sweet Dreams Motel. Honest, that’s the name of it.”
    Robin said, “So I probably won’t see you till tomorrow night.”
    “The latest. But it could be anytime, if the dynamite guy ever gets a customer.”
    “Whenever it is,” Robin said, “call me here. Then I’ll meet you at Mother’s.”
    “You gonna stay with me?”
    “You know I can’t.”
    “Man, it’s gonna be lonesome.”
    “Skip . . . ?”
    He said, “Uh-oh. What?”
    “Nothing’s wrong. Listen, we may change our game