Read Online Hit and The Marksman by Brian Garfield - Free Book Online

Simon, where are you right now? Maybe you’d better come in and we’ll have a little talk—”
    â€œMaybe later,” I said. “Right now I haven’t got anything that could possibly help. We’d waste each other’s dime. I’ll be in touch.”
    I hung up before he could protest; crossed the lobby, dropped two dimes on the desk, pointed a thumb at the phones, got the cashier’s nod and went outside into the broil.
    Joanne was still in the roofed passageway, wearing her dark glasses and a scowl. I handed her the motel key and told her where to find the room, then went out to her car and drove it around back to meet her.
    A weedy lot stretched to the back fence, beyond which half a mile of empty land separated the place from the near boundary of the Air Force base. The flayed, sunbeaten, baking pan of the desert reflected a shimmering heat mist into the air.
    There was no one in sight. She unlocked the door and we went in. It was one of those interchangeable rooms, furnished in cheap modern pine with plastic tops and vinyl upholstery, watercolor prints on the walls. The full blast air conditioning had chilled the room to an inhospitable temperature; it had a vaguely antiseptic smell. Everything was very new: you could live forty years in a room like that and it would never be home. The aura of loneliness held ghosts of solitary salesmen, teenage assignations, conventioneering drunks, yapping vacationing kids.
    Joanne sat on the bed, kicked her shoes off and crossed her fine long legs. Then she fished for a cigarette. During all this stage business she didn’t once look at me. She was, I realized, terrified. She nudged a discarded shoe with her toe and said absently, “I’m always cranky when my feet hurt.”
    â€œSure,” I said. “Look, there’s no such thing as a perfectly safe place for anybody. Nobody’s immune—there’s always random chance to mock you. But this ought to be as safe as anyplace for a few hours or even a few days. I’m pretty sure nobody followed us, and it would be a blind million-to-one shot if anybody saw us who’d recognize us and know what to do with the information.”
    â€œAll right,” she declared, “I’m safe. Until tonight or next week or whenever they find me. What happens in the meantime?”
    â€œI’m going to try to take the heat off.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œThere are a few things I can try,” I said, and let it ride like that; she didn’t press it. I said, “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden from Sherman Oaks if anybody asks. Do you know how to use a gun?”
    I tugged the .38 out of my hip pocket and she looked at it without feeling. “I suppose so,” she said. “But if you’re thinking of bearding Madonna in his den, you’ll need it a lot more than I will.”
    I put the gun on the bed beside her. “If that was what I had in mind,” I said with a little grin, “I wouldn’t get within a mile of him with a gun.”
    She didn’t smile. “You’re a sweet, generous son of a bitch, Simon. I wish—”
    Whatever she had meant to say, she didn’t finish it. I tried to dismiss it with an airy gesture and a casual voice: “The one born every minute, I’m him.” I bent down and gave her a quick brushing kiss, without force; she didn’t draw back, and I straightened quickly and went to the door. “Stay put until I call you. They’ve got a lunch counter in the lobby—room service might be better. Watch TV and don’t think about things, all right?”
    â€œSure,” she muttered. “Sure. I’ll be all right. Simon … be careful.” She sounded miserable.
    I made a face and went. Got in the Jeep and pointed it out of the lot. As I stopped at the stop sign, I heard a car rushing forward from the left and turned in time to see a green sedan speed by—glimpse