Read Online On the Run by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

that!”
    “You’re not very bright and you have a nervous stomach, Georgie. I read you before you open your mouth. And don’t worry about cinder blocks, I forget the modern improvements. You’d have a heart attack.”
    “Claude, please, all I want is …”
    “You want me to find out how things stand.”
    “I want to go there. Maybe there’s a piece of money in it. Even ten would help a lot, with no tax bite out of it.”
    “You five too big, Georgie. It keeps you poor and jumpy.”
    “Will you …”
    “Shut up,” Boardman said. He looked at the letter again. He handed it back. “Go away, Georgie. I’ll call a friend from here. Go downstairs. Have some coffee. Stop sweating. You smell up the office.”
    At the door George turned and moistened his lips and said, “Another thing. If there’s still that … that money for fingering him …”
    Boardman sat up slowly. “Your brother? Your own brother?”
    “But if I got to do it anyway. I mean as long as I’ve got to do it …”
    “What you’ve got, I’d rather have cancer.”
    “But …”
    “Get out! Get out!”
    The anger tired him. After George left he lay back for another few minutes. He went to the desk and took the small notebook from his wallet. He made a call to Miami. He talked for ten minutes. He made another call to Mobile. He stretched out on the red couch again. It amused him to find he enjoyed having a reason to make some of the careful calls, the kind that would mean nothing to anybody who tapped the line. Even on such a dirty little thing like this, it was good to have a reason.
    George Shanley waited thirty minutes before Boardman shuffled into the lunch room and sat on the stool beside him.
    “They still want him,” Boardman said in an almost inaudible voice. “They missed twice. Wain wants him. Anyway, you’re in the clear now. Go see Grandpa. It will be checked out. Maybe somebody gets there before you do. I wouldn’t know. If he’s there when you get there, the kid brother I mean, and if he should disappear right after you get there, you won’t look very good, Georgie.”
    “But I don’t want to be around if there’s going to be any …”
    “You better go see Grandpa. They want you to go see Grandpa. Maybe you can help out a little. I don’t know. But they want it to be very quiet. Very quick and quiet and no fuss. Maybe Wain wouldn’t want it that way, and maybe he won’t find out until it’s done. Maybe Wain isn’t quite as big as he used to be because he worries too much about his face and about your brother, and he doesn’t keep his mind on the operation. Maybe people are a little uneasy about him. So it will be like a favor for a friend, and we’ll tell him later. It means no five for you, Georgie, because that was from Wain on a purely personal basis. Cheer up. Maybe you make up for it by getting his share of Grandpa’s money. A fellow getting his brother knocked off should get something for his trouble.”
    “Don’t do me that way, Claude. I had to protect myself, didn’t I?”
    “You’re protected.”
    “Any time I can do anything for you, Claude …”

five
    On Saturday morning, after phoning her room, Sid walked over with his suitcase and they drove over to the airport in her rental car. She wore the blue skirt he had first seen her in, with a fresh white blouse. She seemed subdued and distant, and he imagined her attitude toward him was that same impersonal approach nurses used toward a patient they did not like. After she had turned the car in, and they had put the baggage into the blue station wagon, they went back to the terminal and had breakfast. He noticed dark smudges under her eyes.
    “I’d like to call Tom,” she said.
    “Can he talk on the phone?”
    “There’s an extension by his bed. But it doesn’t ring there. If he’s sleeping, I can try again. It will make him very happy to hear I’m bringing you back.”
    “And it fills you with joy, too.”
    “I’m just a