Read Online The Damned by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

It could have been one of them crying.
    He took a second little knock at the bottle and handed it back. “Take it easier on the singing,” he said gruffly. “Don’t want you hoarse in Harlingen.”
    “Are you a little hoarse in Harlingen?” Riki asked.
    “Me, I’m a big sheep dog in Denver,” Niki replied.
    “Yuk, yuk, yuk,” Phil said sourly.
    “That’s his trouble. No sense of humor. Old Mother Decker.”
    “Old Mother Phil. How about this? Old Mother Phil went up the hill, to get his poor girls a laugh. And when he got there… hmmm…”
    “The hilltop was bare.”
    “And so were the girls.”
    “Hey, it’s got to rhyme, you,” Riki complained.
    “So what rhymes with laugh?” Phil asked.
    “Would giggle be better?” Niki asked.
    “Try grin. Then you can use gin. Speaking of gin, Mother Decker, how about another kick?”
    “Another knock and we all ride in the back seat. Want me to roll this wagon in this countryside?”
    Niki stared out the window. She said in an awed tone, “The land that Charles Addams forgot.”
    “Hey, write that down,” Phil said. “Put it in the ad-lib book. We’ll use it for snow blindness. You know. Empty joint. Cold crowd. ‘Is that a vulture sitting up there?’ Niki says, looking up, kinda, shading her eyes. We won’t use Addams. Maybe Boris Karloff. Something about him forgetting it or something.”
    “Or a crack about the food in whatever joint it is. Too rough?” Riki asked.
    “Too rough. Let’s work it around somehow. There’s a gag there someplace.”
    The top of the car was up, as protection against the blistering sun. The back window was unzipped. A pair of red sandals followed by long lithe legs came sliding over into the front seat.
    “Getting dull back there,” Niki said. “Girl back there thinks she looks like me.” She braced the red sandals against the glove-compartment door.
    “Everything O.K. with you two?” Phil asked.
    “We don’t make much money, but we have a lot of fun.”
    Phil looked in the mirror. Riki had spread herself out on the back seat to take a nap. Niki, beside him, squinted straight ahead at the highway, no expression on her face. Both girls’ hair was tied back with red ribbon that matched the sandals.
    “We’re going to kill them in New York.”
    “Sure, Phil.”
    “You got nerves about it?”
    “Not a nerve in my head, lambie. Supremely confident, that’s me.”
    He had to be satisfied with that. But he still didn’t feel quite right about the pair of them. Somewhere in the immediate past he had lost control somehow. There was something on their minds, something they hadn’t told him yet. He crossed mental fingers. Here he was with roughly two hundred and forty pounds of female talent, bursting with health and bounce. Enough to make a man suspicious. How lucky could you get? Too lucky, maybe. Hell, one little phone call to Sol and he could put the Triple Deckers into a Bourbon Street joint from now until Dewey turned Democrat. Maybe that would be the thing. Stick to small time. Forget how the pair would look on a Life cover.
    The miles swept at them and were snatched under the droning tires. They topped a small rise. Phil pumped the brake and they eased to a stop behind a blue Cad. A long line of cars and trucks stretched down the hill to the river bank.
    “This is the picnic grounds, ladies,” Phil said. “Here in this natural retreat, surrounded by the beauties of nature…”
    “And house flies.”
    “… you will drink in the mysteries of…”
    “Who said drink?”
    Niki and Riki piled out, stretching long cramped legs. They attracted, as usual, open-mouthed attention. When Phil had first taken them in tow, they hadn’t known how to handle themselves while being stared at. They had just been a pair of corn-fed beauties who happened to be twins. Now no one could doubt for a minute that they were in show business. They had the air and the walk, and as far as the stares were concerned, they might