Read Online The Deceivers by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

and reached over and rolled the right window down.
    When she was even with the car he said, “Hello!”
    She walked on, chin high. He started up and drove slowly beside her. His tires creaked on the snow. He saw that she was a very pretty girl.
    “Look, you’ll freeze your feet.”
    No glance or answer.
    “Miss, I assure you I am perfectly harmless. It’s below zero. Do you want to lose your toes?”
    The steady walk continued.
    “My name is Carl Garrett and I work at Carrier and I’m on my way home after a party in Jamesville. I’ve got a heater in here I paid eleven dollars for and it throws off a lot of heat. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
    The steady pace slowed. She stopped and turned and looked in at him. “A lot of heat?” she asked, and her teeth chattered.
    “More than you can stand when you turn it on high.”
    She opened the door and slid in quickly and rolled the window up. He closed the window on his side. She hugged herself, teeth chattering, shuddering all over so that he could feel the vibration in the car. With the slender shoes and theevening purse she had erected a fragile barricade on the seat between them.
    “S-S-Syracuse,” she said.
    By the time they reached DeWitt she had stopped shuddering and chattering, and the heat inside the car had released the frozen fragrance of her perfume.
    “What happened?” he asked. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
    “Oh, I’ll tell you, all right. I’ll tell you.”
    Anger burned behind her words. He found out that her name was Joan Browning. She had graduated from Syracuse the previous June. She worked in an insurance office in the city. On this Saturday night she had gone back to a formal dance at her sorority on the campus with a boy she had been dating. They had left the dance and driven out into the country and parked and had quarreled bitterly and violently. She didn’t say what about. She had gotten out into the cold, expecting him to plead with her to get back into the car. But instead he had driven off. That had made her so angry that when he came back five minutes later, looking for her, she had hidden. When he had given up, perhaps assuming she had been picked up, she had started walking. It was almost impossible to walk on the packed snow in high heels. She had soon taken them off. She was looking for a house where she could phone a cab to come out and get her. But the houses were dark. He was the second car that had come along. The first one had nearly run her down.
    “But if you hid from him, it isn’t his fault you’re walking.”
    “He drove away, didn’t he?” she said grimly.
    “How are your feet?”
    “They feel terrible. They hurt like fire.”
    “Good sign.”
    “You wouldn’t say that if they were your feet.”
    “We should stop and rub snow on them.”
    “Thank you very much. No.”
    “Look, Miss Joan Browning, I’m not the guy who drove away. I’m the guy giving you a ride.”
    “I’m very grateful for the ride and I’ll try not to be so cross. But I’m still mad. I’m … I’m damn mad.”
    She told him the address. She shared an apartment with two other girls in a big old frame house on Genesee Street. After he stopped in front, near a street light, she put her shoes on. As she was putting them on, he went around thecar and opened the door for her. She got out and he could see that she wasn’t tall, even in the high heels, and she was wonderfully pretty, and her smile was good.
    “I’m getting over being mad now,” she said. “Thanks an awful lot.”
    “I was glad I could help.”
    They said good night and she started up the walk. “Joan,” he said. She stopped and turned. “Look, maybe I could stop by tomorrow afternoon, just to see if … you’re all right. About three.”
    “I’m perfectly all right.”
    “But if I don’t know, I’ll worry.”
    “Well …”
    “I can make it any time you say.”
    “Then … three will be