Read Online The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

female, and regardless of the method of approach, he had become her lover and had, in time, induced sensuous response in her. I thought of the failure of her marriage and wondered if perhaps she was merely a neurotic headed for breakdown anyway, and Junior Allen had merely hastened the process.
    I watched the running lights of a boat heading down the channel, and I heard the grotesque yammering of one of the night birds, and the faraway sobbing of a lovelorn cat.
    I went in and checked her in her deep sleep, and went to bed in the neighboring room.
    SHE TOOK a good breakfast in the morning and seemed well enough for me to leave her for a time. I went off in miss Agnes and picked up the laundry and then I made a Call on Jeff Bocka, the realtor whose sign stood in Lois Atkinson's yard.
    He had a face and head as round and pink as a beach ball. He had that total and almost obscene hairlessness that some diseases cause, a baldness of skull, brows and eyelids. He had amber eyes and small amber teeth.
    "Of course I can move that house. I can move it if I can show it, buddy. But I can't show it if that nutty broad screws it up. I made Twice. What happens? The appointments.
    place is a mess and she is a mess. The first time she is all right for ten minutes, then starts screaming at my clients. The second time she wouldn't even let us in. She's got the place free and clear. There's a recent survey. No cloud on the title. A sound house in a good location.
    Waterfront. I can move it for forty-five tomorrow, but nobody buys a house if they can't look at it, buddy." He shook his head. "When I get around to it, I take my sign off that lawn."
    "When she moves out, if she still wants to sell, I'll leave the keys with you."

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    "How about the condition of it?"
    "It will be okay."
    "What do you mean, if she wants to sell?"
    "If, on second thought, she's absolutely certain."
    "She better move away. She had some friends here. Nice people. until that gas jockey moved in with her and she started hitting the bottle."
    "I guess that offends your sense of morality." He showed me his little teeth. "This is a de- k cent place."
    "They all are, friend.
    I walked away and left him standing in the doorway of his cinderblock office, the sunshine making silver highlights on his smooth pink skull.
    Ramirez came in the afternoon and marveled at the improvement. She got dressed in the afternoon. She was very reserved. She looked sleepy and moved slowly. In the evening she had another bad spell. And again, in the darkness, she talked.
    "I started to come back to life in spite of him, Trav. I seemed to realize that e was trying to destroy me, and I knew I would not be destroyed. I found a little quiet place way back inside myself, and no matter what he made me do, I could go back there and it didn't seem to matter. I began to feel that he had done his worst, and I was in some sense stronger than he was, and I would survive him, and get over him, and get free of him. I began to be able to lift my head and to think of ways of ending it.
    But... he couldn't let that happen, of course.
    He couldn't let me escape."
    it was difficult for her to try to tell me how he had blocked all escape. It became incoherent. And there was much of it she could not remember, fortunately. He kept her drunk so she would be easier to manage, and lessen the chance of her going over the side when she was unguarded, On that last cruise, Junior Allen had taken the boat over to Bimini. And there he had taken aboard a double-gaited little Haitian slut named Fancha, and from there they had gone to a remote bay in the Berry islands and anchored and stayed there a week, and completed the corruption and destruction of Lois Atkinson. She remembered nothing of the trip back to Candle Key. And there, in June, he had left for good, at his option, knowing he had left that gentle woman with all the explosive images and fragmentary memories that would kill her.
    I speculated about motive after Lois