Read Online The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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something that paid good money but didn't have much of a future. So she got out of it maybe because she was scared or tired or something. They wanted her back, and kept after her for a little while. But she refused. Her office skills were rusty, but she got them back fast. And then she started looking around and saw Billy. A new career."
"Had she been living in Lauderdale before she went to work for Ingraham?"
"Oh, no. Miami."
About an hour later I drove her home. She had started yawning. We had agreed it had been a good evening, and we ought to try it again. "Next time I'll cook Duck Annabelle," she said drowsily. "Love this weird old truck of yours."
She was way down the beach in one of the prehistoric condos, renting a one-bedroom job that came cheap because it was on the sixth floor and the elevators had been out of service for a year.
The roof leaked badly, but that was up on the tenth floor. There were no corridor lights, so she had to carry a flashlight in her purse. The Condominium Association had run out of funds when the big stuff started breaking. The pool was full of bushes, and the landscaping was returning to its original condition of pepper bushes and palmetto. Only a third of the units were occupied. Nobody knew who owned the empty ones, the city, the county, the banks or the estates of deceased retireds who'd moved into the Plaza del Rio long ago. She was anxious to get a job and move out before she got mugged in the stairwell. It was such a sad and sorry place I was tempted to ask her to move aboard the Flush until she got her life rearranged, but I was not ready for complications. She was pleasant and she was fun and she was a handsome woman, and she needed help but she wouldn't accept any.
I walked her up to her door, kissed the tip of her nose and felt my way back out into the night. The book bomb kept going off in the back of my mind, ripping Horatio and Emiliano to bits. That night I dreamed I was looking through a huge hole in a cement-block wall, staring in at racks and racks of bright dresses. I heard a ticking and looked down and saw the package addressed to me, right in front of my bare toes.
Six
IF SOMEONE makes a careful and sophisticated and almost foolproof attempt to kill you and they miss, it is, as Meyer announced on Sunday, two days before Christmas, a reasonable assumption they will try again.
"Also," he said, "one can expect the next attempt to be as subtle and as deadly as the first. You do realize, Travis, that the theft of a gift book and an explosion behind a mall may not be linked."
"But I should live as though they were."
"Precisely. Now let's see if we can come up with a list of people that anxious to send you to that big marina in the sky."
We discussed it for an hour and a half, and to my surprise we could come up with but six names, and they went way back, most of them. The seventh was not a name. The seventh, in Meyer's professorial script, read: "Someone who thinks you killed the three young people aboard the Sundowner."
"Let's break that last one down," Meyer said. "I say we rule out the dentist. If he thought you murdered his little girl, he might come after you with a gun. But with a certain hesitation. And from what you say, the Cannon clan would not care that much who did in their son Howard. So we have the girl from Peru. I happen to have the clipping right here. Gigliermina Reyes y Fonseca. A diplomat's daughter. Both those G's are pronounced as hard G's, as in 'begin.'"
"Thank you."
"But the contemporary nickname is usually with soft G's. Gigi. You're welcome."
"There were the three little men in business suits who came to Billy to find out who found his boat. Latins. Two didn't have any English, apparently. Why would they want to know?"
Meyer went into meditation for several minutes. He finally said, "We can play with another variation, Travis. Boat owner hires man to get boat back any way he can, and punish those who took it. You will say that it
"Had she been living in Lauderdale before she went to work for Ingraham?"
"Oh, no. Miami."
About an hour later I drove her home. She had started yawning. We had agreed it had been a good evening, and we ought to try it again. "Next time I'll cook Duck Annabelle," she said drowsily. "Love this weird old truck of yours."
She was way down the beach in one of the prehistoric condos, renting a one-bedroom job that came cheap because it was on the sixth floor and the elevators had been out of service for a year.
The roof leaked badly, but that was up on the tenth floor. There were no corridor lights, so she had to carry a flashlight in her purse. The Condominium Association had run out of funds when the big stuff started breaking. The pool was full of bushes, and the landscaping was returning to its original condition of pepper bushes and palmetto. Only a third of the units were occupied. Nobody knew who owned the empty ones, the city, the county, the banks or the estates of deceased retireds who'd moved into the Plaza del Rio long ago. She was anxious to get a job and move out before she got mugged in the stairwell. It was such a sad and sorry place I was tempted to ask her to move aboard the Flush until she got her life rearranged, but I was not ready for complications. She was pleasant and she was fun and she was a handsome woman, and she needed help but she wouldn't accept any.
I walked her up to her door, kissed the tip of her nose and felt my way back out into the night. The book bomb kept going off in the back of my mind, ripping Horatio and Emiliano to bits. That night I dreamed I was looking through a huge hole in a cement-block wall, staring in at racks and racks of bright dresses. I heard a ticking and looked down and saw the package addressed to me, right in front of my bare toes.
Six
IF SOMEONE makes a careful and sophisticated and almost foolproof attempt to kill you and they miss, it is, as Meyer announced on Sunday, two days before Christmas, a reasonable assumption they will try again.
"Also," he said, "one can expect the next attempt to be as subtle and as deadly as the first. You do realize, Travis, that the theft of a gift book and an explosion behind a mall may not be linked."
"But I should live as though they were."
"Precisely. Now let's see if we can come up with a list of people that anxious to send you to that big marina in the sky."
We discussed it for an hour and a half, and to my surprise we could come up with but six names, and they went way back, most of them. The seventh was not a name. The seventh, in Meyer's professorial script, read: "Someone who thinks you killed the three young people aboard the Sundowner."
"Let's break that last one down," Meyer said. "I say we rule out the dentist. If he thought you murdered his little girl, he might come after you with a gun. But with a certain hesitation. And from what you say, the Cannon clan would not care that much who did in their son Howard. So we have the girl from Peru. I happen to have the clipping right here. Gigliermina Reyes y Fonseca. A diplomat's daughter. Both those G's are pronounced as hard G's, as in 'begin.'"
"Thank you."
"But the contemporary nickname is usually with soft G's. Gigi. You're welcome."
"There were the three little men in business suits who came to Billy to find out who found his boat. Latins. Two didn't have any English, apparently. Why would they want to know?"
Meyer went into meditation for several minutes. He finally said, "We can play with another variation, Travis. Boat owner hires man to get boat back any way he can, and punish those who took it. You will say that it
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