Read Online Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A

that.”
    “We’ll be careful, Kyle. Terribly careful. I learned things from my husband. I remembered a name. I’ve remembered it for a long time. A man in Mexico City. Manuel Antonio Flores. He’s expensive. But he can sell Argentine citizenship, the kind where they can’t extradite you.”
    “Very simple. I just pick up a couple hundred thousand and we got to Mexico City and become Argentinians.”
    Her eyes glowed. “This is luck, Kyle! Can’t you see it? Can’t you taste it? Luck! The best thing in the world. Everything fits.”
    I pushed her away and drained the drink and stood up. I began to pace back and forth. She sat and watched me. When I glanced at her, I knew where I’d seen that expression before. Mona Lisa. Now I knew why that old gal had smiled that way. A little victory smile. Suddenly I hated the black-headed tart on the day bed. Hated her for both her violence and her greed.
    I stood heavily in front of her. “I’m a fool, Emily. But not a damn fool. I’ve never stolen a dime in my life.”
    “Bully for you,” she said softly.
    There was a certain kind of revenge I could take. I reached for her.
    She said quietly, “If you touch me, I’ll scream as loud as I can. I’ll scream before I have a chance to … respond to being hurt.”
    I knew she would. It was on her face, in her eyes. I picked up the shaker, went into the hall, pulled her door shut, and went down to my own place. I showered, changed, went out, and ate a steak that was more expensive than I could afford. When I first went down into my apartment, it shocked me to find that it was still daylight. It gave me that same subtle sense of disorientation as when you come out of an afternoon movie.
    I went to bed, telling myself that I was cured of her.

Chapter Six
    F riday, in the bank, I tried to keep my mind off it. But the bank money I handled had a new feel in my hands, a new texture.
    I don’t think the bank teller ever lived who didn’t play the mental game of how to beat the system. It’s a dangerous game to play. You do it as a sort of mental exercise. You are led to do it because in the books, in the news, there are always stories about those who tried and failed. Being egocentric, you tell yourself that if you ever really
wanted
to jump the fence, you could do a smarter job than the slob who just got himself caught.
    You think and think and think. The checks on you are pretty intricate. A teller can’t really take out enough to make it worth while between auditings. You never get into the main vault without people watching you.
    Years before I had decided, playing my mental game, that the only possible way to make a decent haul is to have an accomplice upstairs. Once I had arrived at that decision, I had given no more thought to the mechanics of it. Now I had the accomplice upstairs, ready made. I knew I wasn’t going to let her angle me into turning thief. So I told myself there was no harm in giving a little thought to the mechanics.
    All day Friday I was slow, and kept catching myself up in one error after another.
    At the end of the day I had a double error somewhere in the checkup, and couldn’t clear it until quarter of six, much to the disgust of all concerned. But while I was fumbling through my job, something cold and sharp and accurate in the back of my mind was ticking over like the timing mechanism on a bomb.
    Saturday morning at ten-thirty, Jo Anne, her eyes dancing, met me in town and we took a bus out to Hilson Gardens. She chattered all the way out, seeming not to notice the depression that I was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide.
    There was quite a crowd there. It was a privately owned housing development. The propaganda sheet they handed out had a lot to say about utilization of space, dynamic design, functional living. The apartments in the first unit to be completed were certainly unlike anything else in Thrace. Panel heat, living rooms designed for television, sliding-door closets, glass shower