All The Way Read Online Free PDF

her in my arms and kissed her. She came to me readily, and was as deftly and pleasantly co-operative as before. If that was the only way to achieve a calm and rational conversation, by God she was willing.
    “What about the tout business?” she asked after a while.
    “It was nothing,” I said. “You know how they operate. You’ve seen ’em by the dozens passing out their sheets at the entrance to racetracks—Clocker Joe, Stablehand Maguire, Exercise Boy—no imagination, competing with each other, and working for buttons. So I made a deal with this one; I’d put him in the big time for half the take. We set it up as a telegraphic service and I bought time on a Tijuana radio station to sell him—a real saturation build-up about the time Santa Anita was opening. Lot of spot announcements and a quarter-hour of hillbilly junk with a plug every minute or two. That’s about all there was to it, besides convincing him he had to raise his prices. Obviously, nobody has any confidence in a cheap tip on a horse race; you’ve got to charge plenty to be good. We were splitting two thousand a week for a while.”
    “What happened?”
    “He couldn’t stand prosperity; turned out to be a lush. Kept getting his records all fouled up so he couldn’t remember who got the winners yesterday. And you’re dead without records, obviously.”
    “I see,” she said thoughtfully.
    I woke once during the night. She was lying quite still beside me, but after a while I began to suspect she was awake. I put my hand on her thigh. It was tense and rigid. Her arms felt the same way, and when I slid my hand down to hers, lying at her side, I found it was clenched into a fist.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    She made no reply. I asked again. She still said nothing. I gave up, and after a while I went back to sleep.

Three
    When I awoke it was after eight. I groped for a cigarette, lit it, and turned to look at her. She was sleeping quietly with the dark hair like spilled ink across the pillow. She had the flat stomach and narrow hips of a fashion model and rather small breasts that were spread out and flattened as she lay on her back. I looked at the slender patrician face with the long lashes like soot against her skin; it was a willful face, I thought, and it just escaped being bony, but the bones were good. She was no pin-up, but she reminded me of something very thin and expensive that was made before good workmanship went out of style. I wondered what she wanted.
    Her bag was on the dresser; it might tell me something, I thought. I went over and opened it. A thin folder held eleven $100 Express checks. I pulled out the wallet and checked her driver’s license. What little she’d told me about herself appeared to be the truth. Mrs. Marion Forsyth, it said, 714 Beauregard Drive, Thomaston, La. Hair, black. Eyes, blue, 5’-7”. 112 pounds. Born 8 November, 1923 . She’d be thirty-four in a few days. This surprised me; I wouldn’t have thought she was over twenty-nine or thirty. The wallet held about six hundred dollars. I dropped it back in the bag.
    I dressed, and looked out into the corridor. It was clear. I went back to my room, called down for orange juice and coffee and the Miami Herald, and had a quick shower and shave. It was nine twenty-five and I was just finishing the coffee when she called. She was going over to Miami, and would be back at noon. The message was as clipped and precise as an inter-office memo.
    I killed a couple of hours swimming off the beach and had just come in and changed when the phone rang. This time her voice was a little friendlier, and there was a hint of suppressed excitement in it. “I’ve got something to show you,” she said.
    I knocked lightly on 316, and she opened almost immediately. Her hair was up in the chignon, of course, softly clubbed and worn low on the nape of the neck, and while the dress was just a summer cotton she looked as slender and smart as a fashion show. I kissed her.