Assassins Have Starry Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’re going to stay married or not.
    Natalie said, “Your homicidal girl friend’s in a room downstairs, under observation. There’s a policeman in front of the door. She seems to be doing all right. No skull fracture or anything. I asked.”
    “Have you heard what they’re planning to do with her?”
    “Well, there was some talk of preferring charges as soon as you are well enough to testify.”
    “Charges?” I whispered. “What charges? She was trying to sell me a secondhand gun, since I’m interested in guns. Some fool had left a shell in the chamber and it went off. The noise startled her so she slipped and knocked over a pot of flowers. Why, you saw the whole thing with your own eyes.”
    Natalie lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in my direction. “If that’s the way you want it, darling.”
    “I had it coming,” I whispered. “I shot her boy-friend. I’m not apologizing, under the circumstances, but the girl was right in a sense: I made a decision nobody’s got a real right to make. The least I can do is accommodate myself to the fact that some people aren’t going to like me for it, and not mess up their lives any more than I’ve already done. She’s got it out of her system; it seems unlikely that she’ll try again. Tell them to let her go, Princess. They won’t get any testimony out of me.”
    Natalie watched me for a moment longer. I could not tell what she was thinking. She was wearing a gray-green cashmere sweater and a pleated plaid skirt that involved a good deal of the same color among several others. She looked like a college girl. The skirt rippled nicely when she moved. I’m a sucker for pleats. The sweater was a loose fit, and she put no severe strains on it; however, I have never understood the current fad for outsize bosoms. If I want milk I can always buy a cow.
    She said, “For a cold-blooded scientific bastard, you’re a surprisingly nice guy. Sometimes.” She stepped forward and leaned down to kiss me, holding the cigarette aloft. “I can hardly taste the man for the whiskers,” she said, smiling. “You look like Ernest Hemingway; you’re even getting some gray in spots.”
    “Well, you know who put it there.”
    “I suppose I ought to be jealous. Would you turn me loose if I tried to shoot you?”
    “Hell, no,” I said. “You’re dangerous.”
    “Don’t underestimate that girl just because she’s a blonde and doesn’t know how to dress.”
    “Underestimate her?” I whispered. “You sound as if I was planning a long and happy relationship with the kid.”
    “Kid, hell,” Natalie said. “She’s a couple of years older than I am. That robust type doesn’t grow up before forty.” She grinned her mischievous grin. “And how would I know what you’re planning? Well, I guess my tune’s up. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    Toward the end of the week it was decided that I was strong enough to have a little more work done on the interior; I spent the morning in surgery and had no visitors that day. The following day it started snowing and Natalie called up from Albuquerque where she had gone to pick up some clothes and stuff; she left a message with the nurse that the roads were too bad for her to make it back, which I could well believe, looking at the white stuff falling past the window. Our friends in the east seem to labor under the delusion that we live in a tropical climate; they forget that Albuquerque is five thousand feet in the air, and Santa Fe, seven thousand. You get some weird scenes around here in the winter, with all the desert country and its spiny vegetation covered with snow. There’s nothing more unlikely-looking than a snow-covered cactus.
    I lay in bed and tried not to feel neglected, and fell asleep doing it. A knock on the door awakened me.
    “Come in,” I said.
    It was one of Van Horn’s men. “Do you want to see a young fellow named Rasmussen, Dr. Gregory?”
    “A fellow named Rasmussen? Not a girl?”
    He shook his head.