Best Friends Read Online Free PDF

turned out to look like the wing of guest bedrooms, on a closet shelf in the first of which he found a folded blanket of moss-green wool, trimmed in dark-green satin. The bedspread and curtains contained or represented complementary shades of the same color, which he now thought of as being Kristin’s though she had surely worn many others on the multitudinous occasions he had been in her company.
    Down in the kitchen, relieved to be on the last leg of the first phase of his mission, Roy swathed the coffee machine in the blanket and clasped the burden to his chest. Not heavy for someone whose lightest workout featured fifty-pound dumbbells, it was, however, extremely bulky and tall enough to obscure his line of sight, both ahead and down, and in exiting the house he was treading blindly on unfamiliar terrain, his cheek against the blanket, redolent of the natural fragrance of virgin wool.
    He had reached the open Alvis and deposited the wrapped machine onto the pilot’s pristine leather seat—the upholstery, desiccated by the years, was the only item of original equipment that had had to be replaced—when behind him he heard a demanding yet thin and uncertain voice. He turned and saw a policeman who displayed a drawn pistol. For an instant he thought the very young cop, smooth below the eyes and without sideburns below the blue cap, was merely demonstrating the use of the weapon in a hypothetical situation.
    â€œI said freeze, scumbag.”
    Roy elevated his tremulous hands. “I’m no burglar. I’m—”
    With his left hand the policeman switched on the little radio that clung to his right epaulet, but Roy’s abortive comment unnerved him further. He brought the hand back to join the other in a double Hollywood grip on the pistol, and in his tenor, very near a scream, cried, “MOTHERFUCKER, I said freeze !”
    It was Roy who brought himself under control. “Go ahead,” he said firmly, even though he was now in more danger. “Call your dispatcher. I’m not resisting.”
    The officer did as suggested, spitting into the perforated black box in rapid code, of which all Roy could understand was “holding him at gun-point.”
    Roy asked respectfully whether he could say something, but he was first obliged to turn and spread ‘em, endure a frisk, and then submit to a small-of-the-back handcuffing. “Okay,” he said when this was done, “my best friend owns this house. He’s in the hospital, and he asked—”
    The young cop had holstered his gun, but left the strap loose so as to be able to draw at the first hint of funny business. He interrupted, sneering, “Sure he did. You just sit there on that fender.”
    â€œNo,” Roy told him. “Nobody sits on the coachwork of a vintage car. This is the original paint.”
    The policeman was so new in authority as to be hypersensitive to what he identified as insubordination and might well have done something at this point that would have jeopardized his career at its outset, had not another patrol car roared around the corner of the house and skidded to a stop, spraying gravel—a fragment or two of which flew close enough to the Alvis as almost to give Roy the seizure he had not quite suffered at the point of a gun.
    Two more cops left the vehicle, one brandishing a shotgun. “Have you got ‘em all?” he asked the officer with Roy.
    â€œMr. Courtright!” cried the taller policeman.
    â€œHi, Hal,” Roy said drily. “Tell your associate who I am.”
    Hal addressed the young officer. “What’s going on here, Howie?”
    The thickset man clutching the shotgun asked, “Any more inside the house, Howie?”
    Howie frowned at Hal. “You know him?”
    â€œHe’s Mr. Roy Courtright. He owns Incomparable Cars, you know, on Peregrine?” Hal prognathously smiled from one to the other, then noticed the Alvis. “Hey,