Cast a Yellow Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyewitnesses who saw a Negro with a rifle. They need someone who can make it down the elevator, out into the lobby, and across the street. They picked me.”
    â€œCould you do it?”
    Padillo held up his glass to the light and looked at it as if it contained an unfriendly cockroach. “I suppose so. I could do it and feel nothing. Zero. I think that’s what I’m most afraid of. It’s been getting a little empty. But say the word and I’ll do it and I won’t get caught and you might get your wife back.”
    â€œMight?”
    â€œShe’ll be dead, of course, but they could let you live long enough to bury her.”
    â€œYou don’t think they’d like to have me walking around with all my inside knowledge?”
    â€œNeither you nor Fredl nor me. The two who made me the proposition are to be the eye witnesses. If you include Van Zandt, that’s a conspiracy of three and that’s damned big for something like this.”
    â€œWith us, it’s six,” I said.
    â€œThat’s why they won’t want us around.”
    I looked at my watch. It was almost three in the morning and the apartment seemed to be assuming the impersonal quality of one of the rooming houses that had once stood in its place. Padillo was sitting in the chair, his drink on the coffee table, his head in his hands. He seemed to be giving the rug a careful examination.
    â€œI should have gone to Switzerland,” he said again.
    â€œBut you didn’t.”
    â€œI wasn’t very smart. I must be getting old. I feel old.”
    â€œYou’re two months younger than I am.”
    â€œSo what do you want me to do? Go down to the FBI with you or take out my Husqvarna with the 7X scope and pop away at the old man?”
    â€œIf I go to the police, they’ll kill her,” I said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI don’t want her killed. I don’t want me killed. I don’t even want you killed which proves how generous I’m getting now that the shock’s wearing off. But they’ll kill all three of us if you shoot him.”
    â€œI can almost guarantee that they’ll kill you and Fredl,” Padillo said. “It might take longer for me, but then they’re not so much concerned about me because I’m not the kind to turn myself in for the murder of a visiting Prime Minister. They could take their time, but they’d put someone on it and some day I’d get careless or he’d get lucky.”
    â€œThey knew I’d figure it out,” I said. “They knew I’d realize that they wouldn’t want Fredl or me around after the assassination. They may know I’m not overly bright, but they must also know that I’m not that thick.”
    Padillo took his head out of his hands and looked at me. “It’s your turn to get the drinks,” he said. “My side hurts.”
    I got up and went over to the bar and mixed two more.
    â€œThey don’t think you’re thick,” he said. “They just think you suffer from something called hope—hope that they won’t kill Fredl if I kill Van Zandt, hope that they won’t kill you, and hope that you’ll be able to outsmart them. Hope even that they’ll change their minds and call it all off because it’s raining that day.” He paused for a moment. “But they believe that the only hope you really believe in is for me to kill him.”
    â€œAnd you’d do it?”
    â€œYou call it.”
    â€œThere’s nothing else I can do.” I made it a statement, but I meant it as a question.
    Padillo examined his glass for trespassers again. “Maybe I’m getting the DTs,” he said, “or maybe it was my African vacation. I’ve got the habit of looking for strangers.” He took a swallow of the drink. “There’s one thing that can be done,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTry to get her back before they kill