Dead Low Tide Read Online Free PDF Page B

was going to hammer me one. And in the front of my mind was the thought, Let him just twitch and I’ll nail him for luck.
    The stillness slowly went out of him; he forked a cigarette out of his shirt pocket with two fingers and popped the match on his thumbnail, never once taking his eyes off mine. His eyes were a curiously pale amber shade, with darker flecks near the pupils. You couldn’t see into them. Your look bounced right off.
    “Let’s get in the shade,” he said.
    I followed him over and he sat on some cinder blocks in the shade of a wall. His thighs, like chunks of phone pole, looked as if they’d split the faded khaki pants.
    “You get pretty hot,” he said.
    “It’s been a long time building up.”
    “Now you’re making a hundred a week.”
    “If I’m working for you.”
    He didn’t answer that. He looked down the bay toward the distant bridge. It was up, and waiting cars winked in the heat shimmy, and a big cabin cruiser came through.
    “Gordy Brogan can handle the men. Big Dake has the construction experience,” he said. “Can you handle the two of them?”
    “I have to. I kid Gordy along. I ask Big Dake’s opinion on things and tell him how smart he is.”
    “They can’t work together.”
    “That’s no secret, John.”
    “I’ll get a girl down in the office,” he said. “And I’ll get somebody to chase materials.” I had the feeling he was talking to himself.
    “Then what do I do?”
    “Then you’ll come out here. Maybe I better fix it so you and Dake and Gordy could finish this thing off.”
    “What’ll you be doing?”
    “Yes, I think that might make some sense. And if it has to come out that way, Andy, I’ll set it up so there’ll be a damn fine bonus for you that nobody can cheat you out of.”
    “I don’t—”
    “But you’ll have to start out here soon as I can pick up those other people. I’m glad you popped off. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s an answer.” He stood up and hitched at his belt. He looked at me and through me. “By God, when you plan something for as long as I’ve planned this, you do it, even if you haven’t got as much reason as you thought you had.”
    “Is something bothering you, John?”
    He focused on me. “Bothering me? Nothing bothers me long. I was just thinking this wouldn’t get finished. Now I know it will, and I can think better.”
    I said I better get back and he told me he’d locate a girl. I drove back to town slowly. I kept turning over what he had said, like a man hunting crabs around the rocks at low tide. I fitted a lot of kinds of trouble to what he had said, and came up with one answer that fitted everything. Suppose a doctor had told him he was on borrowed time. One of those things that will hit you in six days, six weeks, or six months.
    “Even if you haven’t got as much reason as you thought you had.” No long life to enjoy the money he’d make.
    “A bonus that nobody can cheat you out of.” After I’m dead.
    “And if it has to come out that way.” Come out the way the doctor had said.
    “Now I know it will, and I can think better.” My mind will be more at ease. I can plan things, and see that Mary Eleanor’s future is assured.
    Truly, I thought, a hell of a thing. A man like that. Tough as mangrove roots. Some little damn thing that muscles couldn’t handle. That’s the way it went. A man sickly all his life can hit ninety because he takes such good care of himself. It had been almost too simple. I’d turned down Mary Eleanor, and then gone ahead and found out exactly what she wanted to know. And come out of it with a raise. Hell, if he was that sick, I could understand his not wanting to tell her. He’d be smart enough to go to the best doctors and demand the truth. Maybe it wasn’t the best policy in the world to keep the little woman in the dark, but it was his business, not mine.
    Gordy Brogan called me a few minutes after I was back in the office, sore as hell about some copper tubing