Gently Go Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

contents. He handed it back. She grinned again. She took out a cigarette and lit it.
    ‘Man, I’ve known brighter squares,’ she said.
    ‘Take that smirk off your face,’ said Mrs Elton.
    ‘Like my face is my own,’ Maureen said. ‘I don’t have to keep it straight for nobody.’
    Gently watched her for a moment. She puffed smoke towards him. She flicked her hair once or twice. She kept her eyes away from his. He said:
    ‘How well did you know Lister?’
    ‘I saw him around,’ Maureen said. ‘I wasn’t never a chick of his. I saw him around, like that.’
    ‘Didn’t he used to be friends with Laurie?’
    ‘Till the Turner chick,’ Maureen said.
    ‘Who else was he friends with?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Lots,’ Maureen said. ‘We all liked Johnny.’
    ‘Name some of the others.’
    ‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘There was Sidney Bixley and Dicky Deeming. And Jack Salmon. And Frankie Knights. Like he used to be way out with Dicky, but Dicky’s the coolest. We dig him big.’
    ‘Tell me about Dicky,’ Gently said.
    ‘Like I have done,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s crazy, he’s wild, he’s way out with the birds. We meet at his pad sometimes. He’s got a pad in Eastgate Street. We’ve got a combo and make with the music – man, it’s the wildest. I go for Dicky.’
    ‘He’s some sort of a writer,’ said Setters. ‘A long-hair. I checked him.’
    ‘He’s nice,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘He ain’t one of these silly kids.’
    ‘What does he write?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Booksy jazz,’ Maureen said. ‘He fakes some action for the papers, but that’s nowhere stuff, it isn’t it. Like he writes some wild poetry, jazz that really makes the touch. And he’s writing a book too. Man, that book is the craziest.’
    ‘And he was a special friend of Lister’s?’ Gently asked.
    ‘He’s friends with all of us,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve got big eyes for that jeebie. But he don’t never have a regular chick.’
    ‘You’ve seen him since the accident?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘I saw him last night.’
    ‘What does he think about what’s happened?’
    ‘A kick,’ Maureen said. ‘The mostest.’
    ‘A kick for Lister?’
    ‘Like what else?’ she said. ‘Like he was touching and heard the birds. When you shoot the ton you get to touching. It sends you, man. Like you must go.’
    ‘How old are you?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I’m seventeen,’ she said. ‘Like Laurie.’
    ‘And where did you pick up all this jargon?’
    ‘Not from me, she didn’t,’ said Mrs Elton.
    Maureen flipped her hair again, gave her other ankle a scratch.
    ‘Squares,’ she said. ‘Always squares. It’s a nowhere drag. It hangs me up.’
     
    ‘So that’s what you get,’ Setters said as they went down to the car. ‘Her brother talked like that too until I scared the daylights out of him. You put the fifty-dollar question. Where do they get this hokum from? It isn’t film-stuff, not the most of it, nor they don’t get it on TV. It just creeps in like an epidemic. It frightens me. They don’t care.’
    Gently got in, slammed his door. ‘I know where it comes from,’ he said. ‘How it got here is another matter. I’d like the answer to that too.’
    ‘It came with the overspills,’ Setters mused.
    Gently shook his head. ‘No. There’s something like it west of Whitehall, but not in Bethnal Green and Stepney.’
    ‘They don’t care,’ Setters repeated. ‘That’s what’sdifferent about this lot. They’ve got that thing about touching something. And they’re not quite with you.’
    ‘What’s the Listers’ address?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Now there’s someone who cares,’ Setters said. 

CHAPTER THREE
    T HEY CHARGED FOUR thousand eight hundred and fifty for the bungalows in Chase Drive and they looked worth about half of that, which is known in some circles as modern architecture. The Lister bungalow was the last in the road, the road being a two-hundred yard cul-de-sac. There were similar