J is for Judgement Read Online Free PDF

Henry Pitts, my Santa Teresa landlord. Henry's eighty-four years old and adorable: tall and lean, with a great set of legs. He's smart and good-natured, sharper than a lot of guys I know who are half his age. Lately he'd been on a tear because his older brother William, who was now eighty-six, was having a geriatric fling with Rosie, the Hungarian woman who owned the tavern down the street from us. William had come out from Michigan early the previous December, fighting off a bout of depression that descended on him in the wake of a heart attack. William was a trial under the best of circumstances, but his "brush with death" (as he referred to it) had exacerbated all his worst qualities. I gathered that Henry's other siblings -- Lewis, who was eighty-seven, Charlie, age ninety-one, and Nell, who turned ninety-four in December -- had taken a completely democratic family vote and, in Henry's absence, had awarded him custody.
    William's original two-week visit had now expanded to seven months, and the personal proximity was taking its toll. William, a self-absorbed hypochondriac, prissy, temperamental, and pious, had fallen in love with my friend Rosie, who was herself bossy, neurotic, flirtatious, opinionated, penny-pinching, and outspoken. It was a match made in heaven. Love had turned them both rather kittenish, and it was nearly more than Henry could bear. I thought it was cute, but what did I know?
    I finished the card to Henry and wrote one to Vera, employing a few carefully chosen Spanish phrases. The day seemed interminable, all heat and bugs, kids shrieking in the pool with ear-splitting regularity. Wendell and the woman seemed perfectly content to lie in the sunshine and brown themselves. Hadn't anyone ever warned them about wrinkles, skin cancer, and sun poisoning? I retreated into the shade at intervals, too restless to concentrate on the book I was reading. He certainly didn't behave like a man on the run. He acted like a man with all the time in the world. Maybe after five years he no longer thought of himself as a fugitive. Little did he know that officially he was dead.
    Around five, the viento negro began to blow. On a nearby side table, Wendell's newspapers gave a rattle, pages rimed into "napping attention like a set of canvas sails. I saw the woman snatch at them with annoyance, gathering them together with her towel and her beach hat. She slid her feet into her flip-flops and waited impatiently for Wendell to collect himself. He took a final plunge in the pool, apparently washing off the sunscreen before he joined her. I collected my belongings and left in advance, conscious that the two of them were not far behind. As anxious as I was to maintain a connection, I thought it unwise to be any more direct than I'd been. I might have introduced myself, striking up a conversation in which I might gradually bring the subject around to their current circumstances. I'd noticed, however, their scrupulous avoidance of any show of friendliness, and I had to guess they'd have shunned any overtures. Better to feign a similar disinterest than excite their suspicion.
    I went up to my room and shut the door behind me, watching through the fish-eye until I saw them pass. I had to assume they'd hole up the way the rest of us did until the winds had died. I took a shower and changed into a pair of dark cotton slacks and the dark cotton blouse that I'd worn on the plane. I stretched out on the bed and pretended to read, dozing intermittently until the corridors were quiet and no noises at all filtered up from the pool. I could still hear blowing sand slant against my sliding glass door in gusts. The hotel's air-conditioning, which was fitful at best, seemed to drone off and on in a fruitless attempt to cut into the heat. Sometimes the room would be refrigerator chilly. The rest of the time the air was merely tepid and stale. This was the kind of hotel that generates worries about exotic new strains of Legionnaires'