Murder in the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

station platform. There was gray heavy paper around a small flat box. It was tied with pale blue ribbon. Inside the flat box was tissue paper. When he opened it he saw a plain gold money clip. The engraving on it was very tiny. R.L. to B.H. There were five one-hundred-dollar bills in the clip, twice folded. It was the newest and crispest money he had ever seen.
    He sat with the money in his hand. He thought of her and of her wrinkled simian face and her heavy breasts. He thought of the pleased and surprised look on Bill Tilley’s face when they had shaken hands after the match. He shut his hard brown hand on the money and he looked out the train window. After a long time he uncrumpled the bills, smoothed them out against his thigh and put them back in the money clip and put the clip in his pocket
     
    Cutler looked thinner, tireder, older. “I heard about it. I got three letters about it, from dear friends. Get your stuff out of the Carranak today.”
    “But I…”
    “You threw it away. You were nothing. You wanted to keep on being nothing. Now I’m going to let you keep on being nothing. Get out of here.”
    Cutler, he found out later, tried to fix his wagon with all tournament committees, but because Cutler had as many enemies as he had friends, it didn’t work. Bunny found sponsorship. He did better in the next few tournaments. Never top man, but a creditable showing. By the time he was twenty-one he was a tournament veteran. He knew several specifics for hangovers. His game was more clever, though not as powerful. Due to the peculiar customs of amateur tennis, he lived very well indeed. He had long since given up U.C.L.A. When not on the tournament circuit, he was a popular and engaging house guest. And he had learned to identify the Regina Lorrings of the tennis world at fifty paces, and to respond to them. From them he acquired his own car, matched luggage, a Rolex watch in a solid gold case, a Zeiss camera, cashmere jackets, cruise tickets and, whenever possible, cash.
    When he was drafted he sold most of his possessions and put the money away in a Building and Loan Society. He went through basic, was given a commission in Special Services and assigned to a large camp in the southwest where he gave regular tennis instruction to field grade officers and played exhibition games with other tennis stars who passed through the camp. It was a pleasant life and, but for a certain unfortunate episode with the wife of a full colonel, he could have stayed there for the duration. He found himself assigned to Korea and, as the word had gone ahead of him through the West Point Protective Association, assigned to a test area in Japan. He began to work out seriously and regularly at the Officers’ Club near Tokyo. He got permission to enter the All Pacific Tournament and made such a splendid showing he was sent on tour to Australia and New Zealand playing exhibitions.
    At the time of his discharge he almost had his big game back again. But he was twenty-five, and he had lost a lot of time. He did get on the Davis Cup squad as an alternate. After that, during the next two years both his energies and his charm seemed to wear a little thin. It is one thing to be called a tennis bum. It is something else again to be called a tennis bum and be knocked down simultaneously.
    The week after that happened he turned pro. That change warranted no press coverage. He went on two tours, one slightly profitable, and one not profitable at all. Through good luck, after several jobs that did not work out, he at last landed the job of tennis pro at the Oswando Club in Westchester. There were six splendid indoor courts, and so it was a year-round job. He had found that he liked working with kids. He was thirty-three that first year at Oswando. All he knew was tennis. All he would ever know was tennis. And the future had begun to look very black.
    Betty Oldbern came to him to be “brushed up” on her tennis. She was nineteen. She was not