Once a Mutt (Trace 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

long-ago adolescence, he had probably suffered from acne—although, Trace thought, “suffered” was the wrong word. People suffered from acne when other people made fun of them. That had never happened with this person. Even when he was not around, kids would have said, “Yes, Gargantua, yes, he has real nice skin. And a sweet gentle disposition. Gargantua is the salt of the earth.” He probably never even knew he had acne. Maybe he thought everyone else was wrong and who was to say nay?
    The man was as big as Trace and he had the sloping shoulders and stringy arm muscles of the very strong, who don’t have to lift weights to prove it.
    Trace put his age at around forty but wasn’t sure because he had very little experience with Cro-Magnon man.
    He had a scowl on his face. Somehow it made him look more appealing than having blood dripping from his mouth, which Trace thought was the most likely alternative. His eyes, fixed on Trace like a marksman’s sights, were beady.
    Trace reached under his jacket and turned on the small portable tape recorder that he always carried, taped to his skin under his shirt.
    He waited until the man was almost at the gate and then reached over and hit the buzzer button one more time for good measure.
    He smiled at the man, who did not smile back.
    “That isn’t funny,” the man said. Even his voice was menacing, low-pitched, soft and hissing as if he spoke only on the inhale.
    “Sorry,” Trace said. “I was ringing the bell so long it just got to be a habit.”
    “People oughta watch their habits. Some of them aren’t healthy.”
    “But some are very healthy,” Trace said. “For instance, I’m in this habit of taking two hours of karate training every day. Now, that’s what I call a good habit. You never know who you might meet.”
    “Never know,” the man said, and sipped air. “I’m in the habit of carrying an ax handle myself, for just the same reason. What do you want?”
    “That’s neat,” Trace said. “Hardly anybody in my crowd carries clubs anymore.”
    “What do you want?” the man said.
    “I want to see Mrs. Paddington.”
    “You have an appointment?”
    “Not exactly,” Trace said.
    “Then you can’t exactly see her.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because she doesn’t see a lot of people,” the man said.
    “Maybe she’ll make an exception in my case,” Trace said.
    “Why should she?”
    “I’m from the insurance company. Something about two million dollars,” Trace said.
    The man paused. Trace promised to remember that for the future: mentioning a couple of million dollars had a way of catching people’s attention and bringing civilization to the provinces.
    “You wait here,” the man ordered. “I’ll see if she’ll see you.”
    “I’ll wait,” Trace said. As the man walked away, Trace pressed the button again. Trace couldn’t hear it, but obviously the man could because he wheeled around and glared at Trace.
    “Sorry. Just fooling around,” Trace said.
    “You fool around too much.”
    “Well, paaaaardon me,” Trace said.
    While he waited for the man to return, he wondered how he was going to come up with ten thousand dollars. He had no illusions about earning anything except his expenses on this case and Chico seemed intransigent. He had no savings left and there wasn’t much he could do to cut down on his life-style and make it less costly. He looked at the cigarette in his hand. Maybe he could switch to generic cigarettes, the kind they sold in supermarkets in those black-and-white packages that made them look like poor people’s beans.
    He discarded that idea right away. He had smoked a generic cigarette once. It was a moment he would never forget because it had answered a very large question. Trace had been thinking that there should be a way to recycle horse manure from racetracks. Supposedly it was good fertilizer, so why didn’t every racetrack in America have a manure-processing plant built right next door to it? He had