One Grave Too Many Read Online Free PDF

here,” he said.
    “Who gives a rat’s ass.” She walked to a marble-topped coffee table to pick up a crystal pitcher of martinis. “You’re somebody to talk to. I don’t see why I can’t talk to anyone I so please. What difference is it going to make! Have you ever thought about how very short a time you’re alive and how long a time you’re dead?”
    “Late at night,” answered Easy.
    “Really? I’m surprised you admit it. Nobody around here will, including my venerable patriarch of a husband,” Danny said. “There’s really no reason not to sleep with whoever you want. You know, there’s no heaven and there’s no burning hell or anything. There’s only … I don’t know, only nothing. Somebody else’s husband, somebody else’s wife … what can that really mean? It’s simply an arbitrary game, a let’s pretend thing.” She poured herself a fresh martini and drank it. “Why are you here?”
    “I’m a private investigator.”
    “Jesus H. Christ.” Danny refilled her glass. “Did old Santa Claus hire you?”
    “No, I was hired by Gay Holland to find her brother Gary.”
    “Names out of the past. Whatever-happened-to sort of people.” She carried the glass and the pitcher to the high windows. “What’s Gary up to these days?”
    “Can you tell me?”
    “I haven’t seen him for years and years.”
    “Not even when you worked for him in those margarine commercials?”
    “I’d forgotten about that.”
    “He’s been missing two days. Somebody tore his cottage apart looking for something.”
    “I only know Gary Marks in a business sense.”
    Easy moved around the coffee table and stopped a few feet behind her slim back. “Why not tell the truth? Doesn’t that fit in with your philosophy?”
    “Despite everything,” she said, talking not to him but toward the distant sea, “I don’t want to blow what I’ve got here. There’s nothing else I can tell you, Mr. Easy.”
    “If,” he said, “I don’t locate Gary in another day or so, I’m going to advise Gay to go to the police.”
    “Do,” said the girl. “A man in my husband’s position, he can talk to cops or he can tell them to shove it.”
    “San Amaro cops maybe. But not LA cops, or the FBI.”
    Danny snickered. “Oh, Jesus, Easy. You can buy any cop who ever lived. And the FBI … don’t you read the papers?”
    “Maybe so,” said Easy. “Okay, just worry about me then. I’m going to keep looking until …”
    “What the hell is this?” came a booming voice from the doorway.
    “You’re home early, Jake,” said Danny without turning.
    “Who’s this bastard? What’s he doing here?” Jacob Goffman came stalking across the room, a thickset man with short-cropped grey hair. He had his suit jacket over his arm, was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a wide scarlet tie. “One of your new lovers?”
    The girl faced her husband. “Jacob Goffman, John Easy,” she said. “John Easy, Jacob Goffman.”
    Ignoring Easy, the old man strode straight to Danny and grabbed the pitcher from her. “Boozing it up in the middle of the day.”
    “It’s the cocktail hour, Jake.”
    He threw the pitcher from him with a disgusted growl. It trailed gin and smashed against a Flemish painting on the wall. “You,” he said to Easy, “get out before I mop the floor with you.”
    “Famous thoughts of famous men,” said Danny, putting the rim of the glass to her lips.
    “Shut your fucking mouth,” roared the old man. He slapped the glass out of her hand.
    It went splashing into the window.
    Easy reached out and took hold of Goffman’s arm. “Don’t do that anymore,” he advised.
    “You trying to tell me …” The pressure on his arm began to bother him. “Okay, okay. But you just better get the hell out of here now, whoever you are.”
    Easy let go of him. To Danny he said, “Call me if you think of anything I ought to know. My office’s in Hollywood, on the Strip.”
    He walked out of the room, down the long