Paradise Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

gun.
    “There’s plenty to bargain,” Mike said, patient with his brothers. “We don’t even know who sent the man.”
    “It don’t matter,” Rat said, with a sudden surge of intelligence.
    Mike pinched his mustache. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you eat stracciatelle with this man? Frog never fucked us. The D.A. did.”
    “Mikey, Mikey,” Rat said. “He’s the D.A.’s boy.”
    Mike turned to Holden, his mustache flaming in the sun that broke through the porch. “Frog, is that right? Did the D.A. deputize you?”
    “I never worked for Abruzzi.”
    “It don’t matter,” Rat said. “It comes to the same thing.”
    “It’s not the same thing ... Frog, the D.A. is practicing genocide on my family. You know that.”
    “But if you hadn’t touched his daughter-in-law, I wouldn’t be here.”
    Mike’s eyes went beady the way his brothers’ did. “Frog, who’s sitting in your car? Some ice man you brought? I pity the bastard.”
    “It’s Goldie. He came along for the ride.”
    “You should have said so. Invite him inside. He’ll have some spumoni with us,” Mike said, fondling his holster. And Holden shivered under his shirt, shivered for Goldie. He shouldn’t have brought his tailor on the job. And then Rat intervened.
    “Mikey, should we show him the little darling?” Rat said. “She can have some of our ice cream.” He left the living room, returned with Fay Abruzzi, and began to titter with Ed. The daughter-in-law wasn’t wearing any clothes. Holden didn’t go searching below her neck. But he couldn’t avoid the woman’s breasts. She had big shoulders. There weren’t any bruises on her arms. She looked at Holden and lowered her eyes.
    “She does the cooking,” Rat said.
    “Frog, we didn’t touch her,” Mike insisted. “I’m a married man.”
    “She does the cooking,” Rat said. Holden pulled the .22 out of his pants and shot Red Mike. Mike’s lips pursed as he fell. The hole in his forehead could have been a red dime. Ed and Rat were horrified. Holden shot them both before they remembered the deer rifles they had.
    The woman never screamed. She watched the three dead men, her neck high as a swan.
    “Come,” Holden said. “Where’s your clothes?”
    He had to ask her twice.
    “They ripped them,” she said, “ripped them up and used them for rags ... so I couldn’t escape.”
    He’d never heard a woman talk with such a fine melody. Her voice was softer than Goldie’s wool. But he didn’t have time to chat with the bitch. And the open forks of her body made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t relax around a naked woman he didn’t know. Her ripeness bothered Holden, obliged him to consider Andrushka’s chest.
    He wasn’t going to pull clothes off three dead men. He’d have to find other things for Fay to wear. He went into the closets and discovered a whole new wardrobe each brother had. He dressed Fay Abruzzi like some kind of man. She didn’t object. Her bosoms disappeared under the drape of Red Mike’s shirt. Holden felt relieved.
    He had to send her out of the bungalow in a pair of Eddie’s sandals. Goldie stood on the porch with a .22. Now she could identify his tailor.
    “I was worried,” Goldie said.
    “Get back into the car.”
    “I heard three shots, and—”
    “Get back into the car.”
    Goldie returned to the Lincoln.
    A limo seemed to come out of the sand dunes with Venetian blinds. Holden never looked. One of his stoolies, Harrington, owned a car service, and Harrington himself had arrived in the Rockaways.
    Holden led Fay to Harrington’s limousine. She tightened under the shirt. “Where are you taking me?”
    “Home. But I’m not taking you. My associate is.”
    “Do you work for the police?”
    “Not very often,” Holden said.
    She entered the limo and Harrington took off.
    Holden didn’t like it at all. He’d killed three men and she’d never cried. He’d expected her to shove around in a shaky dream. But she talked like a music