Robert B. Parker Read Online Free PDF Page B

bartender.
    No vices
, Newman thought.
Won’t get drunk, won’t get fat, won’t get out of control. Some fun, a glass of soda water
. “Better be careful on the Perrier,” Newmansaid. “You know how you get after three. Just climb all over me.”
    She smiled. “Dream on, Aaron,” she said. “Have a rich fantasy life.”
    Hood was looking at her. “You okay?”
    “Sure,” Janet said. “Why shouldn’t I be okay?”
    “Aaron told me about last night,” Hood said.
    Janet frowned. She looked at Aaron. “Was that smart?”
    Newman shrugged. “I thought Chris could help me make sense out of it. Why not tell him?” Newman drank beer.
    “It’s not Chris,” Janet said. “But I don’t think it’s wise to talk about it to anyone. If it stops here that’s one thing, but who else will you tell? Have a few beers and …” She spread her hands, palms up.
    Hood said, “We were quiet about it. I won’t say a word. Who the hell else do I talk to but you?”
    “And just what was Chris going to help you make sense out of,” Janet said.
    “The whole thing. The shooting, the way they treated you, the way I had to go and tell the cops I was mistaken. The lieutenant called me yellow.” Newman drank more beer. “But I can’t let them harm you. Christ, you’re my whole life.”
    Janet said, “They threatened to harm you too.”
    Newman shrugged and looked at the bar top and shook his head as if to clear it.
    “Or the girls,” he said. “You know what I’m like. I’m a husband and a father before I’m anything else. It’s what makes life purposeful.”
    “How about the books,” Hood said.
    “They help, but they’re not family. That’s what I do, not what I am.”
    “You write good books, Aaron,” Hood said.
    “Yeah, about courage and the matter of honor and how things heal stronger at the break.”
    “Best since Hemingway,” Hood said. Janet sipped her Perrier.
    “And then two bums come around and humiliate my wife and I roll over and make gestures of submission.”
    “Oh, Aaron, don’t be so goddamned melodramatic,” Janet said. “What else are you expected to do?”
    The bartender brought more beer. Newman finished his glass and poured more.
    “I could kill them,” he said.
    Something stirred in the back of Chris Hood’s eyes and tugged briefly at the corners of his mouth.
    Janet said, “Oh, Aaron, grow up. You don’t even know who they are.”
    Newman still stared at the bar top, his head lowered between his shoulders. “I know who he is,” he said.
    “Aaron,” Janet said, “you know how you are when you’re drinking.”
    “I’m not drunk,” Newman said.
    “That’s one of the things you always say when you’re drinking.”
    “You think I’d be scared to?”
    “Kill someone?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Aaron, it is a little unusual to sit about in a restaurant and discuss killing someone.”
    “You think I’d be scared?”
    “I don’t know. Would you?”
    “You wouldn’t, would you?”
    “Be scared to kill someone?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No.”
    “You feel like killing anyone when they were tying you up and maybe copping a little feel while they were doing it?”
    Janet shivered. Hood looked at her and then at Newman. The muscles at his jaw-hinge moved slightly.
    “You feel like killing anybody then?” Newman said.
    “Yes.” Janet’s voice was very soft and it hissed out between her teeth.
    “So why don’t we?”
    Janet looked at Hood.
    “He’s serious, Janet,” Hood said.
    She poked at the slice of lime in her glass of Perrier water. “And you?”
    Hood said, “Whenever you need help, I’ll help you. Whatever it is. You know that.”
    “You’re willing to kill someone?”
    Hood shrugged. “Whatever,” he said.
    “I’d do it for him,” Newman said. He finished his beer. “They did cop a little feel, didn’t they?” There was sweat on his forehead. He felt that odd mixture of lust and horror he’d felt before when he’d found her on the bed.
    Janet