Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice Read Online Free PDF Page A

somebody’s always criticizing us for a little harmless wife trading. You can laugh at those old singing cowboy films of mine, but let me tell you no kid ever …”
    “Why do you think Moseson was killed?”
    “No reason,” said Sadler. “Some young junkie got caught playing burglar and decided to beat the crap out of poor Phil.”
    “Anybody he knew around your club who might do that?”
    “I don’t cater to junkie break-in artists, Easy.” Sadler refilled his glass, getting gin on his wrist. “You see, folks who work out their sexual hangups in an outgoing and healthy way, they don’t get weird.”
    “Was Joan St. John living with Moseson?” According to the newspaper Moseson lived alone.
    “Whoa,” said Sadler, laughing. “I only sell them booze, I don’t compile their autobiographies. Joan and Phil were pretty close, that’s all I know. A handsome couple, as we used to say in my day.”
    “Moseson has a sister,” said Easy. “You know her?”
    Sadler started to shake his head, grimaced, stopped. “Send these poor young bastards over to ’Nam and they pick up the dope habit and the clap and all kinds of new strains of flu,” he complained. “Boy, this one really hit me hard.”
    “Moseson’s sister?”
    “Never met the lady. I understand she’s a very quiet and conservative broad, a librarian. Lives by herself down along the beach someplace.”
    “Moseson never tangled with anybody here, nobody who might have tried to take Joan away from him?”
    The old cowboy laughed again. He drank his latest martini down more slowly. “You don’t get the big picture, Easy. When folks have an open, no regrets, sex life there’s no need for a lot of violence and aggression. You take an uptight guy like Nixon, if he got his ashes …”
    Easy pointed a thumb at the picture on the wall. “Who are those two with Joan and Moseson?”
    “Be a whole lot easier to drink right straight out of the pitcher, less likelihood of spillage,” Sadler said. He lifted the pitcher, glancing at the wall of photos. “That’s Ned and Jeannie Mowatt, two swell young people. Young and bright, very much in love. I know you can’t understand this, Easy, but …”
    Easy had taken a file card from his pocket. “Ned and Jeannie Mowatt. Were they particularly close to Moseson and Joan?”
    “Right you are,” said Sadler, his lips on the rim of the upturned pitcher. It gave his voice a hollow underwater sound. “The Maybe Club has been the birthplace of a good many lasting lifelong friendships, in the year and a half we’ve been in business.”
    “Anyone else Joan was close to?”
    Sadler shrugged and gin ran out of the pitcher and down his scalloped chin. “By the very nature of its operation, Easy, you’re going to find a good many people who, despite what the press and the media say, wouldn’t actually … what point was I trying to make?”
    “Who else did she know in the Maybe Club set?”
    “Oh, yes. You see, Easy, in a club where people swap and trade … well, you meet a lot of different people. Not one-night stands exactly, not lasting lifelong friendships either.”
    “The only lasting lifelong friendship you know of is Joan’s with the Mowatts?”
    “Right you are, Easy,” said Sadler. “Maybe you ought to talk to them. A swell couple, young and bright. You want their address?”
    “I already have it,” said Easy.

VI
    T HE MUDDY WHITE CAT pounced again, making a low mechanical-sounding growl. The dying mouse pulled itself slowly across the wet red-brick porch. It was bleeding a harsh bright scarlet. The cat caught it again, tearing at its throat.
    Easy stepped around the struggle and rang the doorbell of the Mowatt house. Down on the gently curving street, laurel trees were planted every fifteen feet. There were three-bedroom ranch houses, all siblings, every two hundred feet all along this inland block.
    The mouse gave a tiny scream and died. The mud-splotched cat made a chuckling sound as it